Category: Old Dish

Check out Al Gore’s closest foreign policy adviser in the Washington Post today. It’s a classic. Saddam is a real threat; he endangers America and the Middle East. There is every reason to take him on urgently. But … not now. The reason? “U.S. forces will need to be rested after the campaign in Afghanistan.” Puh-leeze. Russia (with whom we have now created a strong alliance) and France – yes, France! – might complain. There’s a worry about “the Arab street.” Has Fuerth learned nothing from the past two months? And there is this classic piece of equivocation: “We certainly ought to cooperate with the Iraqi National Congress, but not be swept up in romanticism about its ability to operate effectively inside Iraq.” This, of course, is exactly what they once said about the Northern Alliance. So where should our next priority in the war against terrorism be? Er, well, somewhere other than Iraq. Where? Fuerth bravely posits “other parts of the world.” Gee, thanks, Leon. This piece is so profoundly incoherent, yet so spun in liberal diplo-speak, you can almost imagine Gore listening to a briefing along those lines, nodding his head, pulling on his beard, and saying, “Fascinating, Leon, fascinating.” And then he would conduct a seminar. Thank God he lost.

Encouraging news that the Harry Potter flick, one of the most pedestrian I have sat through in ages, saw its audience drop 36 percent in its second weekend. It’s still breaking every record in sight, but American movie-goers’ tastes haven’t gone completely wacko. I haven’t read the books which many, many people have told me are excellent (so please save your emails in that regard). But the movie was a terrible waste of time. The main protagonists were bad child actors, which is almost but not entirely a superfluous phrase. The rest was special effects and absurd little cameo performances by some great British stage stars. There was no plot; no structure; no memorable dialogue; no-one you could even vaguely care about. I can see why some kids would like it. But the night I saw it, grown women were shrieking “Harry! Harry!” as the movie started. I don’t know how to explain this phenomenon. Are they just desperate for relief? Or have they lost their minds? Maybe you can help.

WHAT HUMAN CLONING?: I’m a little confused about all the stories on human cloning in the press. For all the fuss, no-one has been cloned; even an embryo hasn’t been cloned; the experiments were not a success; the company that conducted them has run out of money. This is a story? The prize for not buying this savvy piece of media-manipulation goes to the New York Times, which runs a good piece today on the limits of the non-breakthrough. For the record, I’m against human cloning. But I’m also against media hype.

LETTERS: They’re back! Two Buddhists for war; a marine writes; why Powell’s military acumen is over-rated, etc.

ASBESTOS: Several of you have taken me to task for posting a piece on a rabidly anti-enviro website (check the Letters for an excellent rebuttal). I take the point. I’m not pro-asbestos. It kills people. I’m also not anti-environment. I was just passing on a reasonably interesting observation about the WTC. There’s always a danger on a site like this of linking to stuff you can’t completely vet or that might merely give some people more traffic than they deserve. The same argument goes for the usqueers.com site mentioned below. But my web philosophy is not to be risk averse, and to link to stuff that raises difficult or interesting questions, even when I disagree. Just keep me on my toes, will you?

THE RFK CONNECTION: A reader alerts me to an interesting quote buried deep in the Wall Street Journal’s Monday edition. It’s a wiretapped quote from the blind Sheik Omar who was discussing whether Islamic law would allow a bombing of the F.B.I.’s New York offices. “Slow down; slow down a bit,” the spiritual leader says. “The one who killed Kennedy was trained for three years.” Hmmm. Which Kennedy? Trained by whom?

“The war on terrorism has certainly raised our awareness of the ways in which women’s bodies are controlled by a repressive regime in a far away land, but what about the constraints on women’s bodies here at home, right here in America? … Whether it’s the dark, sad eyes of a woman in purdah or the anxious darkly circled eyes of a girl with anorexia nervosa, the woman trapped inside needs to be liberated from cultural confines in whatever form they take. The burka and the bikini represent opposite ends of the political spectrum but each can exert a noose-like grip on the psyche and physical health of girls and women.” – Joan Jacobs Brumberg and Jacquelyn Jackson, Boston Globe. Has it occurred to these writers that there is a difference between behaviors which are a function of free choice and behaviors that are mandated by law?

