I found this section from London blogger “Belgravia Despatch” very moving.
SQUANDERING SYMPATHY?: Blog-Irish scans the Irish press two years ago for evidence of the huge amount of sympathy and support for the U.S. after 9/11. Not much there. The U.S. was hated and resented before 9/11. And America’s effrontery in fighting back had an absolutely predictable response. How can we be expected to please people who refuse to be pleased?
EMAIL OF THE DAY: “Why bother with Iraq? Why fight terrorism? Try this from Richard Hillary’s classic WW2 autobiography written after months of surgery following being shot down.
In a train compartment on the way to Scotland Hillary asked Peter Pease, another young pilot, his reasons for fighting. ‘Well, Richard,’ he said, ‘you’ve got me at last, haven’t you?’
‘I don’t know if I can answer you to your satisfaction, but I’ll try. I would say that I was fighting the war to rid the world of fear – of the fear of fear is perhaps what I mean. If the Germans win this war, nobody except little Hitlers will dare do anything… All courage will die out of the world – the courage to love, to create, to take risks, whether physical or intellectual or moral. Men will hesitate to carry out the promptings of their heart or brain because, having acted, they will live in fear that their action may be discovered and themselves cruelly punished. Thus all love, all spontaneity, will die out of the world. Emotion will have atrophied. Thought will have petrified. The oxygen breathed by the soul, so to speak, will vanish, and mankind will wither.’ Peter Pease was killed in action.
Richard Hillary returned to the RAF and was killed in a plane crash during night training. He was 23.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.
The Dish 