I see nothing remotely funny about the impending hanging of Saddam Hussein – a verdict I agree with but devoutly wish could have been handled better by all parties concerned.

Neither do I see anything at all to celebrate. It is embarrassing the way that some of the righty blogs are playing with this story. It is not a time for snark. Nor is it a time for juvenile posturing or ginned up, testosterone-laden high fives. Before you engage in such celebratory behavior, please imagine the million ghosts Saddam and his henchmen created and then imagine them screaming out their last agonizing moments on this earth. Think of the grieving families they left behind. If that doesn’t sober you up, try conjuring up images of the tens of thousands of women who were brutally raped in front of their fathers or husbands or the many thousands of children who were tortured in the presence of their parents.

No, there is nothing funny about killing this brute, a man who has shown no remorse nor the slightest flicker of regret at the trail of dead bodies he has left in the wake of a life spent torturing and murdering anyone who opposed him. The fact that the world knew of this brutality and did nothing about it – including the US government who marginally assisted the beast in his war of conquest against Iran – only goes to show that anyone who believes in the efficacy of the UN is only kidding themselves. Tyrants like Saddam will exist as long as the governments of the world carry on business as usual with the despots while trying to block the screams of their victims from conscious thought.

Saddam may have been a particularly brutal tyrant. But the difference between his regime and the regimes of dozens of others around the world is only a matter of degree – thousands dead or tortured instead of hundreds of thousands. It says a lot about humanity at this stage of our evolution as a social species that we can be so sanguine about the murderous depredations of a Robert Mugabe or a Islom Karimov simply because the body count hasn’t achieved the elevated status of a Saddam or a Kim Jung Il. We in the civilized world can tune out the cries for succor from the oppressed rather easily – international law, free flow of oil, international commerce, even the War on Terrorism – take your pick. One excuse is as good as another.

I wish I could believe that hanging Saddam will make other tyrants pause and clean up their acts, hoping to avoid suffering a similar fate. But you and I know that is wishful thinking. What is more probable is that the dictators will redouble their efforts to stifle opposition thinking it will guarantee their security – at least from their own people.

But in the end, whether it’s having your neck snapped by a taut rope or dying peacefully in your bed, the criminal oppressors who cause so much human misery and suffering will all come face to face with their own mortality. And I have to believe that as the curtain rings down on their existence, the cold hand of fear will grip their failing heart as they contemplate an eternity that may include torments far surpassing those they meted out during their useless, failed existence on this planet.

UPDATE

Allah thinks that the deed will be done by 4:00 PM eastern time today. He says he will have the video if its available.

We’re all adults and can make up our own minds whether to view someone hanging until dead. I will say that Ogrish (no link – find it on your own) had some video of a hanging (from Burma, I believe) that was, in the words of Henry Tunstall from the John Wayne movie Chisum , describing a hanging he witnessed as “ghastly.” A good descriptive for what I saw. The beheading videos were much more graphic and actually caused me some queasy moments.

Will I watch it? I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Also, make sure you keep a window on your screen open for Michelle Malkin’s expected round-up of react from blogs, from the MSM, and from her readers.

It appears that the President of the United States will also forgo the proceedings in the Rotunda on Saturday in favor of staying at his ranch for another day.

Lest anyone think my displeasure is reserved exclusively for the Democratic LEADERSHIP (Note: The Republicans on the junket are not a part of the leadership in the Senate. Those in the comments from my last post who have demonstrated their towering ignorance by not being able to tell the difference between the Majority Leader of the Senate passing on this event and two relatively unknown GOP members skipping out might want to deepen their thinking faculties a bit.) anything I said about Reid above goes double for Bush.

Look, friends. Hearken to me.

A nation is an organism, a life form. And what animates this life form, what gives it the power to unite our people – so diverse, so different – are its traditions, myths and legends; in other words, the symbolic over the substantiative. The Constitution does a fine job in defining the powers of government. But its real power is in its iconic symbolism in which we have bound up all the hopes and dreams of our citizenry for a better life.

The United States is a very young country by any standard. We are so young, we really have no “myths” or “legends” per se. That’s because even our greatest mythic heroes like Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett left a written record behind along with friends and acquaintance who were able to tell biographers and historians what those two larger than life characters were all about. A “legend” is hardly legendary if we know that the myths surrounding the legend are untrue. And yet we continue to try and conjure up symbolic representations of our mythic heroes because it is through them that we like to see ourselves reflected in our national mirror.

And tied up in these efforts to create legends has been the dominant truth about American public life since George Washington; the presidency as a symbol of nationhood. We have no king, no royal family. Our continuity is the result of civil compact among all of us that the office of the presidency belongs to no man, no party; that it is the one aspect of public life in which we invest enormous power and place enormous trust in the occupant not to abuse that power. Hence, the presidency as a symbolic representation of us, the citizens of the United States imbues the occupant of that office with the status of civic god – especially after he is safely retired and unable to do any damage to our liberties.

I think Bush should be widely criticized for not attending every event related to the Ford funeral rites. The symbolic life of the nation demands that he attend and participate. I believe he and Reid’s failure to take part in the ceremonial, the tradition of laying to rest a former president and former Commander in Chief lessens the hold that office has on our emotional bonds with America – what Lincoln referred to as the “mystic chords of memory” – that allow us to rise above that which separates us and unite in common cause to remember a dead icon.

I fully expect the lefty commenters to belittle this rationalization. So be it. It is probably why in 50 years, long after I’m dust thank god, the way citizens feel about the United States will be unrecognizable to my generation.

It says a lot about the character of the new Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that he would blow off the state funeral of Gerald Ford, the least partisan of our most recent presidents, in order to get in a little holiday sight seeing and engage in some hobnobbing with South American leftists. In fact, I think it a precursor of what we can expect from the Democrats in general for the foreseeable future. Out of power for a decade, I think it safe to say that these ain’t your daddy’s Democrats. In fact, I’m certain that these aren’t the Democrats of the 1970’s either.

The Majority Leader of the Senate during Ford’s tenure as President was Mike Mansfield. The craggy faced Montana lawmaker served in that leadership position longer than anyone in history. Perhaps his greatest moment occurred during the service in the Capitol Rotunda for the assassinated John F. Kennedy when he delivered what is considered one of the most moving eulogies in American political history:

There was a sound of laughter; in a moment, it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.

There was a wit in a man neither young nor old, but a wit full of an old man’s wisdom and of a child’s wisdom, and then, in a moment it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.

There was a man marked with the scars of his love of country, a body active with the surge of a life far, far from spent and, in a moment, it was no more. And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.

Somehow, I don’t think our Harry quite measures up, do you?

Mansfield was a brilliant man, an accomplished diplomat. Harry Reid is a political hack. But the differences go beyond talent, beyond intelligence. The fact is, Mike Mansfield was a gentleman. Harry Reid is not.

Mansfield could be as hyper-partisan as any politician today but he always behaved in a way that reflected his belief that the feelings and sensibilities of others was something to be considered. In other words, Mansfield demonstrated the number one trait of a gentleman; empathy.