ASBESTOS AND THE WTC: An interesting article forwarded to me from a website called “Access To Energy” adds one more fact to the World Trade Center collapse. Apparently, in 1971, while the WTC was under construction, New York City banned the use of asbestos as a building material. The WTC was already under construction – but the floors above the 64th were yet to be built. It was those floors that didn’t have asbestos protection in the columns. ”If a fire breaks out above the 64th floor, that building will fall down,” argued Herbert Levine, an asbestos expert in the 1970s who wanted his firm to get the contract. I’m not qualified to judge the physics and chemistry of this, but the article is well worth a quick read – or filing under the header – Environmentalism’s Unintended Consequences.

MORE HATE FROM THE GAY LEFT: The far gay left is one of the most virulent hate-groups in the country. Tolerated by much of the gay media and beyond, their hate-filled and near-violent tactics are often ignored or tolerated by other gay men and women and liberal straights who should know better. Here’s a small taste of what some gay hate-groups are now up to. It’s a list of leading individuals the authors of the website “usqueers.com” want to see dead. The headline: “Wanted: To Experience A Horrible Death By Any Means Soon. Well-Known Het-Supremacists Deserve It As Their Reward.” Notice the phrase ‘By Any Means.” Are these people condoning murder? There then follows this statement:

“If a person on this list dies (preferably a horrible death), a line will be drawn through their name (and they will probably be added to our Good Riddance! list.) If a person on this list is merely wounded or debilitated in some way, we will change the color of their name to brown. NOTE: We’re just getting started on this list, but the type of information we will be listing here as it comes in includes anything such as Home Address, Home Phone, Office Address, Office Phone, Studio Address, Church Address, Girlfriend’s Address, Boyfriend’s Address, Favorite Hangouts (restaurants, etc.), Family Members, details about automobiles, just about anything which could be useful in spotting these dangerous het supremacists when they are wandering around loose. Organization information is also helpful, but mainly when it can be linked to specific het supremacists.”

They add a disingenuous disclaimer disavowing violence – but these are the very people who seize on even the slightest homophobic remark to argue that it leads to gay-bashing. Notice also their complete contempt for anyone’s privacy or personal dignity – a good indicator of a totalitarian mindset. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for their free speech. And I’m no fan of many of the individuals they oppose. But this kind of extremist, personal rhetoric is simply disgusting. It’s equivalent to the hate-filled pro-lifers who discredit their cause by advocating the murder of abortionists. I don’t know where these people get their hatred from, but it is as real and as dangerous as any of the right-wing hate groups who also deserve censure. These people do as much damage to the cause of gay equality and civility as anyone on the far right. It’s time we stopped ignoring their evil.

Unsurprising pro-Powell spin by Bill Keller of the Times Magazine Sunday. I’ve never believed that Powell was shut out of the administration – he is much closer to Bush than many seem to think – but I don’t see, and am still not persuaded by Keller, that Powell is now in control of the administration’s foreign policy. Yes, he’s an important player in the diplomatic front for the war on terror, but haven’t the events of the last two weeks undermined him yet again? The campaign in Afghanistan must surely have strengthened the hands of Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz – as the news that the administration is now extending its list of targets seems to suggest. Wouldn’t a profile of Rummy be more appropriate now? The most revealing tidbit of the piece, however, was the almost hysterical tone of the emails from former president Bush. It’s unarguable that Powell first opposed using force to repel Saddam from Kuwait, that he vastly over-estimated Iraq’s military capabilities, and that he betrayed the rebelling Iraqis by cutting the war short before Saddam had been toppled. So why does GHWB call Powell’s opposition to force “a grossly unfair, insupportable lie”? I guess it depends on exactly when Powell opposed force. Once ordered to deliver, I have no doubt that Powell did as he was told. But what about before? That’s the critical point, surely: not Powell’s military skills but his political and strategic judgement, which has been demonstrably wrong on every major foreign policy intervention in the last decade. But Powell, like many “moderate” Republicans, cannot bear to say he was once mistaken, and his real contempt seems to be for those within his own party who favor a more hard-headed approach to foreign affairs. Powell’s rolling of the eyes at Ronald Reagan’s legacy speaks volumes about Powell’s overweening arrogance, a quality not likely to be undermined by Keller’s source-pleasing Valentine. Too bad. And way too predictable.

Fascinating little article in the Early America Review about Thomas Jefferson’s response to terrorism and piracy in the Middle East in the early nineteenth century. It looks a lot like George W. Bush’s. Notice particularly how the Europeans and British were more content to pay tribute and bribes to Barbary Coast pirates and murderers than the more “naxefve” Americans. But guess who actually put a stop to the terrorism. Some things don’t change much, do they?

