Interesting take on the left from Andrew Sullivan's blog, commenting on the weekend's "anti-war" protests in Washington DC and San Francisco:
"...it seems to me that the far left anti-war message, misguided before the war, is close to obscene today, and tells us something about what we're up against. Before the war, these people claimed they weren't pro-Saddam; they were just pro-peace. But now that the Iraqi people have the first chance in living memory to have a decent, pluralist and democratic country, these demonstrators want to abandon them to chaos, terror, civil war and a possible new dictatorship.
The only connective thread in this movement is hatred of the United States. (Oh, and Israel. Some posters openly called for the eradication of the Jewish state.) They assail one of the biggest humanitarian efforts in recent history while Iranian Qaeda surrogates are busy locating synagogues in Britain for terrorist attacks; and while Iran itself may be preparing to become the nuclear-armed vanguard of Islamo-fascism. They march under these banners when polling suggests most Iraqis want to construct a viable democracy; and when even the New York Times concedes that Iraqis view their present as far preferable to their past. It's now that we can see what really lay behind the activist core of the "peace movement": not peace but hatred of the West; not democracy, but alliance with dictators, terrorists and Islamo-fascism.
Here's a prediction: the fledgling links now forged between left-wing anti-war campaigners and Islamo-fascism will get stronger in the years ahead. The anti-globalization far left has nowhere else to go. Fanatical political Islam provides them with an over-arching structure for the loathing of the West. Now that Marxism is dead and post-modernism has shown itself inept as a basis for a real political movement, Islam will fill the void."
Monday, October 27, 2003
Sunday, October 26, 2003
From the New York Post:
IT'S COLD IN THE BRONX
By MIKE VACCARO
October 26, 2003
They could hear the muffled glee 100 yards down the hallway, bleeding through the walls and into the musky corridors underneath the Stadium, piercing the heart of every Yankee who walked solemnly out of the ballpark.
To their dying day, they will believe they were the better team in this series - the best team in baseball, not just the most expensive.
But the latter is how they will be remembered, today, tomorrow, forever. They understood that, too; to whom much is given, much is expected, and the Yankees were given $180 million to spread around this fatefully flawed roster. Maybe it seems unfair that a championship was the only way to justify that expense. That's tough. You take George Steinbrenner's money, you accept a certain standard along with it.
"The bar is awfully high here," said Mike Mussina, the man who will never get the ball in Game 7 of the 2003 World Series, whose services were officially rendered moot when the Marlins walked into Yankee Stadium, the St. Peter's Basilica of baseball, and laid a 2-0 thumping on the Yankees that might as well have been 12-0.
"I'm not happy just getting to the World Series," said Derek Jeter, still fully dressed in his uniform and cap nearly an hour after Josh Beckett's open-field tackle of Jorge Posada that had ended the game, the Series, and this most unfulfilling of all Yankee seasons. "You can't ever be happy just getting to the Series. If you come here, you come here to win. I don't want to hear about second place. Second place isn't good enough."
Jeter had broken with precedent this time around. Two years ago, he'd had to be physically removed from the dugout at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, so transfixed was he by the Diamondbacks' impromptu Game 7 party. Twelve months ago, he'd done the same thing in Anaheim, studying the Angels' celebration after Game 4 of the AL Division Series as if trying to sear the image of agony into his memory forever.
But this time, he couldn't watch. Not on this field. Not in this stadium. It had been nine short days earlier when Jeter, dripping champagne, had said, "I'll tell you what I do believe: I believe in ghosts. And we've got some ghosts in this stadium."
The ghosts didn't help, and neither did seven gritty innings from Andy Pettitte - not with Josh Beckett throwing the ball like all the Texas tough guys who'd come before him, tossed together. So when it ended, Jeter dashed indoors. The Marlins wanted to party on that field? They could do it without him. They all felt the same way.
"I couldn't watch," Pettitte said. "I couldn't bear to."
