The familiar rapid-fire swagger of U.S. military briefings, cataloging thermobaric bombs and B-52 raids, is giving way to a sobering new tone this week. The war in Afghanistan, it turns out, is far from over. A number of GIs have been killed, and more may die. It’s not that American leaders downplayed the danger of mountainous battle zones, but there was a sense, perhaps wishful thinking, that the “direct combat” phase of the battle with Al Qaeda had passed.

So now, other assumptions are being questioned. Afghanistan’s interim government, the international peacekeepers, the NGOs and the battle-weary people of that broken land are all being reconsidered, as Western military might is re-focused on new targets.

Guests:

Neamat Nojumi, Central Asian expert and author of “The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan”

Brig. General John Reppert (ret.), Executive Director of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, spokesperson for the Department of Defense

and Susanna Price, BBC correspondent in Kabul.

Every weeknight at 11:30 pm, about 4.5 million people settle in to watch David Letterman on CBS. At the same time, over 5 million sit down to watch Ted Koppel on ABC’s Nightline. Turns out, the people watching Nightline are the wrong people. They’re too old for the taste of the advertising executives at Disney, ABC’s parent company. And it’s the hunt for cash that’s precipitating the latest flap over network television: more specifically, over the value of television news.

If “working for the mouse” means that one of the most highly regarded magazine shows is headed for the rat hole, if “working for the mouse” means that only the entertainment division gets to shoot in Afghanistan, then what’s the future for real journalism on network TV?

Guests:

Larry Grossman, former president, NBC News;
Marvin Kalb, former CBS and NBC correspondent;
David Geoetzl, reporter, Ad Week

If you want to understand what happened in September of 2001, the distinguished Mideast historian Bernard Lewis says you’ve got to look back at least to 1798. That was the year that the French General Napoleon invaded and conquered Egypt. Not only was it humiliating for a once great power to fall so fast, says Professor Lewis, it was much worse because a Muslim state was defeated by a non-Muslim one. For a thousand years before that, the victories had usually belonged to Islam.

At one point, the Muslim world stretched from Spain to India. The Islamic world was the civilized world, with art and science far superior to the European “infidels”. But then something happened. The victories stopped, the empires dwindled, and the blame game began.

Bernard Lewis will be speaking at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education April 8, 2002. For more information, call (617) 495-0740.

Guests:

Bernard Lewis, author, “What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response”

Globalization is one of those topics, along with religion and politics, that should be banned from dinner table conversation. Except when we’re talking about music. Take this recipe: for 500 years, allow the indigenous Flamenco sound of Andalusia to ferment with the folk music of the Chilean Andes, add a dash of rock and roll, move it all to western Canada, and you have the rooted, relentless, passionate sound of the guitarist Oscar Lopez. Blending the soul of gypsy music with the swagger of a rocker, Oscar toca la guitarra con mucho gusto.

The Chilean exile’s passion for music has led him to all corners of the musical globe, but in the end he’s returned to the nylon-stringed wooden box he calls home. Oscar Lopez, music without borders, musica sur barreras.

Guests:

Oscar Lopez, musician

The Great City of London lives in our collective childhood imagination, from London Bridge, Oliver Twist, and Mary Poppins to Chaucer, Samuel Pepys, and Shakespeare. The cobblestones, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Buckingham Palace are always there. But so is mystery, known only to Londoners and heralded by the “London Particular,” also known as London fog. The writer Peter Ackroyd describes a cruel, almost mindless topography, streets that tease and bewilder.

Ackroyd’s latest book is like a friendly Dickensian ghost, leading us through the centuries and over the rows of smoking chimneys. And always with affection for the people on the street, like the evening farewell during the Blitz “Good Night, Good Luck!” It is London, a biography.

Guests:

Peter Ackroyd, author, London: The Biography.