Harry Reid seems to have a dead spot in his soul where empathy usually resides in the rest of us. Blowing off the government of the United States, his colleagues, the Ford family, and history itself is just the latest in series of actions and statements that show Reid to be unfit to follow in the footsteps of giants like Mansfield, LBJ, and the venerable wise man George Mitchell – all of whom would have blanched in horror at the prospect of the Majority Leader of the Senate missing a high affair of state such as a presidential funeral.

Reid has demonstrated on numerous occasions that his rank partisanship gets in the way of him acting like a normal human being; to wit:

Reid made headlines in May 2005 when he said of George W. Bush, “The man’s father is a wonderful human being. I think this guy is a loser.” Reid later apologized for these comments. Reid also called Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas an “embarrassment” and referred to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as a “partisan hack.”

He also called the President a “liar” and refused to apologize. Whether true or not, the idea that one politician calls out another for lying is loony. It is beyond the pot/kettle analogy, moving into the sublime territory of stratospheric irony usually reserved for Communists when they name their country a “Peoples Republic.”

Reid’s snub may be unprecedented, although I doubt whether statistics about such insults to the United States government are kept. And I doubt whether we’ll hear a peep of criticism from any sitting Democratic politician either. At bottom and with few exceptions, the values of tradition and etiquette mean very little to the left. After all, they’ve spent the last 40 years trying to overturn tradition and violate etiquette in order to “speak truth to power” or “challenge convention” or some other such nonsense that more often denotes agitating for change simply for the sake of change itself rather than any specific goal for improving society.

The fact that Reid’s deputy, my home state senator Dick Durbin is also on the junket (along with Kent Conrad, Judd Gregg, Robert Bennett, and Ken Salazar) means that the task of delivering the eulogy may fall to Senator Robert Byrd, President pro tempore emeritus of the Senate. Byrd, for all his faults, is a creature of the Senate and one who reveres and worships its traditions and precedents. I have no doubt that the West Virginia Senator will do a fine job in eulogizing Ford. But frankly, it’s not his job. It’s Reid’s. And the absence of the new Majority Leader at the state funeral of a former president sets a very bad precedent that I hope Republicans will never take advantage.

Jimmy Carter is no spring chicken. There will come a day in the not too distant future when his remains will lie in the Capitol Rotunda and the Honor Guard will stand their solemn watch. And Members of Congress will gather to pay their respects and deliver eulogies to the dead Commander in Chief. Will the Republican leader recall this insult by Reid and find other pressing matters to attend to? I hope not. For if there is one occasion where partisanship should be left at the door, it is in honoring those special men who took up what the Smithsonian referred to as “A Glorious Burden” and guided the United States and the Ship of State through perilous waters.

I’m with Hugh Hewitt 100%: “Turn. The. Plane. Around.”

UPDATE

Ed Morrissey:

What a classless act, and Reid, Durbin, Kent Conrad, Judd Gregg, Robert Bennett, and Ken Salazar should be ashamed of themselves. If Harry Reid can’t figure out that his new position as Majority Leader carries some extra responsibilities, then perhaps the Democrats need to find someone who does understand it.

Amen. Although with the exception of Byrd, I doubt there are more than a handful of Democrats who see anything wrong with Reid’s excursion and would therefore be equally unfit to lead.

And Heather at my blog bud Raven’s site – And Rightly So – wonders “What ever happened to respect?” Indeed.

UPDATE 12/29

It appears that the President of the United States will also forgo the proceedings in the Rotunda on Saturday in favor of staying at his ranch for another day.

Less anyone think my displeasure is reserved exclusively for the Democratic LEADERSHIP (Note: The Republicans on the junket are not a part of the leadership in the Senate. Those in the comments who have demonstrated their towering ignorance by not being able to tell the difference between the Majority Leader of the Senate passing on this event and two relatively unknown GOP members skipping out might want to deepen their thinking faculties a bit.) anything I said about Reid above goes double for Bush.

Look, friends. Hearken to me.

A nation is an organism, a life form. And what animates this life form, what gives it the power to unite our people – so diverse, so different – are its myths and legends; in other words, the symbolic over the substantative. The Constitution does a fine job in defining the powers of government. But its real power is in its iconic symbolism in which we have bound up all the hopes and dreams of our citizenry for a better life.

The United States is a very young country by any standard. We are so young, we really have no “myths” or “legends” per se. That’s because even our greatest mythic heroes like Daniel Boone and Davey Crockett left a written record behind along with friends and acquiantances who were able to tell biographers and historians what those two larger than life characters were all about. A “legend” is hardly legendary if we know that the myths surrounding the legend are untrue.

And tied up in these efforts to create legends has been the dominant truth about American public life since George Washington; the presidency as a symbol of nationhood. We have no king, no royal family. Our continuity is the result of civil compact among all of us that the office of the presidency belongs to no man, no party; that it is the one aspect of public life in which we invest enormous power and place enormous trust in the occupant not to abuse that power. Hence, the presidency as a symbolic representation of us, the citizens of the United States imbues the occupant of that office with the status of civic god – especially after he is safely retired and unable to do any damage to our liberties.

I think Bush should be widely criticized for not attending every event related to the Ford funeral rites. The symbolic life of the nation demands that he attend and participate. I believe he and Reid’s failure to take part in the ceremonial, the tradition of laying to rest a former president and former Commander in Chief lessens the hold that office has on our emotional bonds with America – what Lincoln referred to as the “mystic chords of memory” – that allow us to rise above that which separates us and unite in common cause to remember a dead icon.

I fully expect the lefty commenters to belittle this rationalization. So be it. It is probably why in 50 years, long after I’m dust thank god, the way citizens feel about the United States will be unrecognizable to my generation.

(This update has become a separate post.)

The year was 1980 and Gerald Ford was on a mission. The last two weeks of October, the 38th President of the United States was fulfilling a promise he made during the tumultuous Republican Convention to the GOP standard bearer Ronald Reagan; that he would campaign his heart out for Republican candidates running for the House and Senate. He would help “extend Reagan’s coattails” to bring as many GOP lawmakers to Washington as he could.

The Republican party had placed a jet at Ford’s disposal and he criss crossed the country, speaking at 3 or 4 events (sometimes more) everyday. It was a killer schedule, designed to maximize Ford’s appeal to traditional “Main Street” conservatives as well as moderate members of the party. The Thursday before the election, the former President landed at Washington National Airport (now Reagan National) at 7:00 AM, coming in from California where he had been campaigning until late in the evening. He was to speak to the faithful at a breakfast fund raiser for candidate Frank Wolf, making his third effort to unseat Democrat Joe Fisher in Virginia’s 10th district.

As a volunteer for the Wolf campaign, I was working the registration table that morning, handing out name tags and accepting late donations to the event. Taking a short break, I wandered out into the hallway behind the hotel’s ballroom for a smoke when I saw a lone man walking toward me. There was something familiar about him that I couldn’t quite place. He was striding purposefully but the rest of his body language denoted utter exhaustion. His shoulders drooped. His face, sagged so that the wrinkles came out in bas relief. His eyes were half closed, the circles under them pronounced.

