This is Unbelievable

A Surprise Negotiation

A Surprise Negotiation

By David Ignatius

Wednesday, June 25, 2008; A13

What's going on between Syria and Israel? Are the indirect peace negotiations through Turkish mediators that were announced last month for real? I've been talking with sources on all sides, and they present an upbeat view of a peace process that has taken many people (including top Bush administration officials) by surprise.

As with any secret diplomatic initiative, this one is surrounded by mysteries and riddles. So I'll examine the Syria-Israel dialogue as a series of puzzles and offer my best guesses about what's happening:

(1) How did these negotiations begin?

The channel opened in the fall of 2006, just after the summer war in Lebanon that had made both Damascus and Tel Aviv nervous about the destabilizing role of Hezbollah, Iran's proxy in Lebanon. Syria proposed indirect "proximity" talks and insisted on Turkey, a rare friend of both countries, as intermediary.

For many months, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wasn't sure he trusted the channel. The Bush administration was skeptical about whether the process would lead anywhere, but it didn't try to stop it. About a year ago, Olmert decided to test the Syrian track. He had strong encouragement from the Israeli defense establishment -- the defense minister, Ehud Barak; the army chief of staff, Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi; and Israeli military intelligence.

(2) What's in it for the two sides?

The Israeli military brass favored engagement with Syria because they didn't think the status quo in the region was sustainable. Lebanon had become a surrogate battleground between Israel and Iran, and the Israelis arguably had lost the first round. Meanwhile, the Syrians were increasing their arsenal of missiles and other weapons. The judgment in Tel Aviv was that Israel stood to lose strategically by letting things continue as they were.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad favored an opening to Israel to counter attempts by the United States, France and Saudi Arabia to isolate his country. Syrian confidence in the Turkish negotiating channel increased after Israel indicated informally that it was prepared to accept terms for return of the Golan Heights (and related issues, such as water rights) that had been reached in direct Syrian-Israeli negotiations during the 1990s.

(3) Can Syria be decoupled from Iran?

Israel's overriding goal has been to draw Syria away from its alliance with Iran. So far, the
Israelis see no sign that the peace talks have achieved this goal. Syria-watchers caution that this sort of decisive transfer of loyalties is unlikely. But eventually, Syria may move away from Iran (and toward Turkey) because the Baath regime in Damascus is secular to its core -- and mistrusts the religious fervor of the mullahs. The decoupling would be cultural and political, rather than a matter of security policy.

(4) Who assassinated Imad Mughniyah in Damascus in February?

The car bomb that killed Iran's key covert operative in Hezbollah is still echoing in the Middle East. Suspicion immediately focused on Israel. But on Feb. 27, a London-based newspaper called Al-Quds Al-Arabi, with very good sources in Damascus, alleged that several Arab nations had conspired with Mossad to assassinate Mughniyah.

Adding to the speculation are reports that shortly before his death, Mughniyah was attempting to heal a split within Hezbollah between the group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and its former leader, Subhi Tufaily. Tufaily's power base is the Bekaa Valley, which has lost influence in Hezbollah to Shiites from southern Lebanon. According to one Arab source, Mughniyah -- traveling under his longtime pseudonym, "Haj Ismail" -- paid a visit shortly before his death to Tufaily's village of Britel, just south of Baalbek.

Mughniyah usually traveled without bodyguards, believing that his protection was the surgical alteration of his features, which prevented even old friends from recognizing "Haj Ismail." For that reason, the Syrians insisted they weren't at fault. But a sign of tension was Tehran's announcement that a joint commission would investigate the killing, a statement that Damascus promptly denied.

(5) What about Syria's secret nuclear reactor, which was destroyed by the Israelis on Sept. 6, 2007?

Oddly enough, that attack on what CIA analysts called the "Enigma Building" may have helped the peace talks. The Israelis felt that their decisive action helped restore the credibility of their deterrence policy. The Syrians appreciated that Israeli and American silence allowed them time to cover their tracks. Finally, the fact that Assad kept the nuclear effort a secret, and that he managed the post-attack pressures, showed Israelis that he was truly master of his own house, and thus a plausible negotiating partner.
The writer is co-host ofPostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.

At Israel's Parliament, a French Lesson in Leadership for Bush

At Israel's Parliament, a French Lesson in Leadership for Bush

Barely a month after President Bush chose the venue of Israel's Knesset to scold his domestic critics (or was he scolding the Israeli leadership, as this NYT editorial suggests) with accusations of appeasement, French President Nicholas Sarkozy found himself at the same podium yesterday, but with dramatically different results.

