The message was not particularly subtle: Here, in the birthplace of democracy, Greeks would once again stand up to their oppressors and claim their ancient freedoms. At the very feet of the Parthenon they made their stand, with the ruins of the classical past providing witness.

The juxtaposition between the “birthplace of democracy” and Greece’s current budget woes has been echoed in the media, illustrated with video of Athenians torching Starbucks and Cinnabon. What this analysis fails to recognize is that the contemporary Greeks are rejecting their own heritage as they riot not for freedom, but against it.

The Parthenon has been caught up in this irony, as it has been in so many previous conflicts. Originally constructed as a monument to the successful–and near miraculous–defeat of the Persian empire by the Delian League in the early 5th century BC, the monument became the symbol of the small by doughty Athenian democracy that has been the touchstone for subsequent attempts at free governance. Rome, Venice, Florence, Holland, Great Britain and the United States have in turn claimed classical Athens as an ideological ancestor. Rose-colored glasses notwithstanding, the Parthenon represents the best of the western tradition, the urge towards political freedom that enables prosperity and culture.

Alas, the Parthenon today is but a shadow of its former self. While it survived for centuries in the post-classical world as a church and then a mosque, it was blown up in 1687 in an accident rather similar to the one that destroyed the Attikon theater in Athens over the weekend. The precarious ruin that is the contemporary Parthenon is undergoing a restoration in which each block of marble is removed, studied, and replaced in the archaeological equivalent of Humpty Dumpty.

The philosophical legacy of the culture that produced the Parthenon appears to be in similar tatters. According to Pericles, the building’s patron, the strength of Athens was its self-sufficiency:

Again, we are contrary to most men in matter of bounty. For we purchase our friends not by receiving but by bestowing benefits. And he that bestoweth a good turn is ever the most constant friend because he will not lose the thanks due unto him from him whom he bestowed it on. Whereas the friendship of him that oweth a benefit is dull and flat, as knowing his benefit not to be taken for a favour but for a debt.

In other words, free men should never aspire to handouts, or embrace the dull and flat dead end that is debt. It is ironic indeed that the Parthenon now stands over the banners demanding benefits be bestowed on the Greeks. The enemy is no longer the invading Persians or rival Spartans, but rather “the monopolies” and the European Union who threaten to deny the favours decried by Pericles.

The Parthenon is fragile–not just the beleagured, damaged structure itself, but also the aspirational ideal it has come to represent. Those who believe independence is still worth pursuing should take note of its inglorious appropriation by the forces of dependence in Athens. New Parthenons in Philadelphia and Nashville attest to the influence this structure has had over our democracy. The original may well be beyond saving at this point, but we can preserve its legacy.

The waters have been further muddied by the President’s insistence that there is no parity between the situation in Libya last year and what we face now in Syria. In Libya, the threat to civilians and opportunity to topple a vicious dictator were sufficient cause for Mr. Obama to engage the U.S. military, even without a pressing national security interest at stake.  While it can be argued that once the U.S. engaged in Libya it might have been preferable to lead from the front to secure weapons stockpiles and guard against al Qaida encroachment, the fact remains that the world is a better place with Colonel Qaddafi gone, as Mr. Obama routinely reminds us.

Meanwhile, as many as ten times the civilians killed in Libya before NATO’s intervention have died in Syria over the last year.  Bashir Assad is no less cruel and repressive a tyrant than Muammar Qaddafi. The threat of Syria’s unknown stockpiles of WMD falling into bad hands demands our urgent attention.  And, above all, the United States has a clear strategic interest in toppling this vital ally of Iran.

But Syria is somehow different, and not worthy of the same sort of military assistance we offered to the Libyan rebels.

Rather than taking decisive action in the form of military aid through our purported ally Turkey (perhaps in August when the President issued a statement calling for Assad’s ouster on his way out of town for vacation), the U.S. has remained on the diplomatic equivalent of a hamster wheel.  From the ill-advised resumption of “normal” relations with Syria last January through the pathetic failure of the Security Council resolution this weekend, our efforts to resolve the situation have been futile wastes of time and energy as the slaughter in Syria goes on to the tune of 100 people a day.

In dealing with Libya and Syria, consistency need not be the hobgoblin of little minds but can rather be the hallmark of a consistent and coordinated foreign policy.  There are equivalencies to be drawn between the two crises, and once these are recognized we should take equivalent action.  It is not a decision to be taken lightly, but we would not be alone and the cause is just.  We have the unified support of our European and Arab allies.  We have moral and strategic interests at stake.  Rather than whining about the shocking moral turpitude of the United Nations, the President of the United States needs to remember his responsibilities as the leader of the free world–and lead.

