Thursday, April 07, 2005
'We Want God'
When John Paul II went to Poland, communism didn't have a prayer.
Thursday, April 7, 2005 12:01 a.m.
Everyone has spoken this past week of John Paul II's role in the defeat of Soviet communism and the liberation of Eastern Europe. We don't know everything, or even a lot, about the quiet diplomatic moves--what happened in private, what kind of communications the pope had with the other great lions of the 1980s, Reagan and Thatcher. And others, including Bill Casey, the tough old fox of the CIA, and Lech Walesa of Solidarity.
But I think I know the moment Soviet communism began its fall. It happened in public. Anyone could see it. It was one of the great spiritual moments of the 20th century, maybe the greatest.
It was the first week in June 1979. Europe was split in two between east and west, the democracies and the communist bloc--police states controlled by the Soviet Union and run by local communist parties and secret police.
John Paul was a new pope, raised to the papacy just eight months before. The day after he became pope he made it clear he would like to return as pope to his native Poland to see his people.
The communists who ran the Polish regime faced a quandary. If they didn't allow the new Pope to return to his homeland, they would look defensive and frightened, as if they feared that he had more power than they. To rebuff him would seem an admission of their weakness. On the other hand, if they let him return, the people might rise up against the government, which might in turn trigger an invasion by the Soviet Union.
The Polish government decided that it would be too great an embarrassment to refuse the pope. So they invited him, gambling that John Paul--whom they knew when he was cardinal of Krakow, who they were sure would not want his presence to inspire bloodshed--would be prudent. They wagered that he would understand he was fortunate to be given permission to come, and understand what he owed the government in turn was deportment that would not threaten the reigning reality. They announced the pope would be welcome to come home on a "religious pilgrimage."
John Paul quickly accepted the invitation. He went to Poland.
And from the day he arrived, the boundaries of the world began to shift.
Two months before the pope's arrival, the Polish communist apparatus took steps to restrain the enthusiasm of the people. They sent a secret directive to schoolteachers explaining how they should understand and explain the pope's visit. "The pope is our enemy," it said. "Due to his uncommon skills and great sense of humor he is dangerous, because he charms everyone, especially journalists. Besides, he goes for cheap gestures in his relations with the crowd, for instance, puts on a highlander's hat, shakes all hands, kisses children. . . . It is modeled on American presidential campaigns. . . Because of the activation of the Church in Poland our activities designed to atheize the youth not only cannot diminish but must intensely develop. . . In this respect all means are allowed and we cannot afford any sentiments."
The government also issued instructions to Polish media to censor and limit the pope's comments and appearances.
On June 2, 1979, the pope arrived in Poland. What followed will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it.
He knelt and kissed the ground, the dull gray tarmac of the airport outside Warsaw. The silent churches of Poland at that moment began to ring their bells. The pope traveled by motorcade from the airport to the Old City of Warsaw.
The government had feared hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands would line the streets and highways.
By the end of the day, with the people lining the streets and highways plus the people massed outside Warsaw and then inside it--all of them cheering and throwing flowers and applauding and singing--more than a million had come.
In Victory Square in the Old City the pope gave a mass. Communist officials watched from the windows of nearby hotels. The pope gave what papal biographer George Weigel called the greatest sermon of John Paul's life.
Why, the pope asked, had God lifted a Pole to the papacy? Perhaps it was because of how Poland had suffered for centuries, and through the 20th century had become "the land of a particularly responsible witness" to God. The people of Poland, he suggested, had been chosen for a great role, to understand, humbly but surely, that they were the repository of a special "witness of His cross and His resurrection." He asked then if the people of Poland accepted the obligations of such a role in history.
The crowd responded with thunder.
"We want God!" they shouted, together. "We want God!"
What a moment in modern history: We want God. From the mouths of modern men and women living in a modern atheistic dictatorship.
The pope was speaking on the Vigil of Pentecost, that moment in the New Testament when the Holy Spirit came down to Christ's apostles, who had been hiding in fear after his crucifixion, filling them with courage and joy. John Paul picked up this theme. What was the greatest of the works of God? Man. Who redeemed man? Christ. Therefore, he declared, "Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude. . . . The exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man! Without Christ it is impossible to understand the history of Poland." Those who oppose Christ, he said, still live within the Christian context of history.
