This time, Europe's hatred justified
COLOGNE, Germany -- There were American flags all over the house I visited the other day in the suburbs of this lovely city. Two of the children of the house -- two German kids on the edge of what we would call young adulthood -- had studied in the United States and learned to love the country. What about the Iraq war? I asked their father, a social science colleague. They are able to make the distinction, he replied, between the war, of which they strongly disapprove, and the United States, which they admire.
Friday, May 28, 2004
How war in Iraq derails real war on terror
Colombo Bay sounds like it might be a novel by Joseph Conrad. It is instead a story by Richard Pollak about his voyage from Hong Kong to New York on a container ship named the Colombo Bay, which indeed stopped at the capital of Sri Lanka. The Colombo Bay also reveals just how badly the real war on terror has been compromised by the Iraq war.
Friday, May 21, 2004
Review board must take on cardinals
Occasionally, just occasionally, I agree with the suspicion of American Catholic bishops that they don't get fair media coverage. Thus His Lordship of Colorado Springs announces that those who vote for a candidate who supports abortion may not receive the sacraments, and it's big news. But when two cardinals and an archbishop (Mahoney, McCarrick, Pilarczyk) say or imply that they do not believe the eucharist should be used in political campaigns, the media hardly notice.
Friday, May 14, 2004
Bush has no excuse in abuse scandal
The current shock and outrage at the White House and the Pentagon are as phony as a $17 bill. The president might not have known what was happening specifically at Abu Ghraib, but had to know in general how the CIA and military intelligence were "softening up" prisoners for interrogation. Could he have been so stupid to think that captured al-Qaida leaders had a change of heart and freely revealed their secrets?
Wild about Harry