The natural impulse is to shield them from the squalor, to turn off the radio and change the subject.  But this time I thought I owed it to them to try to explain what was going on.  After all, both of them have iPods that take pictures and that can connect to wifi.  They have gmail accounts.  This activity is monitored of course, but would I really be able to catch every single misstep that happened at a sleepover or at camp before it became part of the flotsam and jetsam of the internet?  Looking in the rearview mirror at them on this, their last day of school, they seemed so young–but the hard reality is that Anthony Weiner’s correspondents were not so very much older (that we know), and grew up in this information age in which it is not only commonplace to be in direct cyber-contact with a famous congressman, but also for that contact to become intimate in a very public and permanent way.

Deep breath.

We talked about the pictures our family had taken this weekend at a horse show that had been posted online, and the people that had seen them and commented on them–a process they thoroughly enjoy.  We discussed the things they circulate around their limited set of email correspondants, and how messages are forwarded but you still keep a copy and you can’t control what happens to what is sent on.  Then we talked about Mr. Weiner, and how those pictures and messages can go from being fun and friendly into the realm of inappropriate.  My son has been chastised for over-use of the term “weiner” as he pointed out this morning–in a funny way it helped us navigate the difficult territory but I needed them to understand this was not something to snicker at, but rather something serious that could touch their lives if they weren’t careful.

Anthony Weiner’s disgrace is a painful reminder to all of us of the fraility and blindness that appear to be an eternal componant of the human condition.  But it might also serve as an opportunity to draw attention to their new manifestiation in our increasingly ubiquitous social media, and to help those coming of age in this environment–an opportunity he squandered yesterday.  In my opinion, the Congressman’s greatest mistake in his press conference was referring to his interaction with the college student in Seattle as a “joke”–something lighthearted and that anyone might do.  It was a shameful word choice that sends precisely the wrong message to others who might engage in such behavior, or who are already doing it.  Taking explicit photos of yourself and posting them in any forum, be it public or private, is no prank gone awry.  It is a dangerous and potentially damaging–even damning–thing to do. 

Mr. Weiner’s name has been the source of endless jokes over the last ten days, and his activities certainly invite ridicule.  But the seriousness of this type of behavior and its lasting ramifications are no joke.

It is true that 45 years is not so very long in terms of the territorial integrity of the United States. We might even prefer to return to the 1967 context in which our borders were much less challenging than they are today. But what Mr. Obama seems to fail to understand is that 45 years is a very long time for Israel. While the history of the Israeli people stretches back millennia, lsrael itself has only existed for 63 years. What the President is asking is that more than 70% of that history be erased, beginning with the reasons it was deemed necessary to annex the territories in 1967, and continuing on through the failed diplomatic initiatives, UN humiliations and relentless, deadly terrorist attacks of the past decades (including the last one, as Jeff Emanuel discussed yesterday). While some have considered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s terse response to this proposal disrespectful of the President, Mr. Netanyahu might have some very real concerns that once three-quarters of Israel’s past has been eradicated, would it be all that outlandish to go all the way to pre-1948? Especially under the leadership of an American president who is asking the Israelis to make this concession on the dubious grounds that hope will overcome hate?

Mr. Obama justified his pre-1967 proposal yesterday by declaring “[t]he dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation.” While rhetorically it sounded nice and cleverly recalled Martin Luther King’s iconic speech, the choice of the word “dream” to describe a sovereign state was a curious one. Perhaps for our President Israel is still an abstract phantasm that might or might not exist, but for others it has been a reality for the last 63 years. Israel has the right to all of its history, and all of its territory.

Very few, however, are protesting “DSK”‘s innocence. But if the news really came as such a jarring surprise, shouldn’t there be a clamour of disbelief? The shameful fact is that this news was not so much a shock as a long time coming.

In 2006, French journalists Christophe Deloire and Christophe Dubois wrote a book called Sexus Politicus about the colorful sexual lives of French politicians. While the American press tended to focus on the revelations about politicians of whom they had heard (Chirac, Mitterand, Sarkozy), the book also contained a chapter on risky, aggressive sexual behavior–titled “L’Affair DSK.” As Mr. Deloire wrote in today’s Le Monde, the media’s code of silence about sexual abuse at the high levels of government may well have permitted, if not enabled, DSK’s most recent offense. Egregiously this book was published the year before Strauss-Kahn became head of the IMF–the same year he was accused of attempted rape by French journalist Tristane Banon who just happened to be Strauss-Kahn’s wife’s goddaughter, not to mention 30 years his junior (the French police declined to press charges in 2007, but may reconsider now).  Less than 12 months later, DSK was back in the news, this time for having an affair with IMF subordinate Paula Nagy.

2006-07 also happened to be the period that saw the moralizing witch hunt of Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank over claimed favoritism that advanced the career of his companion, Shaha Ali Riza (claims that the World Bank itself found without merit, but no matter, Mr. Wolfowitz still had to resign). The discrepancies between the treatment of Mr. Wolfowitz and DSK were noted at the time, but DSK kept his job and continued his activities unimpeded by the moral and legal issues constraining the behavior of lesser mortals–and why shouldn’t he? Clearly he was well above the law.