Christ, the pope declared, was not only the past of Poland--he was "the future . . . our Polish future."
The massed crowd thundered its response. "We want God!" it roared.
That is what the communist apparatchiks watching the mass from the hotels that rimmed Victory Square heard. Perhaps at this point they understood that they had made a strategic mistake. Perhaps as John Paul spoke they heard the sound careen off the hard buildings that ringed the square; perhaps the echo sounded like a wall falling.
The pope had not directly challenged the government. He had not called for an uprising. He had not told the people of Catholic Poland to push back against their atheist masters. He simply stated the obvious. In Mr. Weigel's words: "Poland was not a communist country; Poland was a Catholic nation saddled with a communist state."
The next day, June 3, 1979, John Paul stood outside the cathedral in Gniezno, a small city with a population of 50,000 or so. Again there was an outdoor mass, and again he said an amazing thing.
He did not speak of what governments want, nor directly of what a growing freedom movement wants, nor of what the struggling Polish worker's union, Solidarity, wanted.
He spokeof what God wants.
"Does not Christ want, does not the Holy Spirit demand, that the pope, himself a Pole, the pope, himself a Slav, here and now should bring out into the open the spiritual unity of Christian Europe . . .?" Yes, he said, Christ wants that. "The Holy Spirit demands that it be said aloud, here, now. . . . Your countryman comes to you, the pope, so as to speak before the whole Church, Europe and the world. . . . He comes to cry out with a mighty cry."
What John Paul was saying was remarkable. He was telling Poland: See the reality around you differently. See your situation in a new way. Do not see the division of Europe; see the wholeness that exists and that not even communism can take away. Rhetorically his approach was not to declare or assert but merely, again, to point out the obvious: We are Christians, we are here, we are united, no matter what the communists and their map-makers say.
It was startling. It was as if he were talking about a way of seeing the secret order of the world.
That day at the cathedral the communist authorities could not stop the applause. They could not stop everyone who applauded and cheered. There weren't enough jail cells.
But it was in the Blonie Field, in Krakow--the Blonia Krakowskie, the fields just beyond the city--that the great transcendent moment of the pope's trip took place. It was the moment when, for those looking back, the new world opened. It was the moment, some said later, that Soviet communism's fall became inevitable.
It was a week into the trip, June 10, 1979. It was a sunny day. The pope was to hold a public mass. The communist government had not allowed it to be publicized, but Poles had spread the word.
Government officials braced themselves, because now they knew a lot of people might come, as they had to John Paul's first mass. But that was a week before. Since then, maybe people had seen enough of him. Maybe they were tiring of his message. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
But something happened in the Blonie field.
They started coming early, and by the time the mass began it was the biggest gathering of humanity in the entire history of Poland. Two million or three million people came, no one is sure, maybe more. For a mass.
And it was there, at the end of his trip, in the Blonie field, that John Paul took on communism directly, by focusing on communism's attempt to kill the religious heritage of a country that had for a thousand years believed in Christ.
This is what he said:
Is it possible to dismiss Christ and everything which he brought into the annals of the human being? Of course it is possible. The human being is free. The human being can say to God, "No." The human being can say to Christ, "No." But the critical question is: Should he? And in the name of what "should" he? With what argument, what reasoning, what value held by the will or the heart does one bring oneself, one's loved ones, one's countrymen and nation to reject, to say "no" to Him with whom we have all lived for one thousand years? He who formed the basis of our identity and has Himself remained its basis ever since. . . .
As a bishop does in the sacrament of Confirmation so do I today extend my hands in that apostolic gesture over all who are gathered here today, my compatriots. And so I speak for Christ himself: "Receive the Holy Spirit!"
I speak too for St. Paul: "Do not quench the Spirit!"
I speak again for St. Paul: "Do not grieve the Spirit of God!"
You must be strong, my brothers and sisters! You must be strong with the strength that faith gives! You must be strong with the strength of faith! You must be faithful! You need this strength today more than any other period of our history. . . .
