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Down With Communism, Up With Terrorism?The unforseen consequences of Reagan's Cold War.

By Josh LevinUpdated Friday, June 11, 2004, at 5:08 PM ET

Economist, June 12
The cover touts Ronald Reagan as "the man who beat communism." Inside, the magazine reasons that the Cold War would have ended without Reagan, whose belief in "that special American gusto" snuffed out the Soviet Union perhaps 20 years before it would have died of natural causes. Another piece notes that both Reagan and George W. Bush prefer "simplicity to nuance," while Bush has a "Reaganesque ability to change direction while claiming that he is sticking to principles." The differences between the men: Bush's support of the religious right and his belief in using "government to promote virtue." (Read Slate's David Greenberg on the big myths of the Reagan era.) … A package on emerging technology includes articles on rubberlike metals that could be used to create artificial muscles, three-dimensional printers that may one day create replacement body parts, and the use of DNA fragments as a security tag.

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New Republic, June 21
The cover story laments the rise of foreign policy "realists" who say stability is more important than the promotion of democracy abroad. John Kerry, for one, has said that "full democracy" isn't the be-all and end-all in Iraq and that "he would play down the promotion of democracy" in China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Pakistan. But what the realists fail to understand is that so-called "friendly regimes" like Saudi Arabia and Egypt foster terrorism and repression. … Another piece argues that Ronald Reagan's success in fighting the Cold War is matched by his failure to stop the spread of terrorism. Along with buying off Iran by trading arms for hostages, the Reagan administration also failed to stop the funneling of American money from the Pakistani intelligence service to Islamists with ties to Osama Bin Laden. (Read Slate's Fred Kaplan on another connection between Reagan and Bin Laden.)

New York Times Magazine New York Times Magazine, June 13
The cover story reports that the Iranian government has consistently lied about its nuclear program. When inspectors discovered that Iran had advanced centrifuge designs, government officials claimed it wasn't disclosed because it was just for "research and development." Even so, the Bush administration seems too confident that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, considering the failure to find WMD in Iraq. As of yet, inspectors haven't found any weapons or evidence of weapons research. … Another piece profiles the military lawyer assigned to defend a Yemeni man who drove for Osama Bin Laden. Rather than negotiating a guilty plea, the defense attorney is going to Yemen this summer to look for witnesses to vouch for his client, who denies being a member of al-Qaida. Strangely, even if he is found innocent by a military tribunal, the government could still hold the man as an enemy combatant.

New York Review of Books, June 24
In a follow-up to his scathing piece on press coverage of the Iraq war, Michael Massing says the New York Times has been "late and lethargic" and the Washington Post "astute and aggressive." Massing also laments that Al Jazeera has independent news while American audiences get embedded reporting, which leads to "news filtered through the Marines." One proposed solution: Supplement access with coverage from foreign entities like the BBC, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse. … Another follow-up piece, this time on the methods of torture used in the war on terror, uses the old technique of comparing France's war in Algeria to the situation in Iraq. Take the young officer who, after harshly interrogating Algerian prisoners, has contempt for superior officers and politicians who "at the least sign of controversy over the methods he is obliged to employ, would think nothing of abandoning him as 'a rotten apple.' "

The New Yorker The New Yorker, June 14 and June 21
The summer fiction issue doesn't have much fiction. Along with a story by Aleksandar Hemon and three interconnected Alice Munro stories, there are five nonfiction essays on "vacations from hell," including Zadie Smith's allergic reaction to Tonga and Susan Orlean's getaway at a bathroomless house in Oregon. … Another piece argues that post-World War II America—with psychoanalysis all the rage and authors fighting to produce the next Great American Novel—was the golden age of writer's block. The story notes both how writers romanticize the beautiful agony of their profession and the difficulties in separating out block from, say, nonfunctional alcoholism. … A piece ponders why Bernard Lewis, the West's leading scholar of the Arab world, was so gung ho on the invasion of Iraq. Perhaps, the article suggests, he loved it too much: "Such love often ends in bitter impatience when reality fails to conform to the ideal."

Weekly Standard, June 14
The cover story explains why classical music has been replaced by news and talk on public radio. The short (and unsurprising) answer: ratings. In the late 1970s, a consultant named David Giovannoni persuaded station managers to program like commercial radio: news and talk brings more listeners, donations, and sponsors. These days, stations are caught in a kind of vicious news cycle, needing to run more and more high-revenue news programming to pay the increasing rights fees for NPR's news programs. … Another article looks at Israel's demographics. The country's Arab Muslims, currently about 20 percent of the population, are growing at a rate of 3.5 percent, while the majority non-ultraorthodox Jews are increasing their ranks at a 1 percent rate. With a wave of Jewish immigration looking unlikely, Jewish politicians have tentatively begun to address the demographic question. One possible proposal: discourage Arab population growth by decreasing government subsidies for large families.

Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report, June 14
Dutch treats: All the newsweeklies have retrospectives on 40^th president Ronald Reagan. Both Time and Newsweek feature lengthy chronological essays that focus on the Gipper's conduct of the Cold War and his ever-present optimism. Time also includes remembrances from Nancy Reagan and former President George H.W. Bush and a piece that argues Reagan's legacy might be the judiciary—he appointed more federal judges than any other president. Newsweek has an essay from Patti Davis on how she "grew beyond the girl who wanted more from her father than he was able to give." A piece by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. sounds the harshest notes in either magazine in noting that Reagan "had no capacity for analysis and no command of detail." A commemorative issue of U.S. News will hit newsstands tomorrow—subscribers get a regular issue of the magazine with a cover package on retirement. (Read pieces on Reagan's legacy by Slate's Timothy Noah and William Saletan.)

Tenet, anyone?: The magazines also include obits, of a sort, for CIA director George Tenet. Newsweek says Tenet brought some of the "dash and esprit" back to the CIA. He failed, though, in not recognizing that the agency needed to "get out of the embassies and into the back alleys." Time has material from James Bamford's A Pretext for War, a book that argues Tenet could have stopped the Iraq war. Among the harshest critiques is that the CIA was often most interested in fighting with the FBI—turf wars meant the agency didn't let the bureau know when it had leads on Osama Bin Laden. U.S. News predicts that a post-Tenet U.S. intelligence reorganization won't be easy, as the military controls the purse strings on 90 percent of the intel budget. The mag also suggests that Tenet's resignation, with the concomitant opportunities for consulting and speechmaking, will do wonders for his personal wealth.

The Olympics ... and an unrelated drug scandal: U.S. News reports that half the tickets for August's Athens Olympics remain unsold. Also, most venues still haven't been completed, which makes it tough for planners to develop security plans. Even more worrisome, organizers are worried that terrorists could have infiltrated hastily assembled construction crews and could strike in the weeks before the games, when police won't be as attentive. Greek taxpayers can't be happy about becoming a likely target for terrorism: They paid $7 billion for the privilege of hosting the games. … Newsweek tells the story of "drug dealer turned publisher" Vickie Stringer, whose Triple Crown Publications has sold 300,000 "hip-hop novels" and had three writers purged by St. Martin's Press. Amid the predictable complaints about the drugs and violence, a buyer for Waldenbooks notes enthusiastically that the books are "doing for 15- to 25-year-old African Americans what Harry Potter did for kids."