Until Saturday night, that is, when DSK found himself not up against the complaint authorities of more sophisticated nations that turn a blind eye to such escapades, and instead at the mercy of the NYPD. Even though DSK’s most recent victim was yet another young woman many years his junior in a comparatively weak position, she found solace in the law. For his part, DSK is entitled under that same law to the presumption of innocence as the case unfolds but at the very least it is time to stop calling Strauss-Kahn by the Casanova-like title of “le grand séducteur” and instead understand him, as Ms. Banon declared, as “a rutting chimpanze.”

If there is a silver lining to this sordid episode, it is that l’affair DSK provides an opportunity to shine a harsh light on the tacit condonement of sexual abuse in the world’s theoretically-charitable institutions ranging from the U.N. to the Peace Corps. While the vast majority of the victims have suffered in anonymous silence, DSK can provide a very famous face and ample publicity to this dirty little secret that has been kept for far too long–and if this case can force some much-needed reform and accounability then Strauss-Kahn may finally do some good, however unwillingly.

Update: More details from the criminal complaint.

Update 2: There is another book on the topic, this one titled DSK: Les secrets d’un présidentiable.

Israel has achieved amazing things given its small size and precarious location. Its hulking neighbors, notably oil-rich Iran, seem poised to swallow it up–yet Iran is the one facing unemployment and popular discontent. Israel on the other hand is open for business, boasting an advanced and prosperous industrial economy that welcomes international investment despite security concerns. Furthermore, Israel is notably helpful in the region, doing good deeds such as striking Iraq and Syria’s nascent nuclear programs. Some see our friendship with Israel as a one-way street and advocate cutting aid, but we might find ourselves feeling surprisingly lonely if we pursued that short-sighted policy.

While we contemplate the so-called “Arab spring” with all its exciting promises of spreading democracy, we would do well to remember the free state that has been our good friend for these many years. While the President may take this opportunity to chide the Israelis about achieving a “two-state solution” and sharing their “peace, prosperity and dignity” with “all the people of the region,” I prefer Senator Marco Rubio’s suggestion that we mark the occasion by reconfirming that “we must always support [Israel's] right to secure and defend its territory and people.”

I join Senator Rubio in wishing joyful and blessed Yom Ha’atzmaut to all our friends in Israel.

This construct applies to presidents as well. You begin the job basically beholden to your predecessor, who has created the circumstances under which you have to try to do your job. Indeed, your first year is in many ways the political equivalent of adolescence, as you try to break away from the existing model and establish your own identity. This process can be particularly dramatic when you have successive presidents of opposing political parties.

So we have seen President Obama rebel against the Bush administration legacy throughout both his campaign and his first twenty-seven months in office. Calling attention to his inherited burdens, particularly at home but also abroad, has been a constant refrain in Obama’s rhetoric, an inevitable codicil to any policy announcement. To date, these references have been exclusively negative and pejorative, and to be honest many Americans suffering from an extended economic downturn and weary of the lengthy foreign wars have tended to accept these statements at face value.

The events of the last five days strongly suggest that there was something else in that heritage, something of great and lasting value even if it was shrouded and reviled like some ugly and unwanted family object foisted on a new generation with no taste for such things. In this case, rather than a breakfront or silver service we are talking about detention operations in the global war on terror, that impossibly difficult but unavoidable challenge President Bush and his administration confronted in the years after 9/11.

Those who grappled with this issue have been the most reviled of the previous administration. While Treasury Secretaries and budget directors go largely unreviled, anyone who had to deal with detainees, their capture, incarceration and interrogation, have been roundly attacked as at best ignorant and parochial, and at worst eager to torment innocents in a dark campaign to subvert our most precious values, our true jewels of civil liberties. Compared to the worst monsters in history–i.e. Pol Pot, the Nazis–they have had few defenders as it has seemed a losing battle to try to argue for what has been widely accepted as “torture”, a corrupt and defunct practice. It has been so easy to disavow these activities, perhaps with the caveat that such things might have seemed necessary in the early days after 9/11 when we feared another attack, but that attack didn’t come and even if we dont utterly condemn, we know better.

Now that our most deadly enemy rests with the fishes thanks to the intelligence gathered from those detainees, a welcome development removing both a real and present security threat and a painful shared psychological burden, these policies emerge in a different light. Rather than a shameful inheritance, they have been a gift, painstakingly crafted behind layers of classification and legal necessity. As time and events peel those layers away like so many layers of tarnish, we might want to be prepared for more unexpected revelations that make the easy poses of moral superiority that have been so fashionable over the past seven years increasingly uncomfortable and difficult to defend.

While it is naive to expect President Obama will overtly acknowledge this heritage either today at Ground Zero or at anytime in the coming election season, we can hope that his actions will speak more loudly than his words. As he has recognized the necessity of the DoD detention facility at Guantanamo he may now understand the necessity of those CIA interrogators who are still under investigation for the very practices that ultimately got Osama bin Laden. Perhaps today when he stands where his predecessor stood in those terrible days after the 9/11 attacks he will understand what he has truly inherited.

