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Jens 'n' Frens
Idle thoughts of a relatively libertarian Republican in Cambridge, MA, and whomever he invites. Mostly political.
"A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures."
-- Daniel Webster
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Wednesday, September 10, 2003 :::
Lily Malcolm draws my attention to an excellent piece by Christopher Hitchens — it gets better as it goes along — with which I'd like to take the following slight exception.There were other reasons to oppose flagification. (Very many of the immediate victims were not American, for example, and most of those murdered and enslaved by Islamic fascists have themselves been Muslims.) In the rest of the world it may mean something different, but in the United States, or at least the parts with which I'm most familiar, the Stars and Stripes represent the principle that an individual should control his own destiny more than they represent a particular geographic region or population (though, to be sure, they aren't entirely distinguishable). Hitchens goes on to say I was glad for similar reasons when the order was announced that “coalition” flags would not be flown in Iraq. And, indeed, it makes sense that we should consider how the flag might be understood elsewhere, but if Iraqis understood it in the same way, liberating Arab Muslims under that flag with no imperialist intentions would have made absolutely perfect sense.As for commemoration, I still want to see that day through rose-colored glasses, not as the day we took our biggest hit but as the day we started to fight back. This is how Hitchens ends his essay (but read the whole thing yourself): If there is anything to mark or commemorate, it is the day when that realm of illusion was dispelled — the date that will one day be acknowledged as the one on which our enemies made their most truly “suicidal” mistake.
::: posted by dWj at 11:10 AM
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