On this Memorial Day, to every veteran, but especially to those who secured freedom with their lives, you are heroes. Thank you!
The dream of freedom lives on in Hong Kong despite efforts by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its thugs to silence peaceful protest and public expression. The New York Times this morning reported on a march for democracy that drew thousands in Hong Kong yesterday. The Times article mentioned difficulties encountered by march organizers in obtaining permits and insurance for the march, and it noted that the march comes at a time when several talk show radio hosts have been threatened to such an extent that they left Hong Kong and have since refused public comment. Yesterday’s march and preparations for the annual June 4 commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre, come at a time when the Chinese Communist Party has illegally rewritten the Basic Law to end hopes of representative government in Hong Kong.
The Washington Post this morning reported on CCP dynamics that fuel intolerance for freedom. A struggle for power between former president, Jiang Zemin, and current President, Hu Jintao, has CCP members competing for the hardest line on Hong Kong and Taiwan. It is a sign of sick minds and bad times when being despotic is seen as proof of patriotism. The only thing that hard line positioning proves is that the CCP is out for itself and not for the Chinese people.
The people of China are prevented from discussing the truth about Tiananmen Square because doing so calls into question the legitimacy of a government that slaughtered its citizens for fear of losing power. This de-linking of the occurrence of an event and the ability of a people to discuss the event is the hallmark of tyranny. The butchers of Beijing seek to impose a similar de-linking in Hong Kong, and ultimately in Taiwan. They must not succeed- the fate of freedom is a common thread that binds all of the world's people. Remember Tiananmen Square! Never forget Tiananmen Square!
From The Edge of England's Sword, refreshing candor on the Abu Ghraib scandal:
"I have recently been thinking about the scene in A Few Good Men, where Tom Cruise says he wants the TRUTH and Jack Nicholson yells back "you can't handle the truth". I was hoping for a Nicholson style outbreak when Rumsfield et al were being questioned by the Senate. I want him to yell it at every pontificating journalist and opinionista. Hell, I want to yell it from the roof tops. The truth is war is a hard, messy, deadly affair. It is not a romantic game of bravery and daring. It is a hard slog, that is trying at the best of times and wrenching and torturous and terrifying most of the time."
There may be scandal in the photographs- there is certainly scandal in their publication. If taken for gratuitous personal use by our soldiers, there is no excusing the photographs. If taken for purposes of intimidation to gain cooperation and information from hardened Baathists, the strategy behind the photographs can be explained and excused. That the photographs circulated freely amongst the soldiers who took them points toward the former explanation. That Jeremy Spivits testified that freelance violence by soldiers guarding the prisoners was common in reinforces this explanation.
It would seem that Military Intelligence operated in Abu Ghraib with insufficient firewalls, and that soldiers guarding prisoners operated with insufficient guidance and supervision. In the combination of these oversights, abuse was almost predictable. The soldiers implicated must and no doubt will be punished. More importantly, the soldiers must not be sacrificed to save the careers of officers in the chain of command who are ultimately responsible for the scandal.
On the subject of torture, Mark Bowden wrote an excellent essay for The Atlantic Monthly examining the subject- its uses, its impact on torturer and torturee, and its effectiveness in gaining information. (I hasten to credit Gabrielle for suggesting that I read the article.) Bowden concluded that some level of torture can be a necessary evil to protect civilization, and he suggested a method (with which I disagree) for judicial regulation of mild torture under extreme circumstances.