The seemingly endless–and hopeless–search for OBL had threatened to become our nation’s Moby Dick, an obsessive quest that destroys not only the prey but also the predator.  Our collective unresolved need to “get” the man who ordered those planes to fly into our buildings quickly became a cancer that turned citizen against citizen, and provoked some of the harshest partisanship I have witnessed.

But now we have OBL, and it is an opportunity for us to prove ourselves as Americans.  For those of us on the right, we should simply thank God for a CIA Director who took the time to develop the appropriate plan, a Secretary of Defense who lent him sufficient man and firepower, and a President who was decisive enough to pull the trigger at the right moment.  This sort of leadership should not be parsed or resented.  For their part, our fellow citizens on the left might consider giving up the relentless drumbeat of “war crimes” for those who did so much of the long and lonely work to make this possible.  Even with the so-called “harsh” interrogation techniques used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it took years to put together the pieces.  How many honestly regret those techniques this morning, or that we had Guantanamo to house KSM and his colleagues for further reference?

If we on both sides can make these respective leaps we will truly have killed our white whale, and not annihilated ourselves in the process.  This is not to say that we will be singing kumbaya together over the debt ceiling tomorrow, nor should we.  But we will have met a great challenge, as so many generations of Americans have done, together.  While the war may not be over, that would be a tremendous victory, and Osama bin Laden’s ultimate defeat.

The problem is that the root of the issue may not lie with the staff, but rather with the person doing the staffing.

Looking at this most recent reorganization, I have to ask what it will achieve? Putting partisanship aside, I do not question the competence of Panetta, Petraeus and Crocker, or their patriotism. They are all proven public servants, and certainly as qualified to hold their new positions as many who have come before them. But these appointments promise little improvement in our foreign policy and national security, which continues to be directed by a President who cannot or will not get his team moving in a coherent direction.

Mr. Obama famously campaigned on a message of change, and in general change can be good–that is if it is change with a purpose. But there is a sort of grim sameness to these changes. More “gown-ups” are being called in, more of the non-partisan career types who will make the trains run on time. But it is increasingly apparent that these trains, even if they be efficiently managed high-speed ones, have no particular destination and we are in a global situation in which a lack of policy is even worse than a bad policy.

The best hope is that the President will shake himself free from his inclination to respond to individual events based on the recommendation of the loudest voice in the room at the moment–perhaps in the hopes of silencing the ruckus–and develop a serious vision for his foreign policy team. That hope, however, may prove to be as ephemeral as Mr. Obama’s campaign rhetoric. We will more likely settle for hoping Messrs. Panetta, Petraeus, and Crocker (and is it cynical to expect we are going to hear Mr. Gates’ name again before January, 2012?) can hold things together in their respective fiefdoms for the next twenty months, and that we don’t encounter too many icebergs in the interim.

The thing is, Pelosi is right. Elections are burdensome things. They are expensive, intrusive and all too frequently unfair. Even when you win, the cycle of fundraising and campaigning distracts from the business at hand.

Elections are particularly burdensome when you lose. Then their inconvenience becomes glaringly apparent. New crops of politicos have to be trained over and over again to do the same tasks as their predecessors. Perfectly able, even accomplished lawmakers are routinely tossed out on their ears to make way for the ignorant and green. Majorities and minorities ebb and flow, leading to confusion over policy and priorities. Your treasured projects, nursed and nurtured in good faith, are threatened by the newcomers who do not share your values–who may in fact be devoid of values altogether and may nip those tender shoots in the bud.

Really when you look at it from Pelosi’s perspective, it all seems at best counter-intuitive and at worst barely civilized.

There has been some well-founded outrage at Pelosi’s apparent disdain for the democratic process stemming from post-2008 mid-term sour grapes. I suspect, however, that the root of the problem for those of us who find her remarks disturbing rather than self-evident is less the word “election” and more the word “shared”–as in the values Pelosi believes we must all have in common to achieve a utopia free from those burdensome elections.

Variants of “share” are popular in President Obama’s rhetoric as well, and I expect we will hear it several times from him this afternoon. I have noticed it as a curiously condescending word choice from a politician who is in my age group recalling what you would expect to hear from a parent or teacher, a disconnect he does not appear to see. It seems he understands the term differently. This new “sharing” is transitioning from being the free exercise of generosity–a learned trait for most humans–to being an obligatory act of subjugation to the state. You do not learn to share as a moral choice; you are told to do it. Should you attempt not to share what is yours–be it values or money–this government seems increasingly eager to put you back on the path of righteousness.

I find I am not comfortable with this obligatory sharing. I am one of those who do not consider pregnancy to be a punishment or gainful employment to be a prison. I am not eager to share my values with those who disagree on the first point or my money with those who differ on the second. As we consider the calls for us all to just get along, Nancy Pelosi’s off-hand comment serves as a useful reminder of what too much compromise–too much sharing–can get us.

As unfortunate as it may seem at times, elections must continue to be our burden to bear.

