A nuclear Iran will endanger Israel's existence, the stability of the Middle East and the welfare of the West. An Iran stripped of nuclear ability will allow the Middle East to become more moderate; it will enable the West to uphold its values and perpetuate its way of life for a long time to come. In the short term, however, the wild scenario is multi-risk. There might be an intelligence failure or a military one. In any case, the Iran of the ayatollahs is a sophisticated and strong religious power. If it is backed into a corner, Iran, too, will prefer to go out with a bang and not a whimper. No one today knows for sure what the nature and impact of such a bang would be.

It is by now overwhelmingly clear that Al Qaeda and its philosophy are not the worldwide leviathan that they were once portrayed to be. Both have been losing support over the last seven years. The terrorist organization's ability to plan large-scale operations has crumbled, their funding streams are smaller and more closely tracked. Of course, small groups of people can still cause great havoc, but is this movement an "existential threat" to the United States or the Western world? No, because it is fundamentally weak. Al Qaeda and its ilk comprise a few thousand jihadists, with no country as a base, almost no territory and limited funds. Most crucially, they lack an ideology that has mass appeal. They are fighting not just America but the vast majority of the Muslim world. In fact, they are fighting modernity itself.

All of this makes perfect sense, of course. But at yesterday's Aspen panel on nuclear non-proliferation, the general consensus was that there's a reasonably high likelihood that a nuclear device will be detonated in an American city, New York or Washington most likely, at some point in the next ten years. And the experts on the panel, John Holdren and Joe Cirincione among them, are not exactly attached to the Bush Administration worldview. After such an attack, we'll look back -- those of us still around, obviously -- on our efforts to combat al Qaeda and judge them inadequate to the task, just as we look back now on the Clinton Administration's pre-9/11 preparations (and the Bush Administration's, as well) as thoroughly inadequate. So I suppose I'm convinced of two things simultaneously: Al Qaeda is fairly weak, and not very popular at all, and that this might not matter as much as people think.

Steele is arguing for the end of white guilt, which is something legitimate to argue about, but now he's saying that America conducts itself with excessive politesse in Middle East war zones because of white guilt. And I always thought we tried to respect human rights whenever possible because it's the right thing to do, and, by the way, slaughtering people indiscriminately doesn't tend to win over the people you let live.

I'm not even sure, come to think of it, that I'm with his general notion that white people can stop worrying now about the consequences of slavery, and stop acting on those consequences. Maybe I'm a little bit freaked out because the audience here is 99.44 white. His talk gives me an idea, though: tomorrow, instead of moderating panels on Islam and on nuclear non-proliferation, I'm going to give a speech called, "Dear Christians: You Can Stop Thinking about Buchenwald Now."

Now John Holdren from Harvard is up there, telling us that climate change is a nearly-irreversible catastrophe, and he blames America for egregious fecklessness on the issue. I would note that many members of the audience at Aspen flew here on private jets.

His talk is making me thirsty. Two rows in front of me (one row in front of Jay Lauf's shirt) is Linda Resnick, the woman behind Fiji Water, who is at this moment drinking a bottle of same. I wish I could reach over and grab that bottle.

In any case, my capo di tutti capi, David Bradley, is speaking at this very moment, so I should listen, because, after all, a recent brain-scan has shown that I empathize with him quite a bit, but I just have to say that my attention is being diverted by a shirt worn by our publisher, Jay Lauf, who is sitting directly in front of me. I will try to get a picture of the shirt if I could figure out the camera in this laptop, but it’s a checkered, Caribbean-blue number with ornate designs inside the collar, and it’s a great-looking shirt, and it might very well epitomize the style known as “Aspen Casual” (though it might actually be too nice for Aspen) which I’ll never master. I've decided that I need better shirts generally, and this just brings it into sharp relief. Anyway, if I can get a picture of it, I’ll post it.

The new text, lurching to a curious and condescending finale, maintains moral neutrality in the face of suggestions by some Christians, that if the Jews may not have killed Christ some 2000 years ago, they may be doing so now.

When Christian liberation theology considers "a situation of oppression in which the oppressing power is a state that is Jewish, with a population and leadership predominantly made up of Jews," the revised report reads, "Christians suffering oppression at the hands of the Jewish state, its army or its citizens, identify with Jesus in his suffering.

"Sometimes Palestinian Christians liken their experience to the passion of Jesus, or describe themselves as being crucified as Jesus was crucified," the text continues. "The implication of such descriptions is that the state of Israel and its policies are the crucifying power."

I'm taking a guess that most of my neighbors in Northwest DC don't share this opinion, however.

Okay, I liked it. So what? Who doesn't like a hummus joke? Or 37 hummus jokes? It turns out that Michael Chabon also thought it was the worst movie he's ever seen, and he enjoyed it very much as well. Since we were e-mailing about it anyway, I thought I would send him a series of questions. Here are his answers:

Jeffrey Goldberg: Do you like hummus?

Michael Chabon: I would say that, in fact, I relish hummus.

JG: Isn't hummus really delicious?

MC: Yes, but what I like most about it is that, for all its deliciousness, it has managed to stay humble.

JG: Was Zohan the worst movie you've ever seen?

MC: Certainly in the last two weeks. No, wait, I forgot about Get Smart.

JG: Do you think that Zohan is a 21st century Ari Ben-Canaan? Do people in the 21st century know who Ari Ben-Canaan is?

MC: What a depressing thought. Is there anybody else who feels that it might be best if we just started the 21st century over again? No question that, in retrospect, Zohan suffered from a distinct lack of Eva-Marie Saint.

JG: Are Jews in Hollywood more comfortable now with their Jewishness than they were 30 years ago?

MC: Are there Jews in Hollywood?

JG: And if yes, is this necessarily a good thing?

MC: I am sitting here trying to think of recent Hollywood films that might be seen to reflect their Jewish creators' increased comfort with their Jewishness. What I see is an increased degree of comfort with Jewishiness. That's probably not a bad thing.

I mean, hummus toothpaste, that had me laughing. My wife (born in Israel), and me. Nobody else in the theater (Emeryville, matinee) was really laughing about the hummus toothpaste.

JG: Do you know any Israelis who are obsessed with hacky sack? Because I don't.

MC: You mean apart from Tzabar Regel, gold medalist in hacky sack at the 2005 Maccabiah?

JG: Was Zohan a Zionist movie, or a post-Zionist movie, and, does it really matter?

MC: To the degree that it appears to suggest that Jews and Arabs can never live in peace anywhere but in a mythical neighborhood of downtown New York City, I guess I would definitely be inclined to classify it as "post-Something."

JG: What do you think of tehina in your hummus?

MC: I welcome its presence, as a grace note.