A BOOK RECOMMMENDATION: Many of you may already have checked out Bjorn Lomberg’s devastating insider rebuttal of many of the lies of the current environmentalist movement. It’s called The Skeptical Environmentalist. It makes no real difference to anything, but I felt a little less beleaguered by the discovery that this brave and smart individual is also openly gay. Just one more reason for some conservatives to revisit their assumptions about gay writers and thinkers. Yes, there are still many protected left-wing maniacs, who haven’t had an original thought since 1976. But there are many many young, bright free-thinking gays and lesbians challenging the lock-step leftism of the gay establishment. If you haven’t checked the Independent Gay Forum (I’ve played a small part in its origins and functioning), give it a whirl. From Jonathan Rauch to Walter Olson to Camille Paglia and Bjorn Lomberg (to name just a few), many non-conformist gay thinkers are actually making a difference. Perhaps the gay establishment, instead of wasting energy demonizing and vilifying us, will one day see us as productive contributors to many debates. Then again, pigs might fly.

CARTOONED: Yep, it’s happened. This cartoon is the first to lampoon me (kinda) since college days. Enjoy.

THE TALIBAN VERSUS CIVILIZATION: Forget for a moment the pictures of liberated Afghanis. Perhaps the most telling evidence to come out of Afghanistan these past few days is documentation of brutality and philistinism on a massive scale. Here’s a gut-wrenching story on what the Taliban did to ancient treasures in Afghanistan’s national museum. They went through almost 3,000 objects of beauty and Islamic civilization with sledge-hammers and axes: “One Buddhist statue was among the most precious. It was a clay image of a bodhisattva, a Buddhist who seeks complete enlightenment, made 1,600 years ago. ‘Before, when we needed to move the bodhisattva, we were afraid it would break and didn’t touch it,’ Mr. Mohebzadah said. ‘So it was difficult for me to see it being smashed with an ax.’ ‘I was crying,’ he continued, and tears welled up in his eyes all over again. “One of the Taliban saw me, and I pretended that my hand was hurt, and that I was cold. They asked me if I was crying, and I said, ‘No.'” The next time a non-violent Buddhist friend tells me that violence is not a solution to anything, I’ll just give them the URL for this story. It probably won’t do any good. People who take “Conversations With God” seriously are usually beyond any rational dialogue. But it will make me feel a little better.

AND WHAT EXACTLY WOULD THOSE ‘RECENT EVENTS’ BE?: “‘Recent events have finally opened the door to a restoration of the rights of Afghan women,’ Mary Diaz, the executive director of the women’s commission, said at a news conference. ‘It would be a tragic loss if this opportunity were not fully supported by the international community and women were once again forced to hide behind the burka out of fear for their safety.'” – New York Times. I think she means U.S. bombing.

RFK AND MUSLIM TERRORISM: Good point by Jake Tapper (sorry, it’s a Salon Premium story) on why perhaps RFK, unlike some members of his family today, might actually be supporting Bush’s and Ashcroft’s war on terrorism. Wasn’t RFK one of the first victims of Islamo-terrorism? He was killed by Sirhan Sirhan, and one of the motives for this Palestinian assassin was Kennedy’s support for Israel. “During a trip to Israel,” Tapper points out, “in January 2001, Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Kennedy’s oldest child, said that her father ‘was always a great supporter of Israel, and for that support he died.'” The Fatah organization, big buddies with Yassir Arafat, also urged Sirhan’s release years later. I have no doubt that RFK would have been even tougher than Bush and Ashcroft right now, which is why GWB, shrewd as ever, smartly understands the real Kennedy legacy, before it was highjacked by the bleeding hearts of the far left.

VIDAL SUPPORTS BRIBING BIN LADEN: Gore Vidal has become such a fool it’s hard to be shocked by what he says any more. And being shocked is part of what this perpetual adolescent wants. Still, here’s a Reuters interview that struck me as peculiarly dumb. In it, Vidal supports the notion that America is as bad if not worse than bin Laden. According to Vidal, America is a terroristic and totalitarian country: “I’ve listed in this little book about four hundred strikes that the government has made on other countries. War, undeclared. Generally with the excuse that they were harbouring communists. You keep attacking people for such a long time, one of them is going to get you back,” Vidal opines. Then there’s his belief that we should simply buy off bin Laden rather than confront him with force: “What Osama did is not a war. It can’t be a war because Osama is not a nation. He is a gang. It is like being hit by the mafia. You don’t declare war on Sicily because the mafia happen to live in Sicily. You don’t bomb Palermo. You get the international police and you track him down. And if you are a really great nation you buy him. That’s the way every empire from Julius Caesar on has done it.” I’m confused here. Isn’t Vidal supposed to be against America acting as an imperial power? Or is his hatred of America muddling even his twisted coherence?