The Obama administration response to this atrocity is stunning silence. Rubin also reports that no one has bothered to make contact with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The most recent messages on the State Department home page address World Water Day and Ending Violence Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.

Gene Simmons is doing a better job of standing with Israel these days than the United States is. It is just pathetic.

General Petraeus is giving us the Charlie Sheen counter-insurgency strategy, which is to give exclusive interviews to every major network, and to keep saying ‘we’re winning’ and hope the public actually agrees with you.

Now Hastings is well-known for his distaste for accomplished, aggressive war fighters so his comparison between a four-star general on his fourth combat tour of the global war on terror and a TV sit-com actor with unfortunate substance abuse and domestic violence issues comes as no surprise.  What is noteworthy is that this outburst came at a Congressional briefing, and that any member of the U.S. House of Representatives sat through it–let alone approved, as Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.)  did, having apparently learned nothing from the “General Betray Us” debacle. 

No one is telling Ms. Woolsey that she needs to support administration policy on Afghanistan, but it would be seemly to keep these slurs against our military out of the halls of Congress–even if the event did take place in a “closet” as she claimed in her prepared remarks (score one for Chairman Issa and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for bumping them into it!).  Just out of curiosity, who paid for this “briefing?” Was it a taxpayer-funded closet she found so oppressive?  I think we just might have a candidate for a budget cut.

Through the years I have tried to like Noonan, primarily because there are so few prominent female writers on major editorial pages, and even fewer that are conservatives. Also, as she frequently reminds us, she worked for Ronald Reagan and what is not to like about that?

Unfortunately, today’s column is so far beyond the pale that even these powerful attractions cannot redeem her in my eyes. Noonan goes after Rumsfeld, who she declares devoid of “guts” and “brains,” and his “stupid little” book too (I hope that “little” book didn’t make too big of a hole in her plaster when she threw it at the wall, but I digress). Her main beef is that Rumsfeld failed both to capture Osama Bin Laden and to understand how the American psyche needed his capture after 9/11. Since as she again likes to remind us Noonan was in Manhattan on 9/11, she has claimed the mantle of Everyvictim and knows what all of us need, much more than Rumsfeld who after all was only in the Pentagon that day. We are treated to Noonan’s OBL revenge fantasies, which involve scatological imagery and decapitation, and to her fury that Rumsfeld has not facilitated their satisfaction.

Noonan reserves, bizarrely, special vitriol for the documentation of Known and Unknown, and I may well take this part of the review personally since I have labored for some years in that particular salt mine. Noonan seems terribly put out that Rumsfeld has used a rich archive going back seven decades to document his book. She mocks and caricatures the effort–and darkly hints the memos might be falsified. She laments that “so many” Bush administration memoirs depend on primary documents (I can’t think of another with even remotely comparable documentation–certainly not one that offers the reader the opportunity to freely consult the documents–but again, I digress). In the end she finds their presence so odious that she wants to physically dismember the book–to literally break its spine–for so oppressing her. These memos, she rages, “prove nothing.”

I find all of this startling, since I generally consider it a good and useful exercise to go back to the original documents in order to build up thorough historical analysis. My complaints are reserved for those who selectively quote documents and then withhold the originals, so readers are forced to accept the writer’s conclusions. Given the advances in digital technology, Rumsfeld has decided to challenge this construct and not only quote and cite the memos in his book, but also release thousands of them on a free-access website where they are available to readers made of sterner stuff than Noonan as links in a facsimile of the endnotes while the larger collection is browsable in a library-style section.

What is so gob-smackingly awful about this? Why ferociously attack an effort at rigorous scholarship and documentary transparency? Who does it hurt?

Upon reflection, it occurred to me that it hurts Peggy Noonan, who has been trading on her “insider” status in the Reagan administration for decades now. She is the source, in her parlance the witness, and if people take to releasing the actual documents, her fly-on-the-wall reminiscences drop precipitously in value, especially if God forbid the two conflict.

Perhaps not coincidentally, another potential victim of Rumsfeld’s memo offensive is Noonan’s fellow perennial insider, Bob Woodward.  His stock in trade is giving the impression of revealing what should be hidden–accounts that generally confirm readers’ vague suspicions about what must be going on in government–thus making the reader feel smart and in the know, and making Woodward’s books sell.

Woodward, like Noonan, seems to feel threatened by Known and Unknown, and went after the book last week.  He called Rumsfeld a liar for writing in Chapter 31 about a meeting with President Bush on September 26, 2001, in which Bush asked Rumsfeld to review the Iraq war plan then on the Pentagon shelf. Woodward’s beef appears to be not with the wisdom of this order, but rather with the problematic fact that no account of it appears in Woodward’s books on the Bush administration, and he had made a great show of re-tracing the definitive Iraq timeline. Ergo, the meeting did not happen, and even if it did, Iraq was not discussed.