Later in the article, Bowden described an interview with Alistair Hodgett and Alexandra Arriaga of Amnesty International, who oppose torture in any circumstances:
"I showed the two an article I had torn from that day's New York Times, which described the controversy over a tragic kidnapping case in Frankfurt, Germany. On September 27 of last year a Frankfurt law student kidnapped an eleven-year-old boy named Jakob von Metzler, whose smiling face appeared in a box alongside the story. The kidnapper had covered Jakob's mouth and nose with duct tape, wrapped the boy in plastic, and hidden him in a wooded area near a lake. The police captured the suspect when he tried to pick up ransom money, but the suspect wouldn't reveal where he had left the boy, who the police thought might still be alive. So the deputy police chief of Frankfurt, Wolfgang Daschner, told his subordinates to threaten the suspect with torture. According to the suspect, he was told that a "specialist" was being flown in who would "inflict pain on me of the sort I had never experienced." The suspect promptly told the police where he'd hidden Jakob, who, sadly, was found dead. The newspaper said that Daschner was under fire from Amnesty International, among other groups, for threatening torture."
""Under these circumstances," I asked, "do you honestly think it was wrong to even threaten torture?""
"Hodgett and Arriaga squirmed in their chairs. "We recognize that there are difficult situations," said Arriaga, who is the group's director of government relations. "But we are opposed to torture under any and all circumstances, and threatening torture is inflicting mental pain. So we would be against it.""
There you have it... by the standard of Amnesty International the life of every human being could be at stake, and the threat of torture would not be acceptable. It goes without saying that, in Amnesty International's opinion (an opinion shared by the Ted Kennedy wing of the Democrat party), saving the lives of a few good men serving America in Iraq would not be reason enough to man-handle Islamist thugs. Idealism is sometimes to be admired, but not when it is reduced to the level of silliness, and certainly not when the lives of decent people are at stake.
I got a jump on the crowd gathering in Washington for this weekend's dedication of the World War II Memorial. I took my girlfriend to see the Memorial a fortnight ago after work and before dinner. It was one of those evenings in Washington where the ending of a beautiful day is punctuated with storm clouds from the east and north in a prelude to the deluge. The temperature dropped pleasantly and we felt the coming of the storm.
I had doubts about the Memorial before ever I saw it. I am a believer in symbolism and symmetry, and I object to any war memorial- with the possible exception of a civil war memorial- being placed in the central axis of the Mall. What was a tale told about the founding and preservation of our nation becomes now a tale of brave men. To be sure, brave men were at the center of our nation's founding and brave men preserved our nation when brothers fought to tear her apart, but their brave cause was our nation. Those who fought in the Second World War, while equally brave, were engaged in a cause much more about the world than about America.
Many were opposed to this location for the Memorial and as a consequence, it was promised that the Memorial would not distract from the axis formed by the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. In this it succeeds to its own detriment. As Catesby Leigh wrote in today's Weekly Standard, "It's a bad sign when a memorial needs a big inscription to let you know that it is, in fact, a memorial. Uninformed visitors looking at the World War II Memorial from a distance might not realize what they are looking at.”
The inscription to which she referred is a poor attempt to rationalize the placement of the Memorial: “Here in the presence of Washington and Lincoln, one the eighteenth century father and the other the nineteenth century preserver of our nation, we honor those twentieth century Americans who took up the struggle during the Second World War and made the sacrifices to perpetuate the gift our forefathers entrusted to us: a nation conceived in liberty and justice.” It doesn’t quite work.
On that evening, in the calm before the storm, the Memorial struck me as objectively beautiful, as contributing wonderfully to an underutilized part of the Mall without being at all intrusive. Where previously an often-drained symmetrical pool with fountains that rarely worked served only as an obstacle between the Smithsonian Metro exit and the Lincoln Memorial, a lovely sunken plaza with a central fountain and beautiful stone facades now provides a landscaped transition, and a resting point, between the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool and Lincoln Memorial.
Memorials are not constructed for landscaping purposes, however, and this fact underlies what is wrong with the Memorial. In Leigh’s words, “A memorial to World War II should be very intrusive.” Precisely! She attributes success in securing the Memorial site to the lobbying power of veterans of the Second World War who wanted to trump the location of other war memorials on the Mall. The Memorial's unobtrusive design, the political price paid to secure the site, undermines their objective. In this instance, the "greatest generation" won a battle but lost the war.
