Once in a Lifetime

I saw some of Pat Tillman’s memorial service yesterday evening. Senator McCain was speaking when I tuned in, followed by Chief Petty Officer Steven White, who served with Tillman in Iraq. I didn’t catch his introduction, but I think he was a SEAL in the Navy.

He spoke wonderfully and plainly, telling anecdotes about Pat, explaining the heroism that led to his death, and choking back tears. Then he said something that made me well up (and is doing so now):

“It’ll say Pat Tillman, 1976-2004. That one little dash in there represents a lifetime. How do we spend our dash?”

Lightness? Wait.

When I went through a significant break-up in college (1989-1993), I would watch Miller’s Crossing and re-read The Unbearable Lightness of Being. When I had my big split two years ago, I went back to Kundera’s book. It meant a lot of different things to me in my 30s. The things that appeal in college years seem laughable when you’ve lived in (some semblance of) the real world for a while.

John Banville recently returned to the book after 20 years.

Sure, just pile on the totalitarian dictator when he’s down. . .

Kofi Annan, feeling the heat: “If you read the reports, it looks as if the Saddam regime had nothing to do with it. They did nothing wrong–it was all the U.N.”

Nah, it wasn’t all the U.N., Kofi. If the reports are true, it was also a French minister of the interior (who opposed the war), a Labour MP in the UK (who opposed the war), the Russian “office of the president” (which opposed the war), and possibly your own son (no idea where he stood on the war).

Of course, we may never find out the truth, since the U.N.’s files on the oil-for-food scam seem to be woefully incomplete and inaccurate.

Interpreter of Maladies

Thanks to Instapundit for linking to this DoD briefing, where Donald Rumsfeld offers a comment on the practice of using mosques as firebases:

There are two ways, I suppose, one could inform readers of the Geneva Convention stipulation against using places of worship to conduct military attacks. One might be to headline saying that Terrorists Attack Coalition Forces From Mosques. That would be one way to present the information.

Another might be to say: Mosques Targeted in Fallujah. That was the Los Angeles Times headline this morning.

Instapundit also links to this neat article about how the Iraqi army managed to keep its bunkers insect-free . . .

Palestinian Vigilantes?

According to this article, a pair of masked, armed Palestinians tried to stop a pair of suicide bombers, one of whom elected to blow himself up, also killing the people who were trying to stop him.

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t consider gunmen in masks to represent moderation, but I do take a story like this as a good sign that Hamas isn’t the only force in action among the Palestinians. I hope I’m making the correct reading of this event, and that it presages a popular uprising against Hamas.

Update: An article in the Scotsman explains that the masked men were . . . street criminals! And they were trying to mug the bombers! I know I shouldn’t laugh about this, but I am. Probably because I so politicize everything, it never occurred to me that something like this would happen. Sue me, alright?