Unfortunately for Woodward, Rumsfeld had made a handwritten note about the substance of his meeting on his calendar for that day, which he promptly released. It matches in all details the account in Known and Unknown. Woodward appeared to have given up this line of attack–wisely, for what else is there to say?–until the Noonan column appeared today to denigrate and dismiss Rumsfeld’s documentation explicitly, and so to defend Woodward implicitly.

I have no insider information on a particular friendship between Noonan and Woodward, although she has been know to give Woodward’s books pretty fulsome praise. All I have is the widely-available public knowledge that Noonan and Woodward are regular co-panelists on “Meet the Press.” In late December, 2010, for example, they were on to discuss the general distastefulness that is Sarah Palin. Noonan had recently called Palin “ignorant” and a “nincompoop” for daring to tread where only Noonan is privileged to go–that is to discuss Ronald Reagan. Noonan could therefore be trusted to toe the MTP line, and she obligingly if revealingly referred to herself and her fellow panelists (Doris Kerns Goodwin, Tom Brokaw and Woodward) as people like us–people who are sophisticated enough to recognize Palin for what she is–while the rest of America who either admire her or don’t care much either way are them.

So for Noonan, Woodward is “people like us,” the special few who have the exclusive right to tell the rest of us what is really going on unhampered by things like proper documentation. In this context, no wonder she finds Rumsfeld’s archive so distressing. It hits her where she lives, threatening to reveal that her shtick, like Woodward’s, is based on self-serving, selective and unsubstantiated memories and, even worse, forcing her to do her homework if she wants to be considered in the same league.

True, documentary research is hard. It involves tedious work sifting through many, many irrelevant documents to find the few of importance. It requires you to check your cherished preconceived notions at the door and let the information in the documents guide your analysis, even if you uncover things you do not expect–or want–to find. And it forces you to admit, as Rumsfeld has so famously done, that there are things you did not know. But as difficult as the exercise might be, the end goal of trying to pass on to future generations direct observations of historical events accompanied by relevant primary documentation is in my opinion a noble one and well worth the effort. I don’t think I want to read anything else by someone so determined to discredit the attempt.

Farewell, Ms. Noonan, and good luck to you in this brave new world of history.

And what we did was to keep Saddam Hussein in a box by using diplomacy, sanctions and force, with bombing in the no-fly zone. It worked. And what is evident from the CIA reports is that it did work. The sanctions worked.

“It worked.” And so, we can assume, it would have kept on working had the Bush administration only had the wisdom to continue the Clintonian policy of containment.

Of course what Secretary Albright failed to mention was the terrible price Saddam’s people paid since they shared that box with him–especially those who almost exactly 20 years ago were being slaughtered by his henchmen in the months before the no-fly zone was established. We did nothing to help them when they attempted to rise up and claim their freedom, an inertia that cost many thousands of lives and resulted in the ecological and humanitarian catastrophe that was the draining of the Iraqi marshes–not to mention the subsequent no-fly zone stalemate that resulted in the second war.

Two decades later we are watching the same tragedy play over in slow motion. In Libya a disenfranchised, oppressed generation has rebelled against their obviously unstable and tyrannical dictator and enjoyed some success. Encouraging words have come from the west, but precious little has been forthcoming in terms of actual support. A no-fly zone has been proposed to at least make a token effort at stopping Gadhafi from mowing these people down from the skies.

But this time the Democratic Secretary of State says not so fast. Hillary Clinton spoke out today against a no-fly zone in congressional testimony:

I want to remind people that, you know, we had a no-fly zone over Iraq. It did not prevent Saddam Hussein from slaughtering people on the ground, and it did not get him out of office.

This from a woman who has been staunch in her opposition to the Iraq war ever since she voted to authorize it, and whose husband was Commander in Chief for eight years of that no-good no-fly zone.

I have a theory to suggest that might help clear up the confusion between Secretary Albright and her “partner” Secretary Clinton regarding the efficacy of the Iraqi no-fly zone, and help us as we plot a path ahead with Libya. No-fly zones and sanctions, be they smart or otherwise, are not a solution in themselves in perpetuity after a popular uprising has failed. They can however be strategically deployed to hamper and harass a dictator when he is back on his heels, giving opposition forces the actual support–not just the encouragement–that they need.

If Gadhafi does indeed turn the tables on the Libyan insurgents over the next days and weeks, it seems unlikely he will be any more gentle with the rebels than Saddam was. In short, I wonder if 20 years from now we will be looking back at March, 2011 the way we look back at March, 1991 and shake our heads over how much trouble we could have saved–with perhaps as little as one of Secretary Albright’s no-fly zones.  Unfortunately it may already be too late.

I had a novel experience last Thursday–I had lunch with my boss in our office conference room, not as we have untold numbers of times, but as a blogger hoping to get a question in.

In a way it was a lunch more than four years in the making.

Tonight, House Republicans failed to hold the line on one such bill–the Patriot Act.  It needed a two-thirds majority to pass, and it didn’t get it.  I remember, and it does not seem like so long ago, when the Patriot Act was a hill to die on.  Sure the concept was unpopular, but it was worth risking all your political capital because the fight we were engaged in was so important.

