Monday, December 29, 2003
The Year That Was
You gotta love this great year-in-review piece from Barry Crimmins in the Boston Phoenix. A pithy quote: "Items looted from museums on the banks of the Tigris River are understandably of little interest to Rummy, since the only history he respects is Genghis Khan’s foreign policy." And also, on the subject of Christian missionaries thronging the new Iraq: "People who drop death from above really should be careful about implying that salvation emanates from the same point of origin." And finally: "No matter how they try to spin it, we know that imprisoning Saddam will not bring a single slain 'Coalition' soldier back to life, or make their deaths retroactively glorious. Nor will it resurrect any of the thousands of dead Iraqis. Not one freshly minted paraplegic arose from a wheelchair upon hearing the news that Hussein had been caught."
Also reviewing the year just ending, Richard Reeves picks George W. Bush not only as his man of the year, but his man of the decade, and more. Reeves is one of the few columnists with a broad national audience to ask the following simple question about the American thirst to make other parts of the world more like us: What would we do if somebody conquered even part of our country, and told us we should believe in their values and accept their god because it's better than ours? "Would we fight?" Reeves asks. "Would we resist? I hope so." Of course we would. That we don't instantly realize this, and that we are somehow surprised that other people would rather fight than switch, is astounding evidence of our international naivete, and our egotistical belief that everybody wants to be just like us.
You gotta love this great year-in-review piece from Barry Crimmins in the Boston Phoenix. A pithy quote: "Items looted from museums on the banks of the Tigris River are understandably of little interest to Rummy, since the only history he respects is Genghis Khan’s foreign policy." And also, on the subject of Christian missionaries thronging the new Iraq: "People who drop death from above really should be careful about implying that salvation emanates from the same point of origin." And finally: "No matter how they try to spin it, we know that imprisoning Saddam will not bring a single slain 'Coalition' soldier back to life, or make their deaths retroactively glorious. Nor will it resurrect any of the thousands of dead Iraqis. Not one freshly minted paraplegic arose from a wheelchair upon hearing the news that Hussein had been caught."
Also reviewing the year just ending, Richard Reeves picks George W. Bush not only as his man of the year, but his man of the decade, and more. Reeves is one of the few columnists with a broad national audience to ask the following simple question about the American thirst to make other parts of the world more like us: What would we do if somebody conquered even part of our country, and told us we should believe in their values and accept their god because it's better than ours? "Would we fight?" Reeves asks. "Would we resist? I hope so." Of course we would. That we don't instantly realize this, and that we are somehow surprised that other people would rather fight than switch, is astounding evidence of our international naivete, and our egotistical belief that everybody wants to be just like us.