You must be strong with love, which is stronger than death. . . . When we are strong with the Spirit of God, we are also strong with the faith of man. . . . There is therefore no need to fear. . . . So . . . I beg you: Never lose your trust, do not be defeated, do not be discouraged. . . . Always seek spiritual power from Him from whom countless generations of our fathers and mothers have found it. Never detach yourselves from Him. Never lose your spiritual freedom.They went home from that field a changed country. After that mass they would never be the same.
What John Paul did in the Blonie field was both a departure from his original comments in Poland and an extension of them.
In his first comments he said: God sees one unity of Europe, he does not see East and West divided by a gash in the soil.
In this way he "divided the dividers" from God's view of history.
But in the Blonie field he extended his message. He called down the Holy Spirit--as the Vicar of Christ and successor to Peter, he called down God--to fill the people of Poland, to "confirm" their place in history and their ancient choice of Christ, to confirm as it were that their history was real and right and unchangeable--even unchangeable by communists.
So it was a redeclaration of the Polish spirit, which is a free spirit. And those who were there went home a different people, a people who saw themselves differently, not as victims of history but as strugglers for Christ.
Another crucial thing happened, after the mass was over. Everyone who was there went home and turned on the news that night to see the pictures of the incredible crowd and the incredible pope. But state-controlled TV did not show the crowds. They did a brief report that showed a shot of the pope standing and speaking for a second or two. State television did not acknowledge or admit what a phenomenon John Paul's visit was, or what it had unleashed.
The people who had been at the mass could compare the reality they had witnessed with their own eyes with the propaganda their media reported. They could see the discrepancy. This left the people of Poland able to say at once and together, definitively, with no room for argument: It's all lies. Everything this government says is a lie. Everything it is is a lie.
Whatever legitimacy the government could pretend to, it began to lose. One by one the people of Poland said to themselves, or for themselves within themselves: It is over.
And when 10 million Poles said that to themselves, it was over in Poland. And when it was over in Poland, it was over in Eastern Europe. And when it was over in Eastern Europe, it was over in the Soviet Union. And when it was over in the Soviet Union, well, it was over.
All of this was summed up by a Polish publisher and intellectual named Jerzy Turowicz, who had known Karol Wojtyla when they were young men together, and who had gone on to be a supporter of Solidarity and member of Poland's first postcommunist government. Mr. Turowicz, remembering the Blonie field and the Pope's visit, told Ray Flynn, at the time U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, "Historians say World War II ended in 1945. Maybe in the rest of the world, but not in Poland. They say communism fell in 1989. Not in Poland. World War II and communism both ended in Poland at the same time--in 1979, when John Paul II came home."
And now he is dead. It is fitting and not at all surprising that Rome, to its shock, has been overwhelmed with millions of people come to see him for the last time. The line to view his body in St. Peter's stretched more than a mile. His funeral tomorrow will be witnessed by an expected two billion people, the biggest television event in history. And no one, in Poland or elsewhere, will be able to edit the tape to hide what is happening.
John Paul gave us what may be the transcendent public spiritual moment of the 20th century. "We want God." The greatest and most authentic cry of the human heart.
They say he asked that his heart be removed from his body and buried in Poland. That sounds right, and I hope it's true. They'd better get a big box.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), a collection of post-Sept. 11 columns, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.
When John Paul II went to Poland, communism didn't have a prayer.
Thursday, April 7, 2005 12:01 a.m.
Everyone has spoken this past week of John Paul II's role in the defeat of Soviet communism and the liberation of Eastern Europe. We don't know everything, or even a lot, about the quiet diplomatic moves--what happened in private, what kind of communications the pope had with the other great lions of the 1980s, Reagan and Thatcher. And others, including Bill Casey, the tough old fox of the CIA, and Lech Walesa of Solidarity.
But I think I know the moment Soviet communism began its fall. It happened in public. Anyone could see it. It was one of the great spiritual moments of the 20th century, maybe the greatest.
It was the first week in June 1979. Europe was split in two between east and west, the democracies and the communist bloc--police states controlled by the Soviet Union and run by local communist parties and secret police.
