September
20, 2002 9:25 a.m. There’s
a war on, right? A thousand words is worth a picture. Me and the
PM. And more.
t many points in the last year, I’ve been tempted to ask, “Don’t
you know there’s a war going on?” I’m sure you’ve
had many such instances.
Earlier this week,
a reporter on CNN said, “[The Democrats] would rather get [Iraq]
out of the way. The problem is the subject has sucked all the oxygen out
of the room. [Gee, is that so? How rude of it.] If you are someone on
Capitol Hill who’s a Democrat who wants to get some legislation done,
you’re standing around talking to yourself because the talk is all
of Iraq.”
There is reason to
doubt that we Americans are aware of the shadow under which we live, and
the horrible gravity of the present times. In the next issue of National
Review, we’ll have a piece by the inimitable and irreproachable
Paul Johnson that should make hair on necks stand up.
Traveling in Europe last week, I picked up a copy of Le Monde.
They had on the editorial page a photo of a ten-year-old girl in Afghanistan
— a beautiful thing named Shoukriya Zaladgoul, who wants to grow
up to be a doctor.
I wonder whether
anyone at Le Monde — anyone — recognizes that they couldn’t
have published this photo without the U.S. military. Without George W.
Bush. The photo wouldn’t have existed. The girl couldn’t have
shown her face, and even the very legitimacy and legality of an “image”
would have been in question.
And Le Monde,
of course, opposed everything that made the liberation of Afghanistan
possible.
By the way, I was
with an intellectual and journalist in Albania, who had been on a panel
with a diplomatic editor of Le Monde. He recounted to me, wide-eyed,
how the man had been not only pro-Chavez, pro-Castro, but close to pro-terror
as well. So very chilling.
George Will had a (typically) terrific column
in which he explained why France has such a great attachment to the U.N.
(Its role there is absurdly out of proportion to its present status in
the world.) I was reminded of something else I’ve been thinking of
lately.
There is a famous
anecdote told in operatic circles. Sometime in the ’50s, I believe,
the Met was touring in Europe, and stopped in Paris, where Roberta Peters
starred in The Barber of Seville. She did not perform well, and
the critics were merciless.
Next day, Rudolf
Bing — the urbane and caustic general manager of the Met — held
a press conference, at which he said, “Miss Peters had a bad night;
the Paris Opera has had a bad century.”
So true (it didn’t
get any better, by the way). And France, at large, had a bad century,
the 20th. That must sting terribly, in the breasts and eyes of certain
Frenchmen.
It is significant that, as he’s losing late in the campaign, Germany’s
Edmund Stoiber is playing the Muslim card — for that is what the
immigration card is, a Muslim card. This is the great sleeping issue in
much of Europe. It almost won election for the Right in Sweden, of all
places.
Stoiber’s opponent,
the incumbent Gerhard Schroeder, said darkly, “Whoever tries to create
majorities at the expense of minorities” is a baddun. “Whatever
has to do with hatred against minorities must be met with our decisive
opposition.” Understand that this is how the Left talks: Any questions
about immigration and assimilation must be dismissed as “hatred of
minorities.” The Democratic party here does this, of course, constantly.
Here’s something
cute, just as a matter of language: Stoiber’s opponents have taken
to call him “Stoiberlusconi,” to link him with the Italian prime
minister, a conservative who is thought (certainly by the German Left)
a horror. I rather like the name.
More on Stoiber: He said something remarkable for a politician, something
with relevance here in the United States. Asked whether he lacked the
courage to propose economic reforms, he answered, “No. If I arrived
at rallies and there were 10,000 people demonstrating for the final removal
of this yoke of a social-security system, then you could go for radical
reforms. But since people consider social security an important element
in their lives, I’ve got to watch out there’s no breakdown in
this security.”
Again, an amazing
statement, and one with many reverberations.
You know how some group on the Mall will hold a rally and claim it was
a big deal, usually with the help of the media, if the group is a Left
group, which it usually is? You know: “The Million Mom March,”
which may have a few thousand women chanting against guns. That sort of
thing.
Waal, in Rome, they
really hold a rally, the Left. An anti-Berlusconi rally had at least 200,000
people jammed into the Piazza San Giovanni; the organizers claimed 800,000.
(This is the sort of game that’s played at home, too.) Whatever the
case, it was a helluva lot of people, demonstrating for left-wing things
in a country experiencing (relative) peace and prosperity.
My main point: That’s
a rally, not the piddling affairs that Marian Wright Edelman et al. organize
here.
I remember being
a student in Italy, in Florence, and observing a huge memorial service
for Enrico Berlinguer, the Italian Communist boss and the father of so-called
Eurocommunism (which was, as always, nothing but Communism, underneath
everything). That’s when I grasped more than ever that Communism
was part religion. This was, essentially, a religious ceremony, complete
with hymn (the “Internationale”).
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t many points in the last year, I’ve been tempted to ask, “Don’t
you know there’s a war going on?” I’m sure you’ve
had many such instances.
Traveling in Europe last week, I picked up a copy of Le Monde.
They had on the editorial page a photo of a ten-year-old girl in Afghanistan
— a beautiful thing named Shoukriya Zaladgoul, who wants to grow
up to be a doctor.
