Famous Face Belongs to Local Man

So says the pop-up accompanying this article in today's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Cpl. Michael Rega Jr., of Mt. Pleasant, is embraced by a thankful Iraqi Wednesday in downtown Baghdad as troops enter the center of the city. "We were just elated," said his mother, Cheryl Rega. "It was wonderful to see him.... I was so glad to see that look on his face - he's liberating those people." The 1999 graduate of Mt. Pleasant Area High School joined the U.S. Army Reserves and is a member of the 305th Psychological Operations unit, based in the Pittsburgh area.

Mt. Pleasant is about 20 miles from where I live.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/10/03 10:59:22 PM
Categorized as War.

Saddam’s Ankles

The Tipping Point and the Balancing Act

E. L. Core

For a week or two after the start of the War Against Saddam Hussein, one heard frequent mention of “the tipping point” — the point at which the tide of public opinion in Iraq would hopefully swing towards the coalition forces. Until that point, the coalition forces might get unmitigated resistance from Saddamites, while the Iraqi opposition to Saddam would remain unconvinced that siding with us would be a prudent choice. After that point, the Saddamites would balk and scatter, the Iraqis “rise up” against their oppressors, and the coalition forces sweep on to victory.

Little did anybody think that the tipping point — literally as well as symbolically — would be perched atop a cement pillar, just above the feet of a statue of Saddam, where the bronze image bent and broke before it fell.

Even one day earlier, jaundiced pundits could have asked, “Where is the jubilant reception of our forces by the Iraqis, that the warmongers have been saying would come?” And ask, they did. But everybody around the world watched the crowd trying valiantly to topple the statue with ladder and rope and sledge hammer, then shouting for joy and victory when it finally lay on the ground. The naysaysers can ask their question no more, without toppling their own reputations for sanity and integrity and good will.

Who indeed would have thought it? Saddam wasn’t a track star, or a running back, or an outfielder. Who would have thought that his weak ankles would mean the downfall of his team?

Now, as I understand, The Tipping Point is a book by Malcolm Gladwell that describes the way little changes can accumulate until they may effect a big change. It might be unexpected, and seem to be quite abrupt, but the big change is really the end-result, or the dramatic turning-point, of a long process.

Curiously, I have heard less about “the tipping point” in the past couple of days than I did a couple of weeks ago. But when I first thought of what a tipping point might be, I pictured in my mind a seesaw, a teeter-totter. Everybody has seen a teeter-totter at a playground; most of us, I’m sure, have actually ridden a seesaw — if not since childhood, then surely during it.

The tipping point of a seesaw, you know, is right where the board is attached to the frame, midway between the seats on either end. And that tipping point involves a balancing act.

Without people, the seesaw is hardly more than a suitable subject for a photographic essay about loneliness. With one person, a teeter-totter might symbolize, in another photographic essay, the futility of individual effort. (Which, I should add, isn’t always futile.) But add another person, or two or three, and the playground comes alive with action. Two children of roughly the same weight can teeter-totter back and forth for a long time. And a grownup could seesaw similarly with two children. All of that can be a lot of fun — until the swings or the sliding board or the monkey bars beckon; from them, then, other children can flock to the newly vacated seesaw.

But it’s not necessarily always fun. Every playground has its spoilsport. Every playground has the kid who likes nobody else, whom nobody else really likes, and he tries to acquire by orneriness the attention he can’t get by affability — though that attention might last no more than a moment. The few dupes who think of him as almost a friend know better than to try the seesaw with him; they’ve already done so and got a sore bottom or a scraped knee by which to remember their foolishness.

But maybe the new girl in the neighborhood doesn’t know better. The spoilsport coaxes her to ride the teeter-totter with him. (He can be so sweet, don’t you know?) After a minute or so, in which he convinces her that his intention is merely to play, he suddenly jumps from his seat, after he has pushed it all the way to the ground. And he laughs to see her come crashing down on the other side. That painful experience can injure the soul even more than the body, and its lesson can linger far past childhood. As it should.