Sarko gave his American counterpart something of a French lesson not only in how to behave at a foreign parliament, but also in what constitutes both friendship to an ally and leadership on an issue.

The full Sarkozy speech is here (in French, the English version is not yet available, but highlights can be read here)--and contrasting it to Bush's May 15th effort is nothing short of embarrassing.
Sarkozy is credited by Israel and by the French Jewish community with having immeasurably improved French-Israeli bilateral relations. He is considered a friend and trusted ally and was feted during his Israel visit--no less than his Washington equivalent.

Sarkozy's speech was warm, full of admiration for Israel's accomplishments and understanding for Israel's genuine security concerns--but it also contained the home truths that the Israeli's needed to hear and that a visiting friend was best placed to impart. It contained precisely the ingredient--honest friendly advice or leadership--that was so absent in Bush's gutless pander-fest. Take this as a useful corrective to David Brook's gushing op-ed today and a reminder that when in Jerusalem brave Bush becomes "le wimp".

Bush did refer to some of what is needed for a peace deal during his visit last month--but that was in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt three days later, not in the Knesset--really courageous of you,
Mr. President.

Two Presidents, two speeches, one leader:

President Bush on the borders for a 2 state solution: ___________.
President Sarkozy: "It is not possible to have peace without a negotiated border based on the 1967 lines with an exchange of territories."

President Bush on settlements: ___________.
President Sarkozy: "Peace cannot be achieved without a total and immediate cessation of the settlements."

President Bush on Jerusalem's future status: ___________.
President Sarkozy: "Peace cannot be achieved without the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of two states and guaranteeing freedom of access to holy sites for all religions."

President Bush on the Palestinian refugee issue: ___________.
President Sarkozy: "Peace cannot be achieved without solving the problem of the Palestinian refugees, while respecting the identity and purpose of Israel."

President Bush on Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Syrian, or Israeli-Lebanese peace talks: _________.
President Sarkozy: "(France) is ready to organize on its soil all the talks that could lead to (peace), whether in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the Syrian-Israeli dialogue, or the talks that will have to resume, one day soon I hope, between Israel and Lebanon."

Both stated their commitment to Israel's existence and security, and expressed their staunch opposition to anti-Semitism. And both of course discussed the threat of Iran.

Just how appalling was the use of the phrase "the false comfort of appeasement", by America's leader to describe negotiations is given a new clarity when one considers that "appeasement" (read: diplomacy) has been outsourced by the Bushies to the French and other Europeans.

So Sarko spoke of both "sanctions" and "openness" regarding Iran. The U.S. is backing the EU 3's talks with Iran--but then hurling abuse about it when in the Knesset or when it suits domestic politics.

This is all the more stunning when one considers that President Sarkozy has also improved US-France relations, is close to Bush, and is hardly a 'gauchiste'. But then this was not really about ideology--Bush probably agrees with Sarkozy on the substance of 2 states--it was about leadership, or the lack thereof. Oh, and by the way, after the Sarkozy tough love speech there was appreciation, applause and respect from the Israeli's--and no sign of menu's offering "freedom fries" in the Knesset cafeteria.

On The World Stage, the US is a Bit Player

Writing as I am from the heartland, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and having had some time on my hands as my son attended his last session of Hebrew School, I perused the news of the day. I have these past few days been thankfully removed and distracted from the daily cacaphonic chaos of economic and political nonsense I am usually wired into, intently focused as I am on my son's future as a person and a musician.

I was privileged to see him perform twice as the solo percussionist in the pit orchestra of the Nicolet High School Theatre production of "Thoroughly Modern Millie", an adaptation of a comedy film from 1967 directed by George Roy Hill and starring Julie Andrews, James Fox, Mary Tyler Moore, John Gavin, Carol Channing, Beatrice Lillie, Pat Morita and Jack Soo and which ran on Broadway in the early 2000s. (H/T to Wikipedia)

Though ostensibly a comedy set in 1922 Manhattan about aspiring yet naive young waifs from all parts of the country who come to Manhattan to seek and find fortunes and husbands, the women in the play find themselves in the evil clutches of Mrs. Meers, who is herself on the lam from the police for operating a white slave trade out of the Hotel Priscilla, where she takes on a Chinese persona and takes in orphaned women without money, ties or connections, kidnaps and sends them off to China never to be heard from again. We hear, over and over, the refrain from Mrs. Meers, in her finest phony Chinese accent, that "it's so sad to be all alone in the world". Indeed it is. Ultimately, "green glass love" prevails over priceless emeralds and true love and honesty win the day and all go home happy, with the notable exception of "Mrs. Meers", whose devious plot is uncovered, she in receipt of Broadway justice.