John Paul was a new pope, raised to the papacy just eight months before. The day after he became pope he made it clear he would like to return as pope to his native Poland to see his people.
The communists who ran the Polish regime faced a quandary. If they didn't allow the new Pope to return to his homeland, they would look defensive and frightened, as if they feared that he had more power than they. To rebuff him would seem an admission of their weakness. On the other hand, if they let him return, the people might rise up against the government, which might in turn trigger an invasion by the Soviet Union.
The Polish government decided that it would be too great an embarrassment to refuse the pope. So they invited him, gambling that John Paul--whom they knew when he was cardinal of Krakow, who they were sure would not want his presence to inspire bloodshed--would be prudent. They wagered that he would understand he was fortunate to be given permission to come, and understand what he owed the government in turn was deportment that would not threaten the reigning reality. They announced the pope would be welcome to come home on a "religious pilgrimage."
John Paul quickly accepted the invitation. He went to Poland.
And from the day he arrived, the boundaries of the world began to shift.
Two months before the pope's arrival, the Polish communist apparatus took steps to restrain the enthusiasm of the people. They sent a secret directive to schoolteachers explaining how they should understand and explain the pope's visit. "The pope is our enemy," it said. "Due to his uncommon skills and great sense of humor he is dangerous, because he charms everyone, especially journalists. Besides, he goes for cheap gestures in his relations with the crowd, for instance, puts on a highlander's hat, shakes all hands, kisses children. . . . It is modeled on American presidential campaigns. . . Because of the activation of the Church in Poland our activities designed to atheize the youth not only cannot diminish but must intensely develop. . . In this respect all means are allowed and we cannot afford any sentiments."
The government also issued instructions to Polish media to censor and limit the pope's comments and appearances.
On June 2, 1979, the pope arrived in Poland. What followed will never be forgotten by those who witnessed it.
He knelt and kissed the ground, the dull gray tarmac of the airport outside Warsaw. The silent churches of Poland at that moment began to ring their bells. The pope traveled by motorcade from the airport to the Old City of Warsaw.
The government had feared hundreds or thousands or even tens of thousands would line the streets and highways.
By the end of the day, with the people lining the streets and highways plus the people massed outside Warsaw and then inside it--all of them cheering and throwing flowers and applauding and singing--more than a million had come.
In Victory Square in the Old City the pope gave a mass. Communist officials watched from the windows of nearby hotels. The pope gave what papal biographer George Weigel called the greatest sermon of John Paul's life.
Why, the pope asked, had God lifted a Pole to the papacy? Perhaps it was because of how Poland had suffered for centuries, and through the 20th century had become "the land of a particularly responsible witness" to God. The people of Poland, he suggested, had been chosen for a great role, to understand, humbly but surely, that they were the repository of a special "witness of His cross and His resurrection." He asked then if the people of Poland accepted the obligations of such a role in history.
The crowd responded with thunder.
"We want God!" they shouted, together. "We want God!"
What a moment in modern history: We want God. From the mouths of modern men and women living in a modern atheistic dictatorship.
The pope was speaking on the Vigil of Pentecost, that moment in the New Testament when the Holy Spirit came down to Christ's apostles, who had been hiding in fear after his crucifixion, filling them with courage and joy. John Paul picked up this theme. What was the greatest of the works of God? Man. Who redeemed man? Christ. Therefore, he declared, "Christ cannot be kept out of the history of man in any part of the globe, at any longitude or latitude. . . . The exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man! Without Christ it is impossible to understand the history of Poland." Those who oppose Christ, he said, still live within the Christian context of history.
Christ, the pope declared, was not only the past of Poland--he was "the future . . . our Polish future."
The massed crowd thundered its response. "We want God!" it roared.
That is what the communist apparatchiks watching the mass from the hotels that rimmed Victory Square heard. Perhaps at this point they understood that they had made a strategic mistake. Perhaps as John Paul spoke they heard the sound careen off the hard buildings that ringed the square; perhaps the echo sounded like a wall falling.