ARAB ANTI-SEMITISM WATCH: Interesting news from Abu Dhabi, where a new satirical show making fun of Ariel Sharon has been launched to coincide with Ramadan. Fair enough, of course. If any culture needs more satire right now, it’s Arab-Muslim culture. Alas, according to Gulf News, the show recycles the now-familiar Jewish blood libel: “One of the scenes shows Sharon waving with a bottle filled with the blood of Arab children, quenching his thirst with each sip. In another scene, a character playing Dracula sucks blood from Sharon’s neck but drops dead because of the infected blood.” Altogether now: ha ha ha. One Kuwaiti argues that such scenes aren’t even satire. They are “a reflection of reality and are not fictional.”

Who wrote this headline in today’s New York Times: “Direction of Global War on Terror Raises Unsettling Questions”? Why is it “unsettling” for the United States to have achieved at least some success in its campaign against terrorism in Afghanistan? Why is it “unsettling,” as the article suggests, that the U.S. might take heart from this initial success and extend its campaign elsewhere? Wouldn’t it, in fact, be far more unsettling if the reverse had occurred and the U.S. was now retreating wounded from battle? The article adds nothing new to what we already know and doesn’t suggest any obvious reasons why we should now be worrying. In fact, it’s clear that the only people who’d find the direction of America’s war ‘unsettling’ at this point are the terrorists and leaders of rogue states who wish the West ill. So why on earth should the Times be looking at the world from their point of view?

BLOCK THAT METAPHOR DEPT.: “The phallic artwork has since been stolen, then recovered by police and will not be re-hung in the library.” – Scripps Howard News Service, November 19.

Two newly posted pieces opposite mark the occasion. I wrote the first five years ago, but its sentiments remain salient, I hope. The second can also be found at Forbes.com.

Another useful column by Jim Hoagland in today’s Washington Post comparing the Clinton and Bush approaches to multilateralism. The former asked the allies first, delayed committing ground troops, preferred limited and ultimately counter-productive strikes, and talked endlessly. The latter commits the U.S. immediately, consults with his close allies (Britain and Russia), always pledges ground troops if necessary, and then watches as other allies – Germany, Italy, France – race to join in. The other difference, of course, is that Bush has wisely never promised an easy ride – or consulted the polls to find one. It seems clear enough to me that this war is only just beginning. It will soon encompass Iraq, and may well include targets in Africa. Because Bush commits the U.S. first and then asks the allies if they wish to follow, he doesn’t need to engage the tortured and usually fruitless efforts to bring every ally aboard before doing anything. If he stays the course, the contrast between his successes and the failures of the past will only deepen with time.

STRATEGERY: Check out my latest column on Bush’s war management opposite. My apologies for not updating the letters page for a few days. I’ve been swamped with work.

HARVARD SIGNS UP: In a fascinating sign of the times, Harvard’s new president, Lawrence Summers gave a speech last week – barely covered in the national media – that seems to me a cultural milestone. “The post-Vietnam cleavage between coastal elites and certain mainstream values is a matter of great concern and has some real costs,” Summers said in an interview with the Crimson. “The United States is engaged in a conflict that is very widely seen as between wrong and right, fear and hope, and is without the moral ambiguity of Vietnam,” he went on. Hard to see his predecessor saying something that bold. Summers even brought up the thorny issue of allowing ROTC back on campus since it was banished in the 1970s. The military’s policy of persecuting gay servicemembers is one reason a reconciliation hasn’t yet taken place. But Summers clearly wants a rapprochement. “[This crisis] provides an opportunity for some reconciliation of values,” he added. With any luck, the military will at some point return the favor. We need our elite universities providing the military and intelligence services with the best the country can offer. And we need a military that will not destroy talent for an anachronistic relic of discrimination.

AS IF I HAD NEVER READ A BOOK: The full text of Leon Wieseltier’s account of visiting Ground Zero, which I quoted from last Saturday, is now up on TNR’s website.