Though 2008 is a world away from 1922, the connection between the themes of "Millie" and conditions in the United States today are too eerily striking to avoid making. New York is tougher and more expensive now than perhaps even the Vanderbilts, Mellons or Carnegies ever anticipated - or perhaps not. I began to think of my son's future as a person of the world as a Jazz artist -- someone who himself intends to go to New York and seek the fulfillment of his dream to become a professional straight-ahead Jazz drummer. As Woody Allen suggests, 80% of success is just showing up. The question is whether this country, in its present state, is a place that still holds the promise that it once did for aspirants not only in music and the arts in general but in any field in which drive, determination, discipline and passion are the key elements to success, in addition of course to just showing up and of course being in the right place at the right time with the right people.

It very much saddens me to have come to the conclusion that his future is not in the United States though thanks, I suppose, to providence and inertia inherent in the Jazz tradition, the training he has had and will receive here in Milwaukee and later in New York is still second to none, at least for what he wants to do. New York is still the Jazz Capital of the world. But this country is in a nose dive to irrelevance. While of course the slave trade still exists in too many parts of the world, this country has become an economic slave not only to China but to too many other parts of the world that we are only bit players in. These United States are presently paying the price for what George Herbert Walker Bush called Ronald Reagan's "voodoo economics" which he celebrated as the cure-all potion for the economic malaise left behind by the reign of Jimmy Carter during the Republican primaries for the 1980 elections. Voodoo indeed. We are now absorbing so many pins and needles that the life-blood of this country has about drained out, our pride and futures having been mortgaged 50 times over, saddling generations of future Americans with the debt that the voodoo doll has absorbed. It is hard to see how, from any perspective, we will ever dig out of the hole that we have happilly, blindly and willfully dug ourselves into for the past 25 years.

This country is literally owned by China, city-states like Dubai and Singapore and the rest, to whom we have given over our futures. When Wal-Mart, Lockheed-Martin, General Dynamics and Halliburton (among notables) set the economic agenda for the country and not the people whom we elect every two, four or six years, the voodoo becomes more and more painful with each prick of the needle, our elections nothing but a charade of the democratic principles that were laid down over 225 years ago by the likes of Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Hamilton and the rest of their ilk who apparently could not foresee the rise of the rest of the earth and Americans' capacity for the abuse of the grand experiment called republican (small r) Democracy that is ostensibly a part of the kettle of the grand experimental stew.

We have forgotten what it means to work together. We have forgotten what it means to demand accountability from our elected leaders. We have invested ourselves not in the future but in hanging on to past glories and the quest, the lust, for a higher share price of the stock of the multinational corporations that have bought and paid for this sham of a government that takes our money just to continue in status quo, helping the rich get richer and damning the rest of America to fight over trivialities and engage in pettifoggery while being robbed blind by the same people who claim to represent "American Values".

One does not have to be sagacious to figure out that how the rest of the world looks at us is simply a reflection of who we are as a polity and as a people. Bloated, arrogant, thrashing about for relevance as if our victories at Normandy and Guadalcanal 65 years ago are still of import in today's world. While they were indeed important for many years, they are sadly irrelevant in 2008 because America decided to recline pining for the better days of yesteryear simultaneously beating its chest as if those events were going to determine the course of world events for the unforeseeable future. When I hear presidential candidates talk about a "deterrent shield" over the Mideast (Hillary Clinton) I laugh. When I hear Mrs. Clinton claim that she would "obliterate" Iran, I shudder, as though Dr. Strangelove has come to life in female form and the perversity of that film our perverse reality. As if the US has any power do anything any more to intimidate or deter anyone from anything. We are on life support in a national coma and the doctors who are in the operating theater are Chinese, Indians, Singaporeans, Dubaians and of course the sheiks of Arabia who wield such enormous influence in this country because of that black dope that lies underneath the otherwise useless sands of those countries and from which, sadly, too many Jihadists emanate in their misguided interpretation -- some would argue not--of the Qu'uran as though it was still the year 1000, and caliphates were still acceptable forms of rule over civilized people, the large majority of whom simply want to just live in peace and get along with one another. Regime change in Iraq has only wrought confirmation to the Jihadists that the Christian Crusader/NeoCon exceptionalist mindset that the American obligation to export democracy is a threat to them and their tribal way of life. This is not to deny the threat that they pose to America simply because we are Americans. There are always those who will seek power by any means available for reasons both public and, as importantly, private.

