Two days before Christmas, our Secretary of Defense was already in the spirit of the season — and not so subtly threatening war, not only in Iraq but on the Korean peninsula. ”We are capable of fighting two major regional conflicts,” Rumsfeld said at the Pentagon. ”We’re capable of winning decisively in one and swiftly defeating in the case of the other, and let there be no doubt about it.”
When facing problems whose solutions are not immediately obvious, or obstacles that stand in the way of their geopolitical desires — and the “Dear Leader’s” desperate regime in North Korea is a doozy of an obstacle — the urge to threaten has proved second nature to this administration. The Boston Globe‘s James Carroll, our most passionate columnist, puts the Bush cast of characters in context in his Christmas column. This administration has made it all too clear that, if necessary, they’re ready to lead us into the charnel house of history. Tom
The Christmas bombings
By James Carroll
December 24, 2002
The Boston GlobeCHRISTMAS EVE seems made for memory. I remember being wedged among my brothers, all of us between our parents, in the crowded balcony of St. Mary’s Church for midnight Mass. The aroma of incense, the hissing of a nearby radiator, the unpadded kneeler hard against my knees, my mother’s rosary beads swaying below her tan gloves.
The best part of Christmas Eve was the cold, clean air coming out of church, the ride home in the car, the exotic feeling of being out so late. The worst part – how impossible it was to keep my eyes from fluttering shut even as my brothers debated whether Santa Claus would come to a house whose occupants were all away at Mass.
But as the music of bells and carols yield to the drums of a mounting military cadence, America about to go to war, another Christmas memory intrudes.
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CHRISTMAS EVE seems made for memory. I remember being wedged among my brothers, all of us between our parents, in the crowded balcony of St. Mary’s Church for midnight Mass. The aroma of incense, the hissing of a nearby radiator, the unpadded kneeler hard against my knees, my mother’s rosary beads swaying below her tan gloves.
The best part of Christmas Eve was the cold, clean air coming out of church, the ride home in the car, the exotic feeling of being out so late. The worst part – how impossible it was to keep my eyes from fluttering shut even as my brothers debated whether Santa Claus would come to a house whose occupants were all away at Mass.
But as the music of bells and carols yield to the drums of a mounting military cadence, America about to go to war, another Christmas memory intrudes.