National Review this morning published an article by Nir Boms on human rights activism and the imprisonment of Aktham Naeesah in Syria. One can only hope that the government of Syria soon joins that of Sadaam Hussein in the dustbin of history.
Human Events today published an editorial by David Freddoso that does a fine job explaining that actions taken by the Church out of moral necessity are not actions taken for political purposes, even if the actions may have consequences for politicians.
On the question of withholding sacraments from politicians who support abortion, Freddoso writes, "This is how religious freedom is supposed to work in the United States. You can do whatever you want -- just don't expect Church leaders to let your poor public example stand without an equally public contradiction. After all, they owe us that moral clarity."
Freddoso's article is worth reading.
As reported in the Washington Post, the Government of Sudan was reelected to the United Nations Human Rights Commission on May 4. Three days later, Human Rights Watch released a lengthy report documenting sponsorship of and participation in genocide by the government of Sudan. The report provides a snapshot of the systematic efforts of the ethnic-Arab government to eliminate ethnic-African Christians, animists and Muslims from southern regions of the country.
According to the report, an historic conflict was reignited, “… in February 2003, when two rebel groups… demanded an end to chronic economic marginalization and sought power-sharing within the Arab-ruled Sudanese state. They also sought government action to end the abuses of their rivals, Arab pastoralists who were driven onto African farmlands by drought and desertification—and who had a nomadic tradition of armed militias.”
The report continues, “The government has responded to this armed and political threat by targeting the civilian populations from which the rebels were drawn. It brazenly engaged in ethnic manipulation by organizing a military and political partnership with some Arab nomads comprising the Janjaweed; armed, trained, and organized them; and provided effective impunity for all crimes committed.” (Details of the atrocities can be read here).
The Sudanese government and the Janjaweed militia use murder, rape, pillaging and destruction to accomplish the removal of an unwanted ethnic rival. The reports states that, “With rare exceptions, the countryside is now emptied of its original Masalit and Fur inhabitants. Everything that can sustain and succour life – livestock, food stores, wells and pumps, blankets and clothing – has been looted or destroyed. Villages have been torched not randomly, but systematically – often not once, but twice
The report characterizes the response from the international community as having been, “slow to exert all possible pressure on the Sudanese government to reverse the ethnic cleansing and end the associated crimes against humanity it has carried out.” The world has known for years about the brutal campaign by Sudanese Arabs against black Africans, just as it has known for years about the enslavement by Sudanese Muslims of Christians and animists. To call their response "slow" is to give the international community credit it does not deserve. The United Nations and it's collective members have been more active in opposing the liberation of Iraq than they have been in supporting the liberation of black, Christian and animist Sudanese.
Who is more depraved, the Arab Muslims who terrorize Sudan, or the elitists in the U.N. who protect and coddle them?
The Washington Post reported yesterday that 48 Democrat congressmen have written to Cardinal McCarrick, head of a U.S. bishop's task force charged with determining how the Church should respond to Catholic politicians who consistently take public positions in opposition to Church doctrine. The letter warns McCarrick that a decision to withhold the Eucharist from politicians who support abortion and other clearly anti-Catholic public policies could turn opinion against the Church.
The Post quotes the letter: "For many years Catholics were denied public office by voters who feared that they would take direction from the Pope... While that type of paranoid anti-Catholicism seems to be a thing of the past, attempts by Church leaders today to influence votes by the threat of withholding a sacrament will revive latent anti-Catholic prejudice, which so many of us have worked so hard to overcome."
The Democrat signatories to the letter are suggesting that bishops who faithfully teach the Magesterium of the Church are responsible for any backlash against the Church. Blending in with secular culture by betraying the Church and her teachings on the sanctity of human life is no way to overcome "latent anti-Catholic prejudice." If ignoring and diluting doctrine is the Democrat solution for anti-Catholic bigotry, then give me bigotry.