The pope had not directly challenged the government. He had not called for an uprising. He had not told the people of Catholic Poland to push back against their atheist masters. He simply stated the obvious. In Mr. Weigel's words: "Poland was not a communist country; Poland was a Catholic nation saddled with a communist state."
The next day, June 3, 1979, John Paul stood outside the cathedral in Gniezno, a small city with a population of 50,000 or so. Again there was an outdoor mass, and again he said an amazing thing.
He did not speak of what governments want, nor directly of what a growing freedom movement wants, nor of what the struggling Polish worker's union, Solidarity, wanted.
He spokeof what God wants.
"Does not Christ want, does not the Holy Spirit demand, that the pope, himself a Pole, the pope, himself a Slav, here and now should bring out into the open the spiritual unity of Christian Europe . . .?" Yes, he said, Christ wants that. "The Holy Spirit demands that it be said aloud, here, now. . . . Your countryman comes to you, the pope, so as to speak before the whole Church, Europe and the world. . . . He comes to cry out with a mighty cry."
What John Paul was saying was remarkable. He was telling Poland: See the reality around you differently. See your situation in a new way. Do not see the division of Europe; see the wholeness that exists and that not even communism can take away. Rhetorically his approach was not to declare or assert but merely, again, to point out the obvious: We are Christians, we are here, we are united, no matter what the communists and their map-makers say.
It was startling. It was as if he were talking about a way of seeing the secret order of the world.
That day at the cathedral the communist authorities could not stop the applause. They could not stop everyone who applauded and cheered. There weren't enough jail cells.
But it was in the Blonie Field, in Krakow--the Blonia Krakowskie, the fields just beyond the city--that the great transcendent moment of the pope's trip took place. It was the moment when, for those looking back, the new world opened. It was the moment, some said later, that Soviet communism's fall became inevitable.
It was a week into the trip, June 10, 1979. It was a sunny day. The pope was to hold a public mass. The communist government had not allowed it to be publicized, but Poles had spread the word.
Government officials braced themselves, because now they knew a lot of people might come, as they had to John Paul's first mass. But that was a week before. Since then, maybe people had seen enough of him. Maybe they were tiring of his message. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
But something happened in the Blonie field.
They started coming early, and by the time the mass began it was the biggest gathering of humanity in the entire history of Poland. Two million or three million people came, no one is sure, maybe more. For a mass.
And it was there, at the end of his trip, in the Blonie field, that John Paul took on communism directly, by focusing on communism's attempt to kill the religious heritage of a country that had for a thousand years believed in Christ.
This is what he said:
Is it possible to dismiss Christ and everything which he brought into the annals of the human being? Of course it is possible. The human being is free. The human being can say to God, "No." The human being can say to Christ, "No." But the critical question is: Should he? And in the name of what "should" he? With what argument, what reasoning, what value held by the will or the heart does one bring oneself, one's loved ones, one's countrymen and nation to reject, to say "no" to Him with whom we have all lived for one thousand years? He who formed the basis of our identity and has Himself remained its basis ever since. . . .
As a bishop does in the sacrament of Confirmation so do I today extend my hands in that apostolic gesture over all who are gathered here today, my compatriots. And so I speak for Christ himself: "Receive the Holy Spirit!"
I speak too for St. Paul: "Do not quench the Spirit!"
I speak again for St. Paul: "Do not grieve the Spirit of God!"
You must be strong, my brothers and sisters! You must be strong with the strength that faith gives! You must be strong with the strength of faith! You must be faithful! You need this strength today more than any other period of our history. . . .
You must be strong with love, which is stronger than death. . . . When we are strong with the Spirit of God, we are also strong with the faith of man. . . . There is therefore no need to fear. . . . So . . . I beg you: Never lose your trust, do not be defeated, do not be discouraged. . . . Always seek spiritual power from Him from whom countless generations of our fathers and mothers have found it. Never detach yourselves from Him. Never lose your spiritual freedom.They went home from that field a changed country. After that mass they would never be the same.
What John Paul did in the Blonie field was both a departure from his original comments in Poland and an extension of them.