With a shock I realized it was the former President. There were no Secret Service Agents. No clutch of sycophantic aides trailing in his wake. It was just me and the former President of the United States. I was thinking that he might not make it through the speech, so tired and careworn he looked. And then, magic.

He didn’t notice me until he was almost even with where I was standing against the wall. But when he saw me there with what must have been a dumbfounded look of disbelief on my face, he grinned and extended his hand. At that exact moment, his face lit up, the wrinkles disappeared, the eyes snapped open, and he drew himself up to his full height. It was like someone had thrown a switch. He clasped my hand firmly while all I could do was stutter out some meaningless platitude. I think I murmured “Thanks for coming” or some such nonsense that he probably didn’t hear anyway. And then he was gone, striding down the hallway toward the front of the room where he was to be introduced.

Making my way back to the ballroom, I stood along the wall opposite the podium and saw him in the doorway. His body and face had resumed their exhausted demeanor. But after the introduction, someone threw the switch again and he strode confidently to the lectern to deliver a barnburner of a political speech. Ford may not have been noted for his speaking ability. But I can attest to the fact that the wild applause and standing ovation he received was fully deserved. He skewered Carter and the Democrats for defeatism. He praised Reagan to the skies (despite his long standing anger at him for what Ford believed was the unnecessary challenge Reagan made for the nomination in 1976). And he talked about America as only a Midwestern politician can; with a hushed and reverent tone and a catch in the throat.

I always admired Gerald Ford for what he did during that campaign. The results speak for themselves. The GOP won back the Senate for the first time since 1958 winning 12 seats while the party picked up 35 seats in the House. To extend himself physically and emotionally the way he did was an act of selflessness that seemed to be the hallmark of his political career.

No great monuments will be built to honor Gerald Ford, dead yesterday at age 93. Nor will there will be any post mortem scandals that will tarnish his name or sully his image. His quiet retirement, in contrast to other ex-Presidents, assures him a measure of anonymity with most younger Americans today. To the extent that he lives on in popular culture, it is in the hilarious but unfair cheap shots taken by the Saturday Night Live crew who always portrayed the All-Star athlete as a bumbling klutz in their skits. It can fairly be said that Gerald Ford made Chevy Chase and to a large extent, put SNL on the map. And it is to his eternal credit that Ford was always fairly good natured about the spoofs which almost certainly helped defeat him in the close election of 1976:

Question: Really, what DID you think of Chevy Chase’s impersonations of you? Did you ever meet him?—Mrs. Arlene Gaudioso’s Fifth Grade, Rohrerstown Elementary School, Lancaster, PA.

President Ford: I enjoyed, up to a point, Chevy Chase’s impersonations. Yes, my wife and I have met and had an opportunity to get acquainted with Chevy Chase. He is a very skillful entertainer who had a sharp and penetrating sense of humor. I have learned over the years in the political arena that you cannot be thin-skinned. You have to take the good with the bad.

Simple, common, decency.

His political career was a testament to his sunny disposition and good natured, inoffensive personality. In 1959, he was named “The Congressman’s Congressman,” an accolade he relished. Serving as long as he did (1947-73), Ford rose to the post of Minority Leader if not quite by default then certainly as a result of his durability. He served during a time when the Republicans in Congress were not only on the outs but also usually on the wrong side of history as well. Opposing many of LBJ’s wildly popular domestic programs, House GOP members were disorganized and dispirited.

When Vice President Agnew was revealed to be a common criminal, Nixon reached out for the most non-controversial choice possible. Most observers believed that Nixon would have no choice but to name Nelson Rockefeller Vice President, seeing that he was the only nationally known Republican who possessed what Beltway Insiders considered the “heft” or “gravitas” to be President if worse came to worst. But in 1973, Rockefeller’s divorce was still an issue and rather than risk problems, the President reached out to Ford both because he was popular in Congress and because his reputation as an honest and decent man assured his confirmation.

I reject the notion that Ford was in over his head as President. I think history has shown that ordinary Joe’s like Ford have risen to great occasions in the past when the times demanded it. All you have to do is look at Ford’s decisions when he was tested by history to see he performed more than adequately. The Nixon pardon -controversial as it was and still is – nevertheless was perfectly in keeping with Ford’s character as well as his belief that it was of paramount importance that Watergate be put behind the country so that the business of the United States government could continue. People tend to forget that for more than a year the Presidency was an empty shell of an office with Nixon consumed by his defense. Ford rightly thought that the times were too dangerous not to have a presidency free from the ghosts of scandal that would have been resurrected during any trial of the former President.

It is unfair but historically accurate to say that the Ford Presidency (and Carter’s) was an interregnum between the Johnson-Nixon imperium and the Reagan revolution. The nation almost seemed to catch its breath following the devastating shocks of assassinations, race riots, war, protests, and minority agitation for full participation in American life. It was less than a decade between the race riots that began in the “long, hot, summer” of 1964 to the Nixon resignation in August of 1974 – 10 short years that saw dramatic changes in American life, American politics, and American mores. If Ford is to be known as a “caretaker” president, he did indeed, take good care of the country while he was in office. For that reason alone, he should be remembered with fondness by all.

I will always remember him; the only President I ever met. He was a good and decent man who served our country in war and peace the best he knew how. And considering some who succeeded him, I daresay his stellar character stands the test of time much better than some who believe themselves his better.

It’s bad enough when some B-List blogger and wacko talking head like Debbie Schussel runs off at the mouth about the danger of electing Muslims. That kind of idiocy can be partly ascribed to Ms. Schussel’s desire to move up the blogging ladder, bashing Muslims being a quick way to fame and fortune when plumbing the extreme depths of the conservative sphere for audience and links.

But when a Congressman of the United States sends a letter to his constituents that raises the false specter of some kind of Muslim invasion of Congress while simultaneously warning that “traditional” values would be threatened by Muslim immigration, it forces me once again to take up the Cudgel of Righteousness (already bloodied from yesterday’s pummeling of Schussel) and give Representative Virgil Goode, Jr. a few well deserved whacks upside the head:

In a letter sent to hundreds of voters this month, Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr., Republican of Virginia, warned that the recent election of the first Muslim to Congress posed a serious threat to the nation’s traditional values.

Representative Virgil H. Goode Jr., left, said Keith Ellison’s decision to use a Koran in a private swearing in for the House of Representatives was a mistake.
Mr. Goode was referring to Keith Ellison, the Minnesota Democrat and criminal defense lawyer who converted to Islam as a college student and was elected to the House in November. Mr. Ellison’s plan to use the Koran during his private swearing-in ceremony in January had outraged some Virginia voters, prompting Mr. Goode to issue a written response to them, a spokesman for Mr. Goode said.

In his letter, which was dated Dec. 5, Mr. Goode said that Americans needed to “wake up” or else there would “likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.”