It seems times have changed, and the threat is not quite so imminent.  26 Republicans and 177 Democrats have concluded we no longer need to listen in on potential terrorist cell phone conversations or access their financial records.

Here’s hoping they are right.

The Nativity is one of three small predella panels for Gentile’s monumental Adoration of the Magi painted in Renaissance Florence for the wealthy banker Palla Strozzi. While the main panel of the altarpiece is a brilliant, sumptuous and somewhat hectic depiction of the royal procession arriving to adore the child, the smaller predella panel below tells a far more intimate story.

Gentile selects the moment just after Jesus’ birth. This infant, who arrived in the world without struggle or pain, lies naked on the exposed ground but shows no signs of cold or distress. Instead, he returns his mother’s adoring gaze with a most engaging delight. Despite the fact that these two are no ordinary mortals under the most extraordinary of circumstances, it is a remarkably human moment as mother and child make each other’s acquaintance. Joseph sleeps nearby and the shepherds are only learning of the great event some miles away. The heavenly host has not yet arrived on the scene. Only a serving girl, awakened perhaps by the brilliant light emanating from Jesus, intrudes on their happiness.

This small panel shows us the power of this divine light, as all the stars and the moon (originally silver) in the sky pale besides the radiance of Jesus and the angel in the background. They turn the night into day with a radiant, joyful glow that bathes the landscape in warm light. For all its magnificence, the golden trappings of the main panel cannot compete with this simple, profound miracle.

Hallelujah.

But what if Blanton exercises his God-given right as an American to pursue happiness?

There are certainly no guarantees that Blanton will rise to the challenge and lead his team back into this series. But then again he might–the fat mediocre guy who naps while the hawks are practicing–might just get up there and shock those Giants out of their orange complacency. Or maybe he flubs it and the Phillies go home for good tomorrow night making him the goat of the Philadelphia fans. Or maybe even worse he flubs it and the tall, handsome H20 (Halladay, Hamels and Oswalt if you don’t know) save the series in seven, thus relegating Blanton to the dustheap of Phillies history. But I hope not. I hope Blanton has the night of his life. There have been precious few opportunities for Blanton to be a hero in the past, and if he fails tonight another is unlikely to come his way again. If he can grab hold of this one an ordinary career will have an extraordinary moment, and that’s the promise of the American way.

Here’s hoping an underdog has his day.

On a sweltering July day eleven score and fourteen years ago, a group of men “mutually pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor” as they declared their freedom from Great Britain.  It happened not so very far from here in downtown Philadelphia, but we should remember that in the eighteenth century Chestnut Hill was a summer community several hours’ journey from the city, and may have seemed somewhat remote that July 4th.  It was hot in Philadelphia, but I’m sure the breezes out here were cooling and the trees provided ample shade—especially with no cars or trucks on Bethlehem Pike.  The view looking out from our hill over the fields of Hope Lodge, then in the process of being sold to William West, must have been bucolic compared to the raucous scene around Independence Hall.  The following year, however, the fallout of this audacious Declaration was brought home to St. Thomas’ as after the British victory at Germantown the redcoats stormed up Church Road to the top of this very hill and the area saw fierce fighting.  The little church that stood on this site was destroyed—its windows blown out and its graveyard desecrated.  These events make this Sunday on the date that precipitated them even more sacred for our congregation.  Since our predecessors thought it was worth dying over the Declaration of Independence, it seems to me an opportune moment to reflect on the great gift we were given all those years ago, and how we can act as good stewards of it today.

Eleven score and fourteen is more cumbersome than the lyrical “Four score and seven” that began President Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address, but I deployed it anyway to highlight how young the nation was when Lincoln gave his great speech.  Lincoln was addressing a country engulfed in the agonies of civil war whose survival was far from assured, but he spoke hopefully of “a new birth of freedom” that would come after we as a nation had reaffirmed “the proposition that all men are created equal”—and in a historical footnote I would add that Lincoln managed to make his point in 10 sentences, an admirable brevity that I’m sure everyone eager to get to their celebratory picnics hopes I will imitate—but bear with me a little longer.

From our vantage point so many scores of years later we may be pardoned for taking for granted the happy fulfillment of Lincoln’s optimism, but I think this would be a dangerous complacency.  The Declaration of Independence asserts that we “are endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights…Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” but it does not follow that they are automatically guaranteed to us.  I believe we need to understand that these are precious gifts from God, and like many of his gifts, they are not entirely straightforward.  Rights come with responsibilities.  In order to fully receive and enjoy them we need to exert a little effort of our own, beginning with understanding just what they are—an exercise I found surprisingly difficult and personal, and I’d like to share the results with you today.