MORE ORWELL FOR TODAY: “The mentality of the English left-wing intelligentsia can be studied in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing about all these papers is their generally negative, querulous attitude, their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who have never been and never expect to be in a position of power.” – England Your England, 1940.

A HAMAS ODE TO ANTHRAX: Here’s a charming “open letter” from a regular columnist for the Hamas Weekly. Usually the columnist writes open letters to various prominent politicians or terrorists. For his latest screed, according to MEMRI (scroll down to item 297), he addressed his thoughts to anthrax: “Oh Anthrax, despite your wretchedness, you have sown horror in the heart of the lady of arrogance, of tyranny, of boastfulness! Your gentle touch has made the U.S.’s life rough and pointless. You have filled the lady who horrifies and terrorizes the world with fear, and her feet almost fail to bear [her weight] in horror and fear of you. Because of you, she has lost confidence in the moment in which she lives, or in which she will live. You have entered the most fortified of places; [you have entered] the White House and they left it like horrified mice … In sound mind, I thank you and confess that I like you, I like you very much. May you continue to advance, to permeate, and to spread. If I may give you a word of advice, enter the air of those ‘symbols,’ the water faucets from which they drink, and the pens with which they draft their traps and conspiracies against the wretched peoples … Turn the bodies of the tyrants into matches burning slowly and gradually, so that they understand that the truth belongs to Allah and that they should give those entitled to rights their rights.” This is one of the most convincing arguments for extending this war to all such Islamo-fascist terrorist entities that threaten the West.

Forget the broad coalition for action against al Qaeda. Forget the U.N., which has once again been shown to be essentially useless in a real crisis. Forget the E.U., which also dissolves into constituent parts at the first sign of gunfire. The only real alliance worth anything right now is a tripartite arc from Washington through London to Moscow. In Afghanistan, British and American troops are jointly fighting the war. The Brits have also been a handy bridge for Washington with the other European powers, as well as an indispensable diplomatic tool. The Russians for their part have provided hard intelligence, accommodation on missile defense, and lower oil prices. In the coming decade, I predict a massive Western investment in oil exploration in Russia – a giant quid pro quo after September 11. And last Friday, Tony Blair joined two remaining dots by offering a new role for Russia within NATO. On Saturday, straight from Crawford, Putin called Blair to thank him. Putin’s statement read: “Moscow highly esteems the practical reaction of the British leadership to the Russian president’s repeated suggestions on the need to alter the mutual relations between Russia and the Western alliance in response to new challenges.” So we have a new entente cordiale between two old imperial powers and the current hegemon. This arc might come under strain if Washington aims next for Iraq – and, so far, the Brits have expressed panic at the very idea. But I deeply doubt that, when the crunch comes, the Brits will fiercely protest an Iraqi extension of the war. Blair has too much invested in this new alliance to watch it unravel now. Same with Putin. He sees the new alliance as a way for Russia to leap forward in international relations. And Bush finally has two foreign leaders he can trust. Neither unilateralism nor multilateralism: this trilateralism could actually work, i.e. do more useful things than employ professional diplomats.

HUMAN NATURE: I had dinner last week with William Hague, the former Tory leader, in Washington. He said one thing that stuck in my mind. We were discussing the images from liberated Afghanistan of women throwing off their veils and feeling the sun on their faces for the first time in years. How could anyone have believed that these women actually wanted to live like that? We have become so saturated with the nostrum that culture is everything, that we cannot judge or understand others brought up with different faiths or histories or legends that we have forgotten a simple thing. Some things are simply against human nature. There is barely a child anywhere in the world who wouldn’t take some pleasure in flying a kite. There is no human who has ever lived whose life wasn’t improved or enlightened by some kind of music. A religion that attempts not to channel human nature for good, but to suppress human nature altogether is doomed to failure. What we saw in Afghanistan is not some shift to a different political order. What we saw in Afghanistan was human nature rebelling against a cruel and evil abstraction. We are seeing human light in a theocratic darkness.

IT’S OFFICIAL: “Mr. Clinton now has to defend himself from the charge that he did not do enough to capture Osama bin Laden.” – Rick Berke, New York Times today. And when I dared to say this weeks ago, the Clintonites went berserk. Always trust content from andrewsullivan.com! In a few weeks, even the Times will concur.