“I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America and to prevent our resources from being swamped,” said Mr. Goode, who vowed to use the Bible when taking his own oath of office.

In taking the good Mr. Goode to task for this stupidity, allow me first to slap all of you lefties around a bit for once again overgeneralizing when it comes to Values Conservatives by attempting to make the bad Mr. Goode a poster boy of sorts for that constituency.

Goode isn’t even a good example of an extremist. That’s because his letter is so transparently a political calculation that it doesn’t even come off as sincere. No Congressman can be this stupid, can they?

Mr. Goode declined Wednesday to comment on his letter, which quickly stirred a furor among some Congressional Democrats and Muslim Americans, who accused him of bigotry and intolerance.

They noted that the Constitution specifically bars any religious screening of members of Congress and that the actual swearing in of those lawmakers occurs without any religious texts. The use of the Bible or Koran occurs only in private ceremonial events that take place after lawmakers have officially sworn to uphold the Constitution.

Mr. Ellison dismissed Mr. Goode’s comments, saying they seemed ill informed about his personal origins as well as about Constitutional protections of religious freedom. “I’m not an immigrant,” added Mr. Ellison, who traces his American ancestors back to 1742. “I’m an African-American.”

Goode’s spokesman has informed us that the Congressman actually is that stupid; he declines to apologize and “stands by” the letter.

Of course, such incidents help Ellison enormously. They allow him to appear the reasonable, bemused, aggrieved party while anyone who has a passing familiarity with the devastating series of articles published by the Powerline boys knows that “reasonable” is not the way to describe many of the new Congressman’s views.

But beyond the shameless, shallow pandering by Goode is a revealed truth; that too often Republican politicians are using this “traditional values” theme to capitalize on some unimagined fear as in the case of Goode and his phantom Muslims. We also see other individual groups like gays targeted as somehow being in conflict with traditional American values – as if these values are practiced by people solely as a result of their religion, sexual orientation, ethnic heritage, or any other qualifier that a politician seeks to use to drive a wedge between us.

There are plenty of gay people who practice what, by any definition would be “traditional” American values. They are as monogamous as heterosexual couples. They raise children. They are god fearing folk. The cry when the flag passes in front of them. They fight and die for their country. Aside from their sexual orientation, there is absolutely nothing to differentiate them from your average Joe American. (Don’t believe me? Visit Gay Patriot and any one of a number of Republican/center right gay blogs and read a little bit about what they believe.) And yet, because of the actions of some so-called “Gay Rights” groups – who are much more about advancing a leftist agenda then they are about advancing gay rights – most conservatives look with distrust upon gays who believe in traditional American values.

There are traditional values that are under attack – but not by gays, or Muslims, or any specific group. Rather it is leftist ideology that seeks to remove religion from public life not separate it as they claim. It is leftist cant that seeks to change the narrative of our nation’s founding, substituting the basest of motives for Independence instead of the truly heroic and improbable way our freedom was achieved. The left has spent the last 40 years degrading our culture, denigrating our heroes, altering our history, deriding the simplicity and patriotism of the most common of folk among us, and in the end, trying to tear down 200 years of tradition and decency that our ancestors fought to pass down to the rest of us.

Whether this is their intent or not is a moot point. Their actions are having this affect. Whether it is the “no holds barred, anything goes” cesspool of a culture they have created via Hollywood or, in the name of “civil rights,” erecting a structure of separateness and discrimination via “affirmative action,” the left has done its best to destroy what many Americans cherish and believe in.

But none of this excuses idiots like Goode – and many others who use the battle cry of “Traditional Values” to advance their own agendas – from responsibility for engendering fear and loathing among those who are susceptible to the siren call of nativism. This strain has a long, dishonorable history in America, going back to the first days of the Republic when the first wave of immigrants began to unload onto the docks in New York and Boston. Then it was mostly Swiss and Germans with a smattering of Scots and Irish. Later waves of Irish immigrants would raise the spectre of not only aliens who didn’t possess “American values” but arrivals who were papists to boot. And each successive wave, the nativist impulse would rear its ugly head and find something scary and alien about the newcomers.

Goode is no different. From his letter:

“We need to stop illegal immigration totally and reduce legal immigration and end the diversity visas policy . . . allowing many persons from the Middle East to come to this country,” Goode said in the letter. “I fear that in the next century we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt the strict immigration policies that I believe are necessary to preserve the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America.”

Right out of the nativist playbook.

I’m all for controlling our borders. I’m all for enforcing the law. But I am also in favor of increasing legal immigration. If someone wishes to go through the bureaucratic rigmarole that it takes to get here legally and then work toward citizenship, that alone should denote a person’s interest in the “traditional values” of America. There are plenty of Muslims here today – second and third generation Muslims – who embrace the same values you and I do and are no more a threat to those values than my pet cat Snowball.

For Goode to posit the notion that Muslims are incapable of adopting and embracing traditional values not only flies in the face of history and everything we know about immigrants but also bespeaks a shallow and corrupt mind, incapable of grasping the shining truth about America as a melting pot that embraces all cultures and ethnic groups.

And that may be the most traditional of all American values.

One of my heroes died last night.

Jeane Kirkpatrick was a genuine intellectual; brilliant, honest, ever curious, blunt, even “acerbic” – an adjective I’ve seen on three different obits already. One wonders if Ambassador Kirkpatrick had been male if she would have been described that way.

She may have invented snark. Her cutting wit was justly famous around Georgetown University where she taught before getting the call from Reagan to be Ambassador to the United Nations. She served on his foreign policy transition team and impressed the President with her spirited defense of democracy and Israel. Her article in Commentary Magazine “Dictatorships and Double Standards” gave an ideological answer to leftists who wanted to cut off American aid to dictatorships for violating human rights at a time when the Soviets were on the march.

And despite the controversy of the subject, I will point out that Kirkpatrick, Ben Wattenberg, and Irving Kristol – former liberal Democrats all – helped define neo-conservatism.

They epitomized the neo-conservative movement. Liberal on social issues, moderately conservative on economic issues, and dyed in the wool anti-communists who left the Democratic party not only for their ruinous economic policies but also their pacifism in the face of Soviet aggression. They were warily welcomed by Republicans of the time who had learned over the years to have a healthy mistrust of Democratic intellectuals. But Kirkpatrick and others made deep thinking popular among rank and file conservatives again. In fact, thanks to Reagan, who brought several genuine conservative intellectuals into government like Martin Anderson, conservatives began to embrace the ideas bubbling up from think tanks and academia. In those heady days in Washington, ideas mattered a great deal. And seminal thinkers like Jeane Kirkpatrick whose vigorous defense of America at the United Nations became the stuff of legend, was in the forefront of the most important foreign policy debates of the time.

She was also a wife and mother – something she never let people forget. In a press conference following a particularly grueling UN session on the Middle East, Kirkpatrick said:

When the Syrian ambassador acted up, what I really felt like saying to him was, “Go to your room!”

