"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
Thursday, February 03, 2005 Must reading: The NY Times'Thomas Friedman on the Iraq vote:
The Iraqi Shiites just gave every Iranian Shiite next door a demonstration of what real "Islamic" democracy is: it's when Muslims vote for anyone they want. I just want to be around for Iran's next election, when the ayatollahs try to veto reform candidates and Iranian Shiites ask, Why can't we vote for anyone, like Iraqi Shiites did? Oh, boy, that's going to be pay-per-view.
Then there is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. This Charles-Manson-with-a-turban who heads the insurgency in Iraq had a bad hair day on Sunday. I wonder whether anyone told him about the suicide bomber who managed to blow up only himself outside a Baghdad polling station and how Iraqi voters walked around his body, spitting on it as they went by. Zarqawi claims to be the leader of the Iraqi Vietcong - the authentic carrier of Iraqis' national aspirations and desire to liberate their country from "U.S. occupation." In truth, he is the leader of the Iraqi Khmer Rouge - a murderous death cult.
[T]his election has made it crystal clear that the Iraq war is not between fascist insurgents and America, but between the fascist insurgents and the Iraqi people.
We know what it takes to upend the ossified order -- a progressive, an idealist and a revolutionary. That's George W. Bush, and no matter how much the academics weep into their trademarked Che Guevara T-shirts, that's how history will judge him.
This leaves the reactionary left in a quandary: Do they toss in their lot with transnational progressives who want a thin smear of Nordic socialism spread everywhere, or anti-capitalist anarchists who regard Starbucks as the evil empire, or neo-Stalinist nut goodies like ANSWER? Do they consider that there might be a higher purpose in life than hating Bush's guts, and give Americans a blast of steely can-do optimism for which the Democrats were once justly known?
Ask Howard Dean, who remarked at a recent New York City fund-raiser that he "hated the Republicans and everything they stand for." Hmm. Like elections in Afghanistan and Iraq?
The bullet train of history has left, Howard. Here's your handcart. Start pumping.
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Llama Butcher Steve mulls Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and wonders what became of the party of FDR and Harry Truman.
Mark Noonan at Blogs for Bush gauges the reaction of the "Democratic" Underground to democracy in Iraq, and finds, not surprisingly, little sympathy. He also compares Kennedys, then and now.
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