A balancing act, a war of words, went on for weeks and months before the war of weaponry began. One hardly needs to rehash it all, pro and con: it was played out before the world, on TV and radio, in newspapers and magazines. A few words and phrases from the naysayers should suffice:

Imperialism. Hegemony. Bush is Hitler. Vietnam. No blood for oil. Innocent women and children. Vietnam. Quagmire. Street fighting. House to house fighting. Vietnam. Siege. Bad plan. Disaster. Stalemate. Vietnam. Months and months. Hundreds of thousands of deaths. Vietnam. Ignominy. Vietnam.

All wrong. Way wrong. Shown to be wrong. Known to be wrong.

That thud you heard, Wednesday, April 9, 2003, was not merely Saddam’s statue hitting the pavement in Baghdad’s Shahid Square. That thud was also one end of the seesaw smashing to the ground, jarring the naysayers, the spoilsports, back to reality. Simultaneously, the other end launched the Iraqi people’s spirits to new heights.

The spoilsports were jarred in more ways than one: they are quite unaccustomed to having their own bottoms hit the ground so hard.

And the racket you heard later was not merely that statue’s head being dragged down Baghdad’s streets, while a gleeful, barefooted boy smacked it with his shoes. That racket was also the doors slamming behind the “anti-war” protestors who said they wanted to be rid of Saddam yet were unwilling to actually do anything to accomplish his demise. They’re brooding and sulking now in their rooms, about how a few more months, a few more inspections, a few more resolutions — really, really, honest and truly — how a few more fantasies would have done the same. For them, that’s more satisfying than enjoying the sunshine in the playground with the rest of us who are happy that a fearsome despot is gone. Alas, they will come out again (soon, maybe) when they spy the slightest hint of some storm cloud on some distant horizon, which will unaccountably make them feel better.

One is tempted to suspect, if not to accuse outright, that they sympathize so little with the oppressed peoples of Iraq because Saddam Hussein was the biggest spoilsport of all.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/10/03 06:42:47 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

"Oh, You Poor People!"

Another great cartoon today, by John Coles at the Herald Sun.

(Thanks, Charles.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/10/03 03:21:03 PM
Categorized as Political.

"Giving Peace a Chance"

A brilliant column by Christopher Hitchens at Slate today.

(Thanks, Peter.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/10/03 01:21:18 PM
Categorized as Political.

"A Sad Day"

A most worthy blog from The Mighty today. (If the archive link doesn't work, look on the main page for the earliest blog of Thursday, April 10, 2003.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/10/03 10:27:57 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

Photo Central

The place to go today for scads of great photos, from the past week or so, is Just Your Average Catholic Guy.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/10/03 07:58:01 AM
Categorized as War.

Blog Stuff

I have added a "Today in History" link at the conclusion of each day's blogs on the main page: it will open a new browser window to the day's page at American Memory from the Library of Congress.

P.S. A while back, I had added to the blogroll, without fanfare, somebody who has turned out to be a flagrant, and stupid, plagiarist. He has been removed from the blogroll. If you don't know what I mean, forget I mentioned it.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/10/03 07:42:11 AM
Categorized as Other.

Sic Semper Tyrannis

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

A wonderful cartoon today from Cox & Forkum, celebrating yesterday's historic event:

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/10/03 07:35:14 AM
Categorized as War.

"Peacenik Warmongers"

A fine, hard-hitting, spot-on essay by Alex Epstein of the Ayn Rand Institute, from last December, which just came to my attention yesterday:

There is an increasingly vocal movement that seeks to engage America in ever longer, wider, and more costly wars — leading to thousands and perhaps millions of unnecessary deaths. This movement calls itself the "anti-war" movement....

The only way to deal with militant enemies is to show them unequivocally that aggression against the United States will lead to their destruction. The only means of imparting this lesson is overwhelming military force — enough to defeat and incapacitate the enemy. Had we annihilated the Iranian regime 23 years ago, we could have thwarted Islamic terrorism at the beginning, with far less cost than will be required to defeat terrorism today....

The suicidal stance of peaceniks is no innocent error or mere overflow of youthful idealism. It is the product of a fundamentally immoral commitment: the commitment to ignore reality — from the historical evidence of the consequences of pacifism to the very existence of the violent threats that confront us today — in favor of the wish that laying down our arms will achieve peace somehow.

Those of us who are committed to facing the facts should condemn these peaceniks for what they really are: warmongers for our enemies.

(Thanks, Forkum.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/10/03 07:25:59 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.