And this in response to a question at one of her numerous seminars given at college campuses across the country:

Truth, which is important to a scholar, has got to be concrete. And there is nothing more concrete than dealing with babies, burps and bottles, frogs and mud.

But what endeared her more than anything to conservatives was her speech at the 1984 Republican Convention were she invented the term “Blame America First” regarding liberal Democrats of the time:

They said that saving Grenada from terror and totalitarianism was the wrong thing to do – they didn’t blame Cuba or the communists for threatening American students and murdering Grenadians – they blamed the United States instead.

But then, somehow, they always blame America first.

When our Marines, sent to Lebanon on a multinational peacekeeping mission with the consent of the United States Congress, were murdered in their sleep, the “blame America first crowd” didn’t blame the terrorists who murdered the Marines, they blamed the United States.

But then, they always blame America first.

When the Soviet Union walked out of arms control negotiations, and refused even to discuss the issues, the San Francisco Democrats didn’t blame Soviet intransigence. They blamed the United States.

But then, they always blame America first.

The crowd went nuts. And the Democrats have been on the defensive about foreign policy ever since.

It is perhaps inevitable that with her forceful personality that she should be compared to John Bolton who was a good friend and was queried today about his thoughts:

She took with her [to the UN] a reputation as a hard-liner on foreign policy. Because of this, she often was a lightning rod for the opposition. In some respects, she shared Bolton’s controversial profile. Bolton recently decided to resign when it became clear the Senate would not approve him full-time as U.N. ambassador.

Describing his work with Kirkpatrick at the American Enterprise Institute, Bolton told reporters Friday: “When I was at AEI in the late ‘90s for most of that time our offices were right next to each other and…” His voice then broke, and near tears he closed his eyes briefly, cleared his throat, and then continued in a quavering voice, “I benefited very greatly. It really is very sad for America, but she will be greatly missed.”

When a reporter noted that Bolton and Kirkpatrick had very similar attitudes, he replied, “I don’t really want to address that question.”

Yes, I suppose they did have similar “attitudes” – as if an American ambassador to the United Nations shouldn’t aggressively represent our interests in that body. The question reveals more about the reporter than it does about Bolton or Kirkpatrick.

In the end, of all that she had accomplished and was known for, she would probably be proudest of the fact that first and foremost, she was an American. And I might add, an American original at that.

One of our country’s best friends is gone. And I can’t think of a time when we needed her wisdom, her courage, and her driving personality more than right now.

PEARL HARBOR FROM AIEA HEIGHTS, DECEMBER 7, 1941

PEARL HARBOR FROM AIEA HEIGHTS TODAY

Hawaii is one of those places that no matter where you turn your head, there is stunning natural beauty. Take a drive along H-1 and get off on one of the scenic highways that meander across the island of Oahu and you’ll suddenly find yourself in a world of stunning vistas and breathtaking overlooks. And Honolulu has one of the most extraordinary skylines in the world, set against an ocean backdrop with Diamond Head looming over it in the distance.

Couple that natural beauty with a climate that encourages relaxation and even sloth and you begin to understand why on that beautiful Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, the sailors and airmen posted on the island felt themselves the luckiest in the service.

The sailors especially must have felt themselves blessed. The Pacific Fleet was usually based in San Diego or some other west coast facility and only made it to Hawaii once a year during training cruises. But in April of 1941, the Empire of Japan was on the move and FDR made the controversial decision to relocate the fleet to Pearl. The Navy was extremely unhappy. Not only were the harbor’s dock facilities inadequate to service the Fleet’s 8 battleships but any Midshipman could tell just by looking at a map what a trap the harbor was in case of attack. Narrow and shallow with just one channel that led to the open ocean, the Navy felt that the fleet was a sitting duck – if someone could figure out how to attack it. But Roosevelt wanted to send a message to the Japanese that he was serious about blocking their plans for total East Asian hegemony.

But that didn’t matter to the thousands of ordinary seamen, airmen, their families, wives or their sweethearts on that lovely December morning. Many had spent the previous Saturday night as they normally did, attending parties or going to one of the many nightclubs that catered to servicemen in Honolulu. Peacetime military life was stupefyingly boring, filled with mind numbing routine and little chance of promotion. Kicking up one’s heels on Saturday night was about the only fun many of them had.

We know now that the Japanese never planned to attack Pearl Harbor without a formal declaration of war. But a communications snafu (gratefully intercepted by our diplomatic code breakers) meant that the timing of the attack had been blown. As it turned out, the Japanese diplomats didn’t make it to Secretary of State Cordell Hull’s office until after the attack was well underway. The attack therefore took place without any official warning although everyone in the government knew that war was imminent. The previous evening, Roosevelt sent a personal message to the Emperor of Japan pleading for peace. That message too never made it to its intended audience. Communications broke down between Washington and our embassy in Tokyo, delaying its transmission and preventing Ambassador Grew from delivering it.

Despite intercepting the message to the Japanese embassy in Washington that clearly indicated an attack was forthcoming, the military still didn’t know where the blow would fall. Some thought the Philippines would be the target (indeed, the Japanese bombed the Philippines on that day as well) while others thought Indochina was the objective. It did not occur to war planners in Washington that the Japanese would be audacious enough to steam thousands of miles across the Pacific ocean with a huge fleet of 56 ships and subs, not being detected, and creep up to within striking distance of the fleet.

The logistics of such an operation was only one reason American planners didn’t think Pearl could possibly be a target. It was also a fact that the harbor was too shallow for a torpedo plane attack, the preferred method of attacking surface ships at that time. The torpedoes would hit the bottom of the harbor before they had a chance to home in on their targets. The Japanese got around this problem by ingeniously attaching fins of wood along the axis of the torpedo that gave it enough buoyancy to prevent it from hitting bottom. They were used with deadly effect during the attacks.

Admiral Yamamoto’s huge gamble in attacking Pearl was justified by the recognition of the Navy that they could not long hold back the American Pacific Fleet once war broke out. In a long war, America would have a decisive advantage. Their only hope was to knock out the fleet in the first hours of the war and attack western possessions along the entire east Asian pacific rim, hoping to acquire enough raw materials and oil to prosecute a war that they hoped would lead to stalemate by 1943 and peace negotiations.

But on that morning, with American going about their normal Sunday routines – getting ready for church, enjoying time with their families – the Japanese fleet was targeting the symbol of American power in the Pacific. As Yamamoto’s ships came within 275 miles of Pearl, they launched a first wave of 183 bombers and fighters in the pre dawn darkness. On Oahu, the Army’s Opana Point radar station picked up the formation of Japanese planes but were told not to worry because a formation of 6 B-17’s were expected that morning and coming from the same direction. This mistake sealed the fate of our air force whose planes were lined up wingtip to wingtip on 3 separate air fields to prevent sabotage.

