In Memory of Saeed One day my father called us and said: I have three gifts for you — A red heart, an hourglass, and… O God, I don’t remember the other one. Mehdy took the heart Opened its two halves And strummed the strings of its chambers. I took the hourglass And along its […]
Children in Sierra Leone. Photo Credit: David Alan Harris.
“[W]hat lengths men will go in order to carry out, to their extreme limit, the rites of a collective self-worship which fills them with a sense of righteousness and complacent satisfaction in the midst of the most shocking injustices and crimes.” -Love and Living, by Thomas Merton
In commenting on the war in the Caucasus, most American analysts have tended to see it as a throwback to the past: as a continuation of a centuries-old blood feud between Russians and Georgians, or, at best, as part of the unfinished business of the Cold War. Many have spoken of Russia’s desire to erase the national “humiliation” it experienced with the collapse of the Soviet Union 16 years ago, or to restore its historic “sphere of influence” over the lands to its South. But the conflict is more about the future than the past. It stems from an intense geopolitical contest over the flow of Caspian Sea energy to markets in the West.
Five years after President George W. Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier off San Diego, Iraq is in chaos, U.S. troops are mired in a sectarian war, and the entrenched conflict is dragging the nation into a recession.
On May 1, 2003, George W. Bush held an Iraq War victory celebration aboard the aircraft carrier, USS Lincoln, a moment of triumph that has since metamorphosed into the very embodiment of folly as the bloody war continues to grind on. On that faraway date Bush stood beneath a mammoth banner that read, “Mission Accomplished.” Ed Koren has memorialized the event very differently from what the president intended.
Dear Kalila,
It has been five years since you, as a 12-year old 7th grader, joined your classmates in a walk-out at your school in protest of the impending invasion of Iraq.
“Even though I oppose the planned invasion of Iraq, I want my new country to succeed in my old country.” This is what I told the person in the State Department in charge helping formulate pre- and post-invasion plans in 2002 before the invasion. Though I had spoken to this person several times, this was the last conversation I had with him. Clearly, my sentiments against the invasion disqualified me from offering solutions to rebuild Iraq.
Sublime, if the gardens in misfortune are taken, they shall be returned