Domenico Bettinelli has an interesting interpretation. He considers the offer of a meeting with McCarrick to be a sign that the Church will blink: “What the letter did was provide a convenient escape hatch for McCarrick and his task force where they can say that they have no choice but to recommend that such sanctions not be used, lest Catholics be forcibly ejected from public life by the shadowy hordes of anti-Catholics bigots waiting in the wings."
Bettinelli continues, “Most of the anti-Catholic bigots I know of are listed on the Democrat Party’s web site as affiliated groups. Maybe the Catholic Democrats should be re-thinking their party affiliation if that’s what they’re really afraid of.”
I have not yet read Irshad Manji's book, "The Trouble with Islam: A Muslim's Call for Reform in Her Faith." I first encountered the book in a used bookstore that I favor with much of my spare time, and while I was intrigued by the cover notes, I passed on the purchase because I already faced a backlog of books on the subject of Islam. I have since read a number of reviews about Manji’s book and I very much regret my uncharacteristic restraint on that distant day.
I mention Manji because Opinion Journal today published an editorial in which she discusses, with candor uncharacteristic of Islam, the violence and intolerance that are written into the Koran and Hadiths. Manji succeeds in explaining some of the theology that drives Islamists- Osama bin Laden for example. She also suggests that an Islamic “reformation” is possible through theological constructs. On the latter point, I withhold judgment. While I am not persuaded by the argument framed in Manji’s editorial, I recognize the limitations of the editorial medium. Perhaps in the space of a book her argument is more compelling.
In the meantime, my reading of the Koran and parts of the Hadiths leaves me convinced that they say little to encourage a theology that is not literalist. My skepticism results from the following logic: the Koran repeatedly claims literal divine authorship and exalts the life of Muhammad (an exaltation that holds Islamic tradition together); and Islamic tradition describes Muhammad’s life in terms that are objectively violent, intolerant and opportunistic. How then can a Muslim question the life and deeds of Muhammad without breaking with what he is taught to consider the literal words of God?
I have not found a satisfactory answer to this problem, but I will read Manji with the hope that she can provide one.
Opinion Journal today published Claudia Rosett's latest report on the Oil For Fraud scandal and efforts by the United Nations to prevent damaging information about the scandal from seeing daylight.
Rosett writes about a leaked internal audit report (accessible here), one of more than fifty prepared for U.N. review, implicating Cotecna, a Swiss firm, in gross misconduct related to the Oil For Fraud program. Cotecna employed the son of Secretary General Kofi Annan at the time it was awarded a contract, and while the report does not reference Kojo Annan, it does provide detail about the U.N.'s total failure to address contractural and procedural issues that were self evidently "inappropriate."
The report reveals systematic incompetence and mismanagement by the U.N., which if part of a pattern might well be characterized as willful. This leads to the question, what of the other forty-nine internal audit reports? Rosett writes that the reports have been turned over to an internal U.N. audit conducted by Paul Volcker, but that Volcker lacks subpoena power and authority to publish his findings beyond an audience of one- namely Kofi Annan. Can you say coverup?
In the New York Times this morning, William Safire commented on the relative silence among what he calls "defeatists" about the discovery of sarin gas, a weapon of mass destruction, in Iraq. Worth reading.
The Washington Times this morning reported that the long arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) extends even to journalists in Hong Kong. The Times writes that two talk show hosts known for questioning the mainland government have resigned their positions and that one of them has left Hong Kong. Their actions result from death threats and attempted bribery by CCP sympathisers in Hong Kong and China. Shameful and predictable behavior from a government and political party comprised of thugs and bullies.
For all of the print it has dedicated to ridiculing President Bush for failing to find weapons of mass destruction following the liberation of Iraq, the New York Times was hypocritically quiet in reporting yesterday that terrorists in Baghdad attempted to detonate an artillery shell filled with sarin gas. Prior to the American led liberation of Iraq, Saddam Hussein assured the United Nations that all of the hundreds of tons of Sarin and other chemical and biological weapons manufactured by his orders had been destroyed.