The result we know. Even today the figures elicit shock. Almost all of the 188 American aircraft were destroyed, including an astonishing 155 on the ground. The surprise was total and absolute. Our combined Army-Navy-Marine air forces could muster only 35 sorties during the entire attack. Little wonder bitter American sailors being strafed in the water at will by Japanese Zeroes cursed our Air Force for dereliction. For weeks after the attack, MP’s in Honolulu were kept busy as vicious fights broke out between airmen and sailors in bars and nightclubs.

Japanese losses were 29 planes (out of 340 engaged), 55 airmen – most of those in the second wave attacks that targeted ships already burning. And in wreaking havoc on the battleships of the Pacific Fleet, the Japanese gained a fleeting and, as it turned out, illusory victory. While they managed to sink 5 of our front line battleships and 13 smaller ships, damaging dozens more, by pure luck the three American aircraft carriers in the fleet had been sent out on patrol only 48 hours prior to the attack. Missing the carriers proved to be decisive because less than 7 months later at the battle of Midway, those three carriers were to deliver a massive blow against a Japanese invasion force and turn the tide to the American side for good.

In the meantime, FDR had to deal with the fact that for all practical purposes, the west coast of the United States was defenseless. He decided to downplay the extent of the damage to the fleet. In fact, it wasn’t until after the first investigation into what went wrong at Pearl had concluded its deliberations in 1943 that the American people were finally told the extent of the catastrophe. Nearly 2500 Americans lost their lives as opposed to the original false figure of 400 given by the government. The War Department also downplayed the number of ships that were damaged or sunk. In this case, the truth was just too horrible to tell.

It has become popular in the last 20 years to posit conspiracy theories regarding FDR’s foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor Attack. Most recently, Robert Stinnet in his book Day of Deceit used FOIA requests and examined nearly 200,000 documents related to intelligence about the attack, coming to the conclusion that Roosevelt had to have known that Hawaii was the target and let the attack happen in order to bring the US into the war against not Japan but Hitler!

An immediate problem with this conspiracy theory is that there was absolutely no guarantee that Germany would declare war on America, thus foiling FDR’s “plan” to assist the British. And the idea that the US would declare war on Germany was very controversial at the time. The feeling in Congress and much of the nation was “one war at a time.” There was no hue and cry to go to war against Germany despite the attack on Pearl Harbor. Roosevelt’s “Date of Infamy” speech on December 8th never mentioned Germany, the British, Europe, or gave any hint that we planned to add the Nazis to our list of enemies.

Hitler, God bless him, solved our problem for us by, for the first time in his life, honoring his word and declaring war on America in accordance with the technical requirements of the Tri-Partite Pact on December 11.

This little nugget of information always seems to escape the conspiracy theorists who want us to believe that FDR allowed the Japanese to attack and nearly destroy the Pacific Fleet. The idea is so stupid on its face – that any American politician or military commander would stand still while the primary defense for the west coast of the United States was knocked out – that is easy to see why most historians dismiss the theory as total rubbish.

But what about all that intelligence? As it turns out, Stinnett especially either deliberately (or out of ignorance) misread much of what he was reading. Pearl Harbor historian and former cryptologist Phillip Jacobsen explains:

The book misleads the uninitiated reader by lumping the relatively simple JN-25A code and cipher system that took 14 months to read with the much more complicated JN-25B system together as “Code Book D.” Thus, the final successes of JN-25A are imputed to JN-25B even though the first significant reported decrypt of the latter much more complicated code and cipher system was in early 1942. The book omits the fact that the November and December 1941 raw intercepted messages from Corregidor, Guam and Hawaii on which so much is relied were actually enroute to Washington DC by ship and rail on 7 December 1941 and thus were not decrypted until 1945-46 and the most promising of those decrypts were translated in 1946-47 and are available in the National Archives today. Also not discussed is the fact that Station Hypo in Hawaii under Rochefort was only permitted to work on the unproductive Admiral’s code system before Pearl Harbor and was not given the go ahead to work on JN-25B until a week or so after the attack. It is claimed that unkown censors are holding back vital decrypts in the National Archives or elsewhere because certain Station Message Serial (SMS) numbers and original versions of messages appearing on Japanese naval broadcasts are missing. However, the so called “missing” messages can be attributed to the fact that less than 60 percent of Japanese naval messages were intercepted and many were originally sent by land-line, cable or visual means when tied up at docks or anchored in a Japanese harbor.

Knowing an attack was imminent is not the same as knowing where it will happen. Sound familiar? Think of the summer of 2001 and perhaps now you see why the 9/11 conspiracists are as batty as Sinnett.

It was 65 years ago today. Every year, the ranks of veterans who lived through that horrific day when the water caught fire and the harbor was choked with the bodies of the living and the dead, grows thinner. They are old men now. Their memories are still tinged with the sadness that comes from the realization that soon, they will all be gone and, like other landmarks in American history such as Gettysburg and Antietam, it will be up to the rest of us to keep the remembrances alive and never, ever forget what happened on that impossibly beautiful Sunday morning when the world turned upside down and changed all of us forever.

ON THE RIGHT, USS ARIZONA AFTER A BOMB PENETRATED TWO DECKS AND EXPLODED IN THE FORWARD MAGAZINE, KILLING MORE THAN 1100 OF HER CREW - SOME OF WHOM LIVED FOR UP TO 10 DAYS AFTER THE ATTACK TRAPPED IN THE SHIP’S SUPERSTRUCTURE.

ON THE LEFT IS THE USS WEST VIRGINIA, BURNING AS A RESULT OF 7 TORPEDO HITS.

We who live in the 21st century suffer from a breathtaking conceit regarding our ancient human ancestors. We believe that the poor dears were ignorant little children, occasionally making a breakthrough discovery to move the train of human knowledge along (some even going so far as to believe that aliens were responsible for it all rather than people) but by and large, seeing the ancients as a dirty, doltish bunch of superstitious ignoramuses with no indoor plumbing and an unhealthy reliance on the mystical in their everyday lives.

This ignores the facts of archeology which paint a much different picture. About 50,000 years ago, our ancestors created art on the walls of caves outside of Lascaux, France that rivals in realism and talent anything that Renaissance painters could do. The Polynesians populated the Islands of the Pacific by crossing expanses of ocean that wouldn’t be duplicated by Europeans for thousands of years. Going the Polynesians one better, it is still a mystery how people from Southeast Asia managed to make it to New Guinea 50,000 years ago.

The Egyptians moved blocks of stone weighing tens of thousands of pounds with little more than levers and rope (the block and tackle pulley system was waiting to be discovered). By sheer brute strength, they carved and maneuvered these stones, stacking them so perfectly that the tolerances achieved would make a modern engineer jealous.

The irrigation system invented by the Mayans was so sophisticated that nothing comparable would be seen until the 19th century. The Mayans also made an unbelievable leap of knowledge by coming up with the concept of zero in mathematics; as counterintuitive in its own right as the invention of quantum mechanics.

And then there were the Greeks. What we know about this astonishing culture has piqued our curiosity and excited our admiration since Medieval times. It’s what we don’t know about them that may, in the end, prove to be even more incredible than anything we could have imagined:

A computer in antiquity would seem to be an anachronism, like Athena ordering takeout on her cellphone.