“Life” may seem reasonably self-evident—I expect it certainly did for Thomas Jefferson and his companions—but for our generation it has become considerably more challenging.  Our Founding Fathers were asserting each being’s right to live unmolested.  While you could forfeit your right to life through criminal behavior, it could not be arbitrarily taken from you by the state.  Today our society is engaged in a debate that they could not have imagined over the nature of life, when it begins—and so when an individual assumes this divinely bestowed right to life.  We need to treat this issue with tremendous caution and care as in the case of our county, “Life” is more than a science experiment, it is a foundation block of our nation.  As our medical capability increases ever more amazingly, we owe it to ourselves to review its ramifications for the right to life at every step.  Is it acceptable to destroy life in order to preserve it—or even to create it?  These are painful and difficult questions, but with God’s help we must not shy away from them.  Decisions over who exists and who does not should not be made on the basis of convenience or expedience, but with a seriousness of purpose and a clear understanding of what the right to life means in our nation.

Liberty is a similarly complex proposition.  Of course we want to be personally free—free to worship and marry as we please, travel at will and make all range of personal decisions that in other countries are arranged by dictator, potentate or junta.  But liberty, while always welcomed by the recipient, has proven remarkably difficult to share for we mortals.  The creation of a free collective society is no easy task.  Establishing who would be endowed with the right to liberty—and how far their freedom would extend—tormented our country for much of its first two centuries of existence.  Lincoln preserved the Union and abolished slavery, but the struggle was far from over.  We have, however, made remarkable—almost historically unprecedented—progress towards understanding that until all of us are free none of us truly understand liberty.  All politics aside, it is wonderful to me as someone who was born five months to the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was gunned down in anger to have my two children live in a world where it is perfectly acceptable—even unremarkable—to have a black man become the President of the United States.  Again, this is a development the Founding Fathers probably did not anticipate even when they acknowledged the country would have to confront the discrepancy between the claim of an inalienable right to freedom and the practice of slavery at some point, but I have to think they would be pleased.  Progress may not always happen as quickly or efficiently as we would hope, but it can happen when we keep our founding principals in front of us as the standard down the road towards which we work.

And now for the fun one: the right to pursue happiness.  That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?  As the old song said, don’t worry, be happy!  Ah, but again there is a catch.  This right is about opportunities not guarantees.  It wasn’t designed to be a passive state.  The results of the gift are of our own making, whether we succeed, fail, or chose not to enter the race at all.  I am coming to think that many of the problems we face today are caused by a misinterpretation of this gift caused by our own prosperity.  So many have done so well given the opportunities provided by the United States that we have come to believe that this is our natural condition and if anyone fails it is the fault of the state and so the state’s responsibility to remedy the situation.  I fear we are losing sight of the value of the pursuit—of the risk and effort, the worry if you will—that goes into building happiness.  I say this as an enormously fortunate child of this country who has benefited greatly from the great opportunities we enjoy.  There is of course another side to this coin—lore on my paternal grandmother’s side of the family has it that her father was friends with Milton Hershey.  Mr. Hershey came to him for money once to invest in a business he was starting.  My great grandfather complied.  The business went belly up.  A year or so later, Mr. Hershey was back with another idea.  Again, my great grandfather invested.  Again, the business failed.  Some period of time later Mr. Hershey was back again, this time with a scheme to make chocolate.  My great grandfather said he simply didn’t have any more money to invest.  The moral of the story is that you sure don’t win them all, but we have to guard our right to pursue our own happiness, and not be contented with what is allocated to us by the state.

And so in conclusion I found that what we have been promised in the Declaration of Independence is a far more complex, challenging gift than I had assumed.  Clearly, given what has transpired over the last 234 years these gifts inspire and sustain human creativity and productivity.  But at the same time, we should not grow too self-assured in our own might.  For all the bravery and strength the heroes now sleeping in our quiet churchyard displayed in fighting for our freedom, our inalienable rights were not won by force of arms, but rather freely bestowed on us by a greater power who we must trust and turn to for guidance in our frailty.  For as we learned in the reading from Luke, “Do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”   And that is the greatest gift of all.

Apparently the answer to that question is no.

I find this development particularly interesting since President Obama has made a virtue of his inclusive willingness to talk to anyone–be they the thuggish dictators of Venezuela or Iran, or even those “stupid” Cambridge police. Talking can’t hurt–as Mr. Obama said in reference to his openness to meeting with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, “As president of the United States, my job is to look out for the national security interests of this country…If it is in the United States’ interest to make certain that we can stabilize the situation and avoid further military confrontation and curb state sponsored terrorism they’ve been involved with, that’s something we should be willing to do.” In other words, even if you disagree with someone as I assume the President of the United States does with the President of Iran, if it is in our national security interests Mr. Obama will at least have a conversation.

But not with Governor Brewer. The President seems to find her actions so noxious that he won’t even find the time to talk to her to see if they can find some common ground from which they might confront this pressing national crisis together. I understand Mr. Obama is a busy man, but can’t he find twenty minutes next week to squeeze her in? Sure it might mean missing a few precious moments with Sir Paul McCartney, but in the interests of stablizing the situation on our southern border and avoiding further confrontation with a leader who should be a partner in this effort, the President might want to consider making the sacrifice.