THE PHARMACEUTICAL DEBATE: Yes, other issues haven’t gone away. Here’s a webcast of a panel I was on last week on the subject of the allegedly evil drug companies. I know it sounds dreary, but it was actually very lively and sparked some interesting exchanges. I was up against Merrill Goozner of the American Prospect and Ron Pollack of Families USA.

YES TO MILITARY TRIBUNALS: Look, I’m a pretty solid civil liberties guy. But this has nothing to do with civil liberties. The murderers of September 11 are not criminals. They are soldiers in an army protected by a foreign power which attacked American soil. They should be fought and captured or killed abroad. If they are in this country, they should be hunted down in exactly the same way as soldiers. I agree with William Barr and Andrew McBride in the Washington Post that this is not a radical move. It would be a radical move to treat these people as civilians subject to the usual protections. Our tortured attempt to do exactly that in the past – remember the Lockerbie fiasco? – is one reason why al Qaeda thought they could get away with mass murder this time. It’s time once and for all to state as clearly as possible that terrorism is not crime. It’s war. The fact that President Bush grasped this critical point early on is extremely good news. It means he knows what we’re up against. And his own personal involvement in such matters implies that this provision will be used carefully and sparingly and with full political accountability. As for the death penalty, this is one exception that, to my mind, makes sense. In a just war, when society itself is threatened by the lives of fascist mass-murderers, there is every justification for executing convicted prisoners of war. Of course, there is one way to avoid this altogether and that is to kill as many of these thugs as possible in the theater of war. We should show them the same mercy they showed to the men and women who showed up for work on September 11.

NOW, IRAQ: A very useful piece by Dean Godson in yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph makes a simple point. What we’ve learned in Afghanistan is that airpower works, that regimes we believed had support are actually quite weak, and that regime stability, so beloved of the first Bush administration, is not always the most important goal. With that in mind, why shouldn’t Saddam Hussein be vulnerable? As Condi Rice said this weekend, it matters not whether we can prove that Saddam was involved in September 11 or the subsequent anthrax attacks. What matters is that he is trying to get chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in contravention of U.N. resolutions. He is acquiring those weapons as a means to control his own people and to attack the West. We already have a casus belli. In some ways, Iraq would be easier than Afghanistan. Iraq has no major supporting neighbor, like Pakistan for the Taliban. Airpower could be much more effective, because there are more targets. Saddam is already pinned down in only a third of his own country, and is unpopular even among his own Sunni minority. The usual suspects claim that the main opposition to Saddam, the Iraqi National Congress, is divided, incompetent and unscrupulous. Sounds exactly like what they said about the Northern Alliance. As for regional conflagration, the State Department has it backwards, as usual. The main impact of our firmness with al Qaeda will not be greater Muslim revolt; it will be a broader awareness within the Muslim world that we should not be messed with. There will be fear. And there will also be greater hope among those people now trampled by the Baathists in Baghdad. We let those people down once before. Let’s not do it again.

Here’s a piece of brave and eloquent introspection from M.A. Muqtedar Khan in tomorrow’s Orlando Sentinel. Yet another indicator that these awful events might lead to a brighter future – not least for America’s many Muslim citizens, and their fellow-believers around the world.

“AS IF I HAD NEVER READ A BOOK”: Leon Wieseltier and I have had our deep differences, but his diarist in this week’s New Republic (it is not, alas, online) is the finest response I have yet read to the physical remains of the crime of September 11. He manages to be both surpassingly eloquent and yet also deeply right. Here’s the final paragraph: “I cannot locate the balm in culture. It is just not my piety. I discovered this when I wasnt into ground zero, in a red hard hat. I was not prepared for what I saw. I do not know how to express the quality of my shock, except to say that it banished culture completely from my mind. I fell dumb and stood there as if I had never read a book. My observations erased my memories. I was without allusion and without metaphors. Can a mind be naked? Then I was naked, without coverings. All I could do was look and pray to see. The metal was the color of an infernal tarnish. I learned that yellow smoke is released when iron is cut. The hole in the sky was more striking than the hole in the ground. I watched the cranes scoop up soil from the pit, and then I grasped that it was not soil. There was no soil in this place. What they were moving was the substance that was formed out of the dissolution of everything and everybody that had been crushed and incinerated: a deathloam. There were spots of it on my boots. I shivered and moved away. And when I left it was not culture that was restored immediately to my consciousness. It was politics; policy; American action.”