Known as the Antikythera Mechanism (Nature)But a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C.

The instrument, the Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and American researchers deciphered inscriptions and reconstructed the gear functions, revealing “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period,” it said.

The researchers, led by the mathematician and filmmaker Tony Freeth and the astronomer Mike G. Edmunds, both of the University of Cardiff, Wales, are reporting their results today in the journal Nature.

They said their findings showed that the inscriptions related to lunar-solar motions, and the gears were a representation of the irregularities of the Moon’s orbital course, as theorized by the astronomer Hipparchos. They established the date of the mechanism at 150-100 B.C.

While scientists now know pretty much what the Antikythera mechanism did, we still don’t really have a good idea of what it was for. Possible practical uses for the device include:

• Astrology was commonly practiced in the ancient world. In order to create an astrological chart, the configuration of the heavens at a particular point of time is needed. It can be very difficult and time-consuming to work this out by hand, and a mechanism such as this would have made an astrologer’s work very much easier.

• Calculating solar and lunar eclipses.

• Setting the dates of religious festivals connected with astronomical events

• Adjusting calendars, which were based on lunar cycles as well as the solar year

This new research indicates that the Antikythera mechanism could predict eclipses to the hour of their appearance as well as the orbits of at least Venus and Mars.

The Antikythera mechanism featured wheeled gears whose sophistication and exactness wouldn’t be seen again until the watchmakers of the middle ages. What this device hints at is the probability that much human knowledge and many technological leaps were lost to history following the fall of Greek civilization. Why didn’t this kind of knowledge pass to new generations of humans so that they could build upon and improve what was already done?

Roman stupidity probably had something to do with it, an empire always more willing to plunder and destroy rather than save and study – except that which could assist them in their conquering. And the fall of that empire which plunged the Europe into the so-called “dark ages.” Of course, while barbarians were running wild in Europe, Muslim culture was in full flower, making their own scientific advances. The Muslims, in fact, admired the Greeks immensely and much of what we know of them is largely given to us by Muslim scholars who saved what they could following the great upheavals in Europe.

The Antikythera mechanism reminds us that the human capacity for making great leaps forward in knowledge is not something limited to modern technological man. Throughout the history of our species, these astonishing breakthroughs have occurred in every culture and during every epoch proving that we really are quite clever when we put our minds to it.

After being mercilessly pummelled the last 2 days by lefty commenters for my ignorance, my closet authoritarianism, my slavish devotion to the cult of Bush, and other wild and wacky imaginings, I thought I’d get away from questions about burning Sunnis, “realist” foreign policy mavens, and the war to talk about something really important.

No, not Lebanon – although I promise a post later today about Nasty Nasrallah and his Merry Band of Cutthroats and their planned “open ended sit in” in Beirut. And no, I will not write today about My Beloveds since they don’t make news on this blog until Sunday. Writing about Pakistan is too depressing. And penning an essay on the weather – 10” of snow that will need to be blown off the sidewalks in front of the homestead – smacks of self pity and no one wants to read about my aching back or chilled feet.

Today’s topic is the lifeblood of human civilization. One usually uses that term when referring to oil. And indeed, without cheap oil, the wheels of western industrialized civilization would come off and we’d live the way the Greenies intend; residing in “sustainable” mud huts, wearing rags for clothes, and bartering mouse meat for extravagances like ball point pens or nail files.

I am talking about the planet’s second most important commodity. With 400 billion cups drunk annually, coffee’s importance economically, culturally, and socially cannot be denied. Indeed, if oil greases the wheels of industrialized civilization then coffee surely lubricates its living, breathing, moving parts.

The history of coffee is weird. The reason for this is that homo sapiens have probably known of every edible plant, root, grass, and tuber on planet earth for more than 100,000 years. Agriculture – the planting and harvesting of crops – has been around for at least 10,000 years. And yet, the coffee bush escaped cultivation until around 1100 CE. Why this is so is a mystery. Poppies have been cultivated for at least 5,000 years. Marijuana even longer. It is amazing that the little bush, thought to have originated on the hillsides of Ethiopia, was not generally recognized for either its medicinal properties or the salutary effects the berries had on our constitutions.

In any event, there are several amusing anecdotes about the origin of coffee, including one widely told myth of a a sheep herder from Caffa, Ethopia named Kaldi who noticed how frisky his animals got after eating berries off of a particular bush. (And no, I’ve never seen a frisky sheep and have no desire to discover how Kaldi could tell either.)

Seems that Kaldi tried the berries and found himself getting rather frisky as well. This piqued the interest of Arab traders who took the bush back home. For three hundred years, Arabs had pretty much of a monopoly on coffee production, although isolated pockets of cultivation appeared in places like India as a result of stolen seedlings. In fact, it was a crime to transport the bush outside of Arabia.

It was probably the Turks who figured out how to dry the berries and roast them, then soaking them in water to make what we would consider coffee today. The first coffee shops appeared in Constantinople around 1475. The Turks, not knowing any better, added flavorings like anise and cardamom to their coffee – as if one could improve on the Almighty’s handiwork by arbitrarily adding flavorings not in God’s original recipe.

From Turkey, it was a simple matter to jump the Bosporus and land in Venice – the center of life and culture in Europe at the time. The first coffee shops opened there in 1645 and swept across Europe.

Early coffee shops were places of both debauchery and intellectually stimulating conversations. English coffee shops hosted the finest minds of the pre-enlightenment and can be credited in no small way with facilitating the spread of radical democratic ideas. Authorities tried several times to clamp down on these ideas by closing the coffee shops – as if one could stop a tidal wave by commanding the ocean to cease making waves.

Later, the French brought the berry to the New World, specifically their island holdings in the Caribbean where the rich, volcanic soil in places like Martinique produces some of the most flavorful and aromatic varieties in the world. Coffee appeared in Brazil in 1727 and by 1800, most of Central and South America was growing the bush.

Although I believe it sacrilege to add anything to coffee, I realize that I live in a world where coffee lovers come in various shades of latte, cappuccino, mocha, and espresso. So be it. Because the social history of coffee is one of felicity and accommodation in interpersonal relations, I will mention that it appears the first use of sugar in coffee was in the court of The Sun King, Louis XIV in 1713 while the use of milk or cream in the nectar seems to have been continuous since coffee’s discovery. Espresso was invented by the French but perfected by the Italians with the first commercial machine in use by the turn of the 20th century.

Why all the fuss? What is it about coffee that has captured so much of humanity and made it the drink of choice to be shared by friends, philosophers, philanderers, the high born, the low, and most especially, the middling classes?

To say, “It’s the caffeine, dummy” is too pat, too simple. While addictive, caffeine is by all reports a mild stimulant and not a danger to human health when taken in moderation. Of course, those of us who truly love coffee find nothing “moderate” about it. A pot in the morning with a taste in the afternoon and a satisfying after dinner indulgence is a daily routine.