The sarin filled artillery shell may have been the sole and accidental survivor of a Baathist policy of weapons destruction- that is how the Times has chosen to spin the story. Lacking other significant weapons evidence, it is not an unreasonable conclusion. That is, unless one has consistently refused to extend the benefit of the doubt in other cases. The Times has established a reputation for concluding in all cases involving the Bush administration, that where there is smoke there is fire. For example, the Times has argued: that prisoner abuse in Abhu Graib is evidence of a policy of torture driven by the White House; that lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction is proof that the President lied about his motives for liberating Iraq; and, that existence of oil in Iraq is proof that the war is all about oil.
Because of its pattern of hypocrisy, the Times lack of follow through on the discovery of the sarin filled artillery shell can only be seen as an effort to hush evidence inconvenient to its long running storyline that the President is not up to his job. One prays that more sarin is not found, but if the story is buried and another sarin shell surfaces we will know it was the Times that was not up to its job.
Friday's article in National Review by Victor Davis Hanson must be read for it's excellent job characterizing the successful tenure of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, and the pathetic partisanship of leftists calling for his resignation.
On Rumsfeld's accomplishments, Hanson writes:
"Rumsfeld and Meyers have presided over two amazingly successful wars. In an aggregate of 11 weeks, and at the tragic cost of 700 combat dead, the American military defeated the two worst regimes in the Middle East and stayed on to implant democratic change where no such idea has ever existed. Had anyone envisioned, say in 1999, that the United States could do such a thing — that Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar would both be out of power, and that governing councils would be there in their place — he would have been dismissed as unhinged."
On the Democrat witchhunt, he writes:
"Very liberal people in Washington are calling for heads to roll in lieu of court proceedings and cross-examinations. Much of the angst that sent senators to the capitol steps microphones derives from their own surprise and the sensationalism of the pictures — images that put these media-savvy legislators first to shame, then to the recognition that this is an election year in which bottled piety is at a premium. They know that there is little to be gained from reminding Americans that there are now thousands of brave soldiers fighting horrific enemies in a professional and highly successful manner. The last one to damn the fewest receives the least air time. In this context, the behavior of Senator Kennedy the last few months is the real metaphor of our times."
As ever, Hanson is spot on.
The Washington Post this morning published an editorial by the only living President with arguably no foreign policy successes to call his own. For hundreds of days, Jimmy Carter did nothing about Americans held hostage in Iran before underlining his ineptitude with a failed rescue mission. His response to the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan was to boycott the Olympics. He is a friend, advisor and occasional speechwriter for terrorist and American-killer, Yasir Arafat. And of course, he continually claims credit for a peace that was largely agreed to by the leaders of Israel and Egypt before they approached him for American purchase of that peace.
A newspaper with a steady grip on reality would not provide a podium for the President who afflicted Americans with the “Misery Index” but the Post has a questionable grip on reality, and a long standing love affair with our most inept President in modern times. With the space provided, Carter presumes to lecture America on human rights. He opines that our response to terrorist attacks on September 11 has endangered human rights throughout the world by muting respect for international norms and obligations. He writes, "... U.S. policies are giving license to abusive governments and even established democracies to stamp out legitimate dissent and reverse decades of progress toward freedom, with many leaders retreating from previous human rights commitments."
Carter provides dubious examples of American backsliding on human rights. He mentions the Patriot Act of course- the villain of choice for every leftist in America. He also mentions the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and other foreign prisons. Most revealing of Carter's moral obtuseness is his anger over, "Civilians and soldiers arbitrarily detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without access to legal counsel or being charged with any crime." From a man who has befriended and defended Fidel Castro in spite of the Castro government’s record of disdain for human beings, from a man who has whitewashed conditions for political dissidents in Cuba, we have the assertion that men captured on battlefields in Afghanistan are being held “arbitrarily.” As though firing a loaded weapon at Americans on a battlefield is insufficient proof of hostile intent.