He spoke in a church-still locker room, players muted by disbelief, felled by the inconceivable turn of events. They had been so sure there would be a Game 7. They had believed so strongly in their own invincibility here, in this stadium, on this stage. Then Beckett began throwing BBs, and then Alex Gonzalez curled around Posada, skimming home plate with his fingertips. And then it was over, and Sinatra had never before been heard so clearly at the end of a World Series, and the people, many of them, were already flooding the Deegan, rushing off to winter.
The Yankees would join them soon enough. And as they left, they would smell the rivers of champagne the Marlins were emptying onto each other. They would see the way the Marlins were openly defying the city's new smoking ordinances, since whenever someone opened the clubhouse door it was if someone had let the windows down on an old VW Bus.
They'll have enough time to ponder what they'd just done, and what they'd failed to do.
"It's going to be a long winter," Brian Cashman, the Yankees GM, whispered, and no one would argue with him. It was already starting to feel cold at the Stadium. Winter had officially descended. Much too soon.
IT'S COLD IN THE BRONX
By MIKE VACCARO
October 26, 2003
They could hear the muffled glee 100 yards down the hallway, bleeding through the walls and into the musky corridors underneath the Stadium, piercing the heart of every Yankee who walked solemnly out of the ballpark.
To their dying day, they will believe they were the better team in this series - the best team in baseball, not just the most expensive.
But the latter is how they will be remembered, today, tomorrow, forever. They understood that, too; to whom much is given, much is expected, and the Yankees were given $180 million to spread around this fatefully flawed roster. Maybe it seems unfair that a championship was the only way to justify that expense. That's tough. You take George Steinbrenner's money, you accept a certain standard along with it.
"The bar is awfully high here," said Mike Mussina, the man who will never get the ball in Game 7 of the 2003 World Series, whose services were officially rendered moot when the Marlins walked into Yankee Stadium, the St. Peter's Basilica of baseball, and laid a 2-0 thumping on the Yankees that might as well have been 12-0.
"I'm not happy just getting to the World Series," said Derek Jeter, still fully dressed in his uniform and cap nearly an hour after Josh Beckett's open-field tackle of Jorge Posada that had ended the game, the Series, and this most unfulfilling of all Yankee seasons. "You can't ever be happy just getting to the Series. If you come here, you come here to win. I don't want to hear about second place. Second place isn't good enough."
Jeter had broken with precedent this time around. Two years ago, he'd had to be physically removed from the dugout at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix, so transfixed was he by the Diamondbacks' impromptu Game 7 party. Twelve months ago, he'd done the same thing in Anaheim, studying the Angels' celebration after Game 4 of the AL Division Series as if trying to sear the image of agony into his memory forever.
But this time, he couldn't watch. Not on this field. Not in this stadium. It had been nine short days earlier when Jeter, dripping champagne, had said, "I'll tell you what I do believe: I believe in ghosts. And we've got some ghosts in this stadium."
The ghosts didn't help, and neither did seven gritty innings from Andy Pettitte - not with Josh Beckett throwing the ball like all the Texas tough guys who'd come before him, tossed together. So when it ended, Jeter dashed indoors. The Marlins wanted to party on that field? They could do it without him. They all felt the same way.
"I couldn't watch," Pettitte said. "I couldn't bear to."
He spoke in a church-still locker room, players muted by disbelief, felled by the inconceivable turn of events. They had been so sure there would be a Game 7. They had believed so strongly in their own invincibility here, in this stadium, on this stage. Then Beckett began throwing BBs, and then Alex Gonzalez curled around Posada, skimming home plate with his fingertips. And then it was over, and Sinatra had never before been heard so clearly at the end of a World Series, and the people, many of them, were already flooding the Deegan, rushing off to winter.
The Yankees would join them soon enough. And as they left, they would smell the rivers of champagne the Marlins were emptying onto each other. They would see the way the Marlins were openly defying the city's new smoking ordinances, since whenever someone opened the clubhouse door it was if someone had let the windows down on an old VW Bus.
They'll have enough time to ponder what they'd just done, and what they'd failed to do.
"It's going to be a long winter," Brian Cashman, the Yankees GM, whispered, and no one would argue with him. It was already starting to feel cold at the Stadium. Winter had officially descended. Much too soon.
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