So my advice to my musician artist son who only seeks to follow his dream and make it pay, to reveal his true self to the world, is this: while your training is here, leave this country and its provincial and self-destructive ways and go to Europe where they have, albeit imperfectly since WWII, learned in some measure to live with one another and who still can appreciate the loud silence of Yeats, Joyce, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Alan Ginsberg or Amiri Baracka and the rhythmic, metered and yet improvisational beauty of Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Mingus, Coltrane, Monk and the rest. This country has forgotten how to improvise for the common good, to reject and denounce, in today's political parlance, a life of cynicism and pettiness. People laugh, if they care at all, at the only candidate for president who is talking common sense and not lapel pins and the impact of one's Pastor, as if those things matter at this precipice in American history. The future for our young does not lie here, though at this point it makes for a launching pad for those who seek to follow their dreams but whose fulfillment, sadly, lies in large part elsewhere. We are apparently bereft of a true and promising future for our young who sense the loss of hope and dreams available once to those who could, on sheer wit, make it in New York or anywhere.

What matters is something that I have to admit I owe in part to Ross Perot who some time ago in connection with the NAFTA warned of the giant sucking sound coming from the south, afraid as he was that all of the previously high paying manufacturing jobs would eventually end up in Mexico. The sound I hear these days is not a sucking sound, but rather the one I remember from my days as a 12 year old when Edith Bunker would ask in her Queensian accent "I wonder where Archie is?" and as if on cue, Norman Lear would push the button announcing the loud flushing of a toilet. "Oh, there he is!" And there we are. But instead of sitting on the commode, we are like the water in it sadly swirling around and down. How long until we wake up and fix the plumbing?

Lest you think that I am somehow something or someone less than a patriot, I will tell you that I had family members who saw combat in WWI and WWII -- people who put their lives on the line for this country and what it once stood for. People who killed for the ideals expressed in our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, for meaningful and useful freedom to do good in the world but of course who always warned against "excessive foriegn entanglements" and the useful idea of being rid of a state religion - whether they be Czars, Popes, Kings, Queens, Fuehrers or Emporors supposedly descended from Heaven from which the founders found to be such an evil influence and from which they fled the old country. I had relatives who were friends of Presidents whose positions mattered - were relevant -- when the United States meant something to the world: its beacon of hope and prosperity. It's true of course that people are still dying, literally, to get into this country. No walls can stop the influx of people who feel even less hope and no promise in their native lands than this one.

Which in some measure should tell us something, everything, about the condition of the rest of the third world of which we are fast becoming a part, the middle class having basically ceased to exist as our presidential candidates talk about tax benefits for those two percent who earn over $250,000. Or was that $200,000? And tax breaks for the wealthy, the war on the middle class. Whatever. Conversation irrelevant. Period. Stop.

I am reminded of the rise, fall and decline of the British empire and the fact that people from the UK now inhabit every corner of the world and the reality that it is individuals and not countries and artifices that truly matter. In the end, it is individuals working together wherever they can find hope and promise, financial, spiritual and otherwise, who will save not only this country but the world, from itself. Of what relevance are countries like ours any more? We are at the same time a cog and a hamster on a rolling steel wheel, running as fast as we can, going nowhere and signifying not yet nothing, but at the present moment, very little bit players enslaved to the chase for money and elusive and ultimatley meaningless power and therefore the obscurity of the bit player, tap-dancing to others' tunes -- the pretender that we as a country are.

Yes, Millie may be modern, but slavery of the soul of our country is today every bit as bad as the economic slavery to which we are seemingly perpetually and permanently chained and from which I am quite afraid there is no escape from, institutionalized as it is, inviting the question of where government ends and business begins and where business ends and government begins. Time will tell whether this situation will change. In the mean time, I suppose, the fact that there are people who dare to ask questions and challenge the country to do better is the penultimate indicator, a presupposition, of faith in the basic decency and goodness of Americans to do better for ourselves and for our children. That we have faith tells me that perhaps there is still hope for this grand experiment, but the life force that once awoke a sleeping giant one Sunday morning in Hawaii in December of 1941 to defend the freedoms fought and died for by the revolutionaries of the 1770s seems to be slowly, ineluctably, ebbing away, away. Off, my son, to New York. The airports still function, I think. And planes do land there as well as they do take off.

Dumb as We Wanna Be

April 30, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Dumb as We Wanna Be
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

But here’s what’s scary: our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

Are you sitting down?

Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.

These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip back down again — which often happens — investments in wind and solar would still be profitable. That’s how you launch a new energy technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without subsidies.

The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President Bush said he would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Mr. Bush — showing not one iota of leadership — refused to get all the adults together in a room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a 20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run two years.