But it is not the amount of coffee one drinks but rather the choice of bean as well as the careful preparation of the elixir that marks the casual coffee drinkers and separates him from the half crazed obsessives such as myself.

For every time of day there is a corresponding type of bean that, when prepared in the proper manner, can bring the sun out from behind the clouds and brighten the mood of anyone.

Mornings require a robust, but richly textured coffee. Most “house blends” seek to achieve this combination but rarely succeed. I rarely bother with blended beans because the quality tends to vary from pot to pot. Starbucks is a perfect example. Millstone also supplies uneven results. This is why for going on 40 years, I have enjoyed a canned coffee. But not just any canned coffee. Stewarts is a Chicago institution and until recently (the last 20 years) was unavailable in most stores. This is the most unique blended coffee I’ve ever had. And if you can keep it fresh, will deliver pot after pot of superbly sublime coffee.

Afternoons require something a little tamer, a taste both smooth and rich while going easy on the palate. Kenyan AA or Kona does nicely. Just about any good highland coffee from Central America will also fill the bill – although I find the Belize bean much the superior to any other from that region.

If you insist on drinking coffee before dinner, try an island coffee. Jamaican is smooth while not being too aromatic. I personally find coffee before dinner a hazard to the enjoyment of the meal. Best to keep the palate cleansed, preferably with water but any good Merlot or Chardonnay that doesn’t leave an aftertaste will do.

The same holds true for drinking coffee with dinner. Given the havoc that coffee can play with our sense of taste, unless you’re eating at Denny’s, wait until dessert.

Here your choices are unlimited. A strong, winey, and full bodied brew is my preference. Can’t get much better than Columbian but many prefer a good Arabica – especially if one is to indulge in dessert. Anything that can overwhelm the tastes of the recently concluded repast so that the coffee isn’t affected by some of the heavier flavors like onion or garlic is desired.

There are literally hundreds of varieties of coffee to choose from for any occasion. But keys to making good coffee are the same regardless of what your personal preferences are; freshness and uniform preparation.

I can’t tell you how to prepare coffee. The idiosyncratic nature of one’s taste buds require that you experiment to discover your own path to coffee Nirvana. If you’ve never paid much attention to how you prepare your coffee, chances are you are missing the full flavor potential of the bean. When experimenting, pay attention to how acidic the coffee is, its aroma, and how the body of the coffee is affected by the combination of more or less water or more or less coffee. When you find a combination that pleases you, stick with it and see if it’s what you had in mind.

As for freshness, here too there are arguments about the best way to keep the bean from going stale. All agree that placing the bean in a hermetically sealed glass or ceramic container is your best bet. When I open my canned coffee, I immediately place it in a glass jar with a lid that can keep the air out. I then place it in a cupboard to keep it away from sunlight, another factor in making coffee lose its freshness.

Some prefer to keep the coffee in the refrigerator. This is controversial due to the moisture that may form in your container. Others recommend freezing the bean. I have tried this and found the coffee nearly tasteless after thawing. For those who might have an interest in the subject, this site gives the pros and cons regarding coffee storage in a pretty straightforward manner.

Regardless of how you prepare it, what beans you use, when you drink it, or what you put into it to enhance its flavor, coffee has greased the skids of social interaction for more than 500 years. More than beer, more than wine or cola, coffee seems always to taste better when drunk in the company of others. It appears to have been placed on earth for the specific purpose of encouraging human beings to interact and enjoy the give and take of stimulating conversation.

For myself and I’m sure for many of you, the world would be a much different place without coffee. Poorer in spirit, I think. Less open, less interesting.

And, no doubt, a much sleepier world as well…

“What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god!”
Hamlet Act II Scene 2

“There’s many a man alive of no more value than a dead dog.”
Sgt. Buster Kilrain from the movie Gettysburg

Saddam Hussein is not the most prolific mass murderer in history. Mao’s rampages make the Butcher of Baghdad appear meek and mild by comparison. Nor is Saddam one of the more inventive killers in history. Vlad the Impaler had a particularly unique and exquisitely painful method of dealing with his enemies. And Genghis Khan took great pleasure in coming up with new and exciting ways to end human life.

In fact, in the grand sweep of history, Saddam will be remembered as pretty much of a run-of-the-mill 20th century tyrant, a second tier mass murderer who will be mentioned in the same breath as Idi Amin and Slobodan Milosevic.

Regardless of how history remembers him, the Iraqi people will never forget his brutal, sadistic rule. And now the tyrant and his reign, ended by force of American arms, has been judged:

An Iraqi court on Sunday sentenced Saddam Hussein to the gallows for crimes against humanity, convicting the former dictator and six subordinates for one nearly quarter-century-old case of violent suppression in this land of long memories, deep grudges and sectarian slaughter.

Shiites and Kurds, who had been tormented and killed in the tens of thousands under Saddam’s iron rule, erupted in celebration — but looked ahead fearfully for a potential backlash from the Sunni insurgency that some believe could be a final shove into all-out civil war.

Saddam trembled and shouted “God is great” when the hawk-faced chief judge, Raouf Abdul-Rahman, declared the former leader guilty and sentenced him to hang.

What is it that makes a man like Saddam? Certainly an essential part of humanity is missing from his soul – the ability to feel empathy, pity, or any of the other “angelic” attributes that Hamlet praised in his soliloquy. But in context, Hamlet was also torn between this majestic view of humanity – made in the image and likeness of God – and the view given voice by the rough hewn Kilrain whose dismissal of any elevating characteristics in most men rings as true as Hamlet’s paean to man’s perfectibility.

We are all of us monsters and saints. The potential for both is present in each of us. Saddam’s brutality cannot be laid at the feet of any cultural or religious peculiarities. Psychiatrists might point to his childhood where he was constantly beaten and abused by his uncle or some other aspect of his development where the finer instincts that adhere to most people either died or were never implanted in his soul. But in the end, Saddam’s evil was the result of his own deliberate choices.

Whether Saddam had been tried under the auspices of the World Court or some other supra-national judicial forum doesn’t matter. The atmospherics may have been different than a trial in Iraq. The lawyers would have been able to maneuver, delay, obfuscate, and preen for the cameras with more freedom than they had in the Iraqi courtroom. But the facts of the case – overwhelming physical and documentary evidence – would have sealed his fate regardless.

The calls are already coming fast and furious to spare his life. I am ambivalent about his execution. There are political, military, and even strategic arguments against hanging the tyrant. But what does civilization do with someone who is directly responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings? In cases like Saddam’s, “punishment” has no meaning in a legal sense. There is simply no sentence that could have been handed down to fit the crimes committed by this bloodthirsty sadist. Death is as good as any. And if justice were indeed blind, hanging would be seen as merciful indeed.

In the midst of the bloodletting that is his legacy (and, to some extent, ours), the Iraqis who suffered so long under the heel of the dictator’s jackboot are celebrating. I just wish they could unite in their recognition that Saddam’s judgement has offered them a new start, a new way to live that doesn’t include killing their neighbor because of what occurred in the past.