Carter has an excuse for his inanities- he is a fool. The Post, on the other hand, has no excuse for publishing him.
So much that is depressing is in the news this week. It is refreshing to read reports such as this one from the BBC about succesful elections in the world's largest democracy. That contention and disagreement can yield to public decision making in countries with traditions dramatically different from those of the West provides hope for people who can only dream of voting for their leaders.
From National Review, an article by Erick Stakelbeck putting American abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib into Islamic and Islamist perspective. Stakelbeck provides a shameful litany of the sort of atrocities committed by Muslims of various stripes against prisoners and military and political opponents. While loudly condemning America for abusive practices, the Islamic world looks the other way, or even cheers, when Muslims commit far worse atrocities against non-Muslims. For example, Palestinians danced in the streets in celebration of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. This is all the more reason for America to investigate and understand what happened in Abu Ghraib, and to punish those responsible for any abuse. We must show the high road to a lost people.
National Review today published an article by Paul Marshall analyzing recent and ongoing elections in Indonesia. Marshall notes that while a majority of voters favor Indonesia's brand of tolerant Islam, they are fragmented into competing parties, which concentrates political power in the hands of political parties inclined toward Islamism, or the sort of intolerant Islam exported by so many Middle Eastern countries. Worth reading.
Opinion Journal published this morning a brief and uplifting editorial on faith, the priesthood and the Church. A positive account of the impact and inspiration of one man's life and death in service to God is welcome at a time when the priesthood is routinely disparaged and the holy order of the Church is under siege by secularism and ignorance.
After a weekend of partisanship masquerading as concern for the national defense, it is refreshing to have the televised temper tantrums of Joe Biden and company placed in context by reason and logic as in William Safire's column in the New York Times this morning. Much work remains in determining the extent of prisoner abuse in Iraq, uncovering the policies or lack of policies responsible for the abuse, and identifying the parties responsible for the abuse. This serious matter was under investigation before photographs reached the media, and it continues to be taken quite seriously. I am confident that justice will be served and lessons learned. None of which requires or is enhanced by the early resignation of Rumsfeld. Calls for the Secretary of Defense to resign are intended by leftists to embarrass the administration, discredit the liberation of Iraq, and weaken the President's bid for reelection. I concede the possibility that information may surface in the weeks to come that would require Rumsfeld to resign, but we have no such information to date. In the meantime, the Iraq front is too important in the war on terrorism to be used a political football.
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's campaign to convince the world that Islam is, "a religion of peace and moderation," was dealt a bit of a setback this morning when Reuters reported that Abdul-Satar al-Bahadli, a cleric and follower of the Iraqi Islamist , Moqtada al-Sadr, preached a sermon in Basra offering a reward of roughly U.S. $170 for the capture of a female British soldier. al-Bahadli told his audience that if captured, the female British soldier "should be handed to the office of Sadr, the martyr, and she will be treated as a concubine."
It must be frustrating to Abdullah and other Muslims who seek to export their religion to an unsuspecting West, when an obscure cleric in Iraq makes international headlines with a pronouncement that is both barbaric and completely in accordance with the Koran and the Hadiths. Abdullah's loss is our gain, as every slip-up feeds the West's awareness of the true nature of Islam.
The New York Times today reported that dissolution and separation had been suggested by conservatives at the quadrennial General Conference of the United Methodist Church in answer to persistent disputes with liberals over questions of homosexuality and scriptural inerrancy. The Times report is worth mentioning only because it is so poorly written and so clearly demonstrates the Time’s willingness to play with words and logic to advance it’s post-Christian and politically correct agenda.
The Times wrote that, “Although a schism is far from imminent or sure, the proposal is an indication that Methodist conservatives intend to use the gay issue as a wedge to precipitate a fracture, just as they have in the Episcopal Church USA, in which some churches are now forming a rival network.” I am sure that the Times does not believe that conservative Methodists are responsible for problems in the Episcopal Church- one wonders what the writer was drinking when he wrote this sentence, and the editor when he overlooked it.