“It’s a disaster,” says Michael Polsky, founder of Invenergy, one of the biggest wind-power developers in America. “Wind is a very capital-intensive industry, and financial institutions are not ready to take ‘Congressional risk.’ They say if you don’t get the [production tax credit] we will not lend you the money to buy more turbines and build projects.”

It is also alarming, says Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, that the U.S. has reached a point “where the priorities of Congress could become so distorted by politics” that it would turn its back on the next great global industry — clean power — “but that’s exactly what is happening.” If the wind and solar credits expire, said Resch, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000 jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion worth of investments that won’t be made.

While all the presidential candidates were railing about lost manufacturing jobs in Ohio, no one noticed that America’s premier solar company, First Solar, from Toledo, Ohio, was opening its newest factory in the former East Germany — 540 high-paying engineering jobs — because Germany has created a booming solar market and America has not.

In 1997, said Resch, America was the leader in solar energy technology, with 40 percent of global solar production. “Last year, we were less than 8 percent, and even most of that was manufacturing for overseas markets.”

The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.

The Procession

Jon Robin Baitz

The Procession
Posted April 27, 2008 | 09:23 PM (EST)

Sag Harbor, New York, Saturday, April 26.

It is spring where I live on Eastern Long Island. The magnitude of the change of seasons is shockingly palpable. The colors are vivid, finally alive again after the dull leaden gray and pewter of winter. Forsythia, that vibrant manic-yellow member of the olive family rises up against newly blue, newly warm skies -- a reminder of what renewal looks like. Magnolias are blossoming, as are Russian olives with their silver-fish green leaves catching the sun and gleaming, incandescently. Today, however, my little town is draped in a palpable air of wrenching sorrow, juxtaposed against the ebullience of spring. There are American flags everywhere today, and a procession just came through town. Traffic stopped. Everything stopped. Life seemed to stop, and the air was suddenly much colder, literally.

A 19 year old boy from our village, a Marine with less than one month of service under his belt, died at 7:30 a.m. Iraqi time on Tuesday, blown up by a suicide bomber in Ramadi. He is the first Sag Harbor resident killed in action since World War II. Jordan Haerter was just a boy -- one who loved history, his truck, and his family. He wanted to come back home to Sag after his tour was over to be a cop, a village cop. He had never been overseas before his deployment. According to the local paper, just a month ago, the boy's father had driven down to Camp LeJune to pick up his truck for safe-keeping.

At noon today, the gathered residents of the village looked dumbstruck, standing on Main Street in agonized and silent grief. You could feel the all-encompassing sorrow descend like an army of ghosts, and I thought of Albert Camus's plague-ridden seaport as I watched the procession pass. The assembled survivors and friends, school-mates, teachers, all silently marking the procession of police cars that were bringing the body to the local funeral home. The flags hanging from the buildings looked lifeless in the spring sunlight, as though they were in mourning too. The whole village is suddenly ashen, usually blessed in so many ways, but not always, and certainly not today. Today, we are inescapably part of a nation at war.

At first I didn't know what was going on, and stuck at a stop light for fifteen minutes, honked gently/impatiently at a police-officer directing traffic, and made a gesture of "what's going on?". Someone explained it. The cop came over to me, and through clenched and furious teeth said, "I bet the boy in that coffin wishes he were stuck in goddamn traffic, mister." I agreed, apologized, sick to my stomach, and drove on. I thought of Henry Reed's great and terrible war poem, "The Naming of Parts", which contrasts Spring in a garden with the assembly of a rifle, playing on the juxtaposition of image and word, with a ferocity of precision that manages to perfectly contain the magnitude of tragic loss at the center of war. One section in particular came into my head as I drove away from the procession:

And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.

They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For to-day we have naming of parts.

I will refrain from a discussion of this war here, of how it came to pass, and of the unthinkable series of ideological and strategic mis-steps, and the tragic deceptions and blind zealotry of an entire class of leaders who will, one prays, have to eventually face the dictates of either their own, or at very least, the nation's consciences. Instead I will report that I saw an entire village holding small American flags. Children and women, local merchants, artists and writers, plumbers, contractors, public servants, mothers and fathers, collectively gathered, to mourn a life that meant so much to those who loved him and those who knew him, and even those, like me, who did not. I will report that on this bright day, the light of spring was occluded by a procession that showed us what will never be for one family. The sense of what was cut short in Ramadi -- the promise of future laughter, of future springs -- is palpable on Main Street. I saw in those faces watching the procession move slowly by, the certain knowledge that, as in Henry Reed's poem, our point of balance is gone, and for one of our own, all that is left is past, just a bank of memories of one happy childhood -- nineteen years in a small village on the Long Island Sound.


(photos- Joe Mantello)