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| Rags to Riches, with John Velazquez up, left, edges out Curlin, ridden by Robby Albarado, center, at the finish to win the 139th running of the Belmont Stakes Saturday, June 9, 2007 at Belmont Park in Elmont, N.Y. Rags to Riches is the first filly to win the race since Tanya won in 1905. AP Photo/Julie Jacobson |
As Benny said in Hot
Topics, this hasn’t happened since 1905. Rags to Riches pulled it out, even after this horrifying stumble at the start. What a win. Glorious. This one is for the ladies.
Now for something singularly sickening. I’ve saved The Most Absurd Op-Ed of the
Year award for today. It comes compliments of Fouad Ajami in the Wall Street
Journal. It will disgust you, shock you and cause you to think Mr. Ajami
has lost all sense of decency, because that’s exactly what has happened.
In “The Soldier’s Creed,” there is a particularly compelling principle:
“I will never leave a fallen comrade.” This is a cherished belief,
and it has been so since soldiers and chroniclers and philosophers thought
about wars and great, common endeavors. Across time and space, cultures, each
in its own way, have given voice to this most basic of beliefs. They have
done it, we know, to give heart to those who embark on a common mission, to
give them confidence that they will not be given up under duress. A process
that yields up Scooter Libby to a zealous prosecutor is justice gone awry.(snip)
A war raged in the inner councils of your administration. The Department
of State and the CIA let it be known that they were on the side of the angels,
that they harbored great doubts about this expedition into Iraq, that they
were “multilateralists” at heart, but that they had lost the war
to Vice President Dick Cheney and to the “hawks” around him. In
the midst of this, Scooter Libby worked tirelessly and quietly to prosecute
and explain and defend this war. He accepted the logic of the Iraq war, the
great surprises we met in the course of this war.He was never a triumphalist. The man I got to know in the aftermath of 9/11,
the man you know so much better, was stoical about our causes in the Arab-Islamic
world. He was a man of great depth. He knew moral complexity (his remarkably
lyrical novel, “The Apprentice,” bears witness to an eye for human
folly and disappointment) but he stuck to your agenda and to this war. He
was not steeped in the ways of the Arabs, but he sought out, tirelessly, all
that could be ascertained about the radicalisms threatening our country. From
my vantage point as an interpreter of Arab and Islamic matters, I could testify
to his great curiosity and relentless devotion. He was keen to understand
the winds at play in the Islamic world. This legal process thus removed from
the higher ranks of our national security a man of real abilities and insight.Fallen
Soldier
Mr. President, do not leave this man behind.
How dare Mr. Ajami compared Scooter Libby to a “fallen soldier.”
The Iraq war propagandists have no shame.
It almost makes Mr. Murdoch’s unsolicited bid for Dow Jones palatable. At least
if Murdoch Foxified the Wall Street Journal we wouldn’t be insulted
with lying cretins being compared to fallen soldiers. Right?
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