Setting aside questions of grammatical incompetence, the Times’ agenda shines forth in the next sentence, “In nearly every mainline Protestant denomination, from the Presbyterian Church USA to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, conservatives are mounting increasingly organized challenges to churches long associated with theological diversity and liberal causes.” If we are to believe the Times, theological liberals who suggest that scripture is not inerrant, and that homosexuality is compatible with scripture, are guardians of denominational tradition, while conservatives are on the attack against those same hallowed traditions.
This argument is nonsensical. Protestant tradition and doctrine has hundreds of years of history behind it, and save for the past thirty years, all of that tradition aligns with the conservative arguments on scripture and homosexuality. Late in the article the Times betrays its sophism in writing, “In multiple votes on gay issues at the conference here, the nearly 1,000 delegates have consistently opposed changing their church doctrine to include acceptance of gay sex or openly gay ministers.” Losers in a voting process represent the minority, not the majority. The doctrine of any religious body is held in the majority, not the minority. Liberals are challenging long standing church traditions, not conservatives.
The self-righteousness of the politically correct left is to be found in the logic of the Times, and in the behavior those responsible for driving the Methodist Church toward schism. The Times wrote, “After losing several critical votes this week, hundreds of gay clergy members and lay people and their supporters paraded through the convention hall today singing the Methodist hymn, "We are the church."” They are not the church, but the will be a church, separate and distinct from the Methodist Church, if they succeed in abandoning scripture and tradition.
Cinco de Mayo, a day on which we celebrate the defeat of the French army by a Mexican force roughly half its size at Puebla in 1862. Mexico is a wonderful place, Puebla even more so. It is the home of mole sauce, talavera pottery, countless beautiful churches, and a devout and friendly people. One evening in Puebla, over drinks at a combination bookstore and bar, I heard what is for me the defining performance of Silly Love Songs. One doesn't travel to Mexico for Paul McCartney covers, but music happens. In any event, what could be better than a day to celebrate a French defeat by eating Mexican food and drinking Margheritas. Viva Mexico! France Stinks!
National Review today published an excellent discussion by Carl Olson of the Left Behind novels and The DaVinci Code, books that rank among the worst I have read in recent memory.
I read the first of the Left Behind novels with some interest, I struggled through the second- the third was a trial of pain. I did not, and will not read the rest of the series. Improbable as it may seem, Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins are actually worse at writing fiction than they are at doing theology. Dan Brown is a slightly better writer than LaHaye and Jenkins (though that is not saying very much) but in The DaVinci Code he betrays a grasp of theology worse than that of LaHaye and Jenkins. One wonders why the books are popular when they combine so much theological error with one-dimensional characters, contrived plotting, and boring dialogue. Olson's attempt to answer this question is worth reading- unlike the books he discusses.
Stories of imprisoned Iraqis abused by their American guards have dominated media headlines for several days. The stories, which seem certain to be true, are disappointing. While we should wait for details to emerge from the official investigation before drawing conclusions, we must emphasize that America will not stand for abusive behavior.
Americans are no less susceptible to original sin than any other people. We are, however, privileged to live in a country with a culture that defines as wrong, the sort of prisoner abuse that seems to have occurred in Iraq. We are not immune from such acts of abuse- under combat circumstances no one is immune from such behavior- but our Judeo-Christian heritage provides us with proper context for reacting to such abuse when it occurs.
In Fallujah several weeks ago, Americans were killed and their bodies desecrated to much public celebration. The Iraqis responsible for this contemptible behavior roam freely. A small number of our soldiers have let down the cause of freedom by treating Iraqis as though they were beneath contempt. We can be proud that an investigation will reveal the extent of their wrongdoing, and we can be certain that those responsible will be punished. This is the difference between them and us, a difference that allows for hope that they may someday be like us.