In his first comments he said: God sees one unity of Europe, he does not see East and West divided by a gash in the soil.
In this way he "divided the dividers" from God's view of history.
But in the Blonie field he extended his message. He called down the Holy Spirit--as the Vicar of Christ and successor to Peter, he called down God--to fill the people of Poland, to "confirm" their place in history and their ancient choice of Christ, to confirm as it were that their history was real and right and unchangeable--even unchangeable by communists.
So it was a redeclaration of the Polish spirit, which is a free spirit. And those who were there went home a different people, a people who saw themselves differently, not as victims of history but as strugglers for Christ.
Another crucial thing happened, after the mass was over. Everyone who was there went home and turned on the news that night to see the pictures of the incredible crowd and the incredible pope. But state-controlled TV did not show the crowds. They did a brief report that showed a shot of the pope standing and speaking for a second or two. State television did not acknowledge or admit what a phenomenon John Paul's visit was, or what it had unleashed.
The people who had been at the mass could compare the reality they had witnessed with their own eyes with the propaganda their media reported. They could see the discrepancy. This left the people of Poland able to say at once and together, definitively, with no room for argument: It's all lies. Everything this government says is a lie. Everything it is is a lie.
Whatever legitimacy the government could pretend to, it began to lose. One by one the people of Poland said to themselves, or for themselves within themselves: It is over.
And when 10 million Poles said that to themselves, it was over in Poland. And when it was over in Poland, it was over in Eastern Europe. And when it was over in Eastern Europe, it was over in the Soviet Union. And when it was over in the Soviet Union, well, it was over.
All of this was summed up by a Polish publisher and intellectual named Jerzy Turowicz, who had known Karol Wojtyla when they were young men together, and who had gone on to be a supporter of Solidarity and member of Poland's first postcommunist government. Mr. Turowicz, remembering the Blonie field and the Pope's visit, told Ray Flynn, at the time U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, "Historians say World War II ended in 1945. Maybe in the rest of the world, but not in Poland. They say communism fell in 1989. Not in Poland. World War II and communism both ended in Poland at the same time--in 1979, when John Paul II came home."
And now he is dead. It is fitting and not at all surprising that Rome, to its shock, has been overwhelmed with millions of people come to see him for the last time. The line to view his body in St. Peter's stretched more than a mile. His funeral tomorrow will be witnessed by an expected two billion people, the biggest television event in history. And no one, in Poland or elsewhere, will be able to edit the tape to hide what is happening.
John Paul gave us what may be the transcendent public spiritual moment of the 20th century. "We want God." The greatest and most authentic cry of the human heart.
They say he asked that his heart be removed from his body and buried in Poland. That sounds right, and I hope it's true. They'd better get a big box.
Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and author of "A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag" (Wall Street Journal Books/Simon & Schuster), a collection of post-Sept. 11 columns, which you can buy from the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Thursdays.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Iraqi Parliament Elects Kurd as New President
By Caryle Murphy and Fred BarbashWashington Post Staff WritersWednesday, April 6, 2005; 6:10 AM
BAGHDAD, April 6 -- Iraq's National Assembly broke weeks of impasse Wednesday by electing a new president, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, and two vice presidents.
Two senior Iraqi political officials said that the new appointees will move quickly to choose Ibrahim Jafari, a Shiite politician, as Iraq's new prime minister, the most powerful political post in the new government.
The decisions come in the face of mounting popular dismay over the time lag between the country's successful democratic election on January 30 and the organization of a new government charged with writing a permanent constitution for Iraq and replacing the interim Iraqi government led by Ayad Allawi.
Underscoring the urgency of the situation has been a surge in violence over the past few days, including a well coordinated full-scale assault by insurgents on Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison that left more than 40 U.S. troops wounded and the kidnapping Tuesday of a senior Iraqi police official. The U.S. military Tuesday reported the death of four U.S. service members.
Ali Debbagh, a senior official with the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, and Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurdish politician and interim foreign minister, said an agreement had been reached to name Jafari on Thursday.
Talabani is the first Kurd to be Iraq's president, a sign of the new clout of the minority that backed the U.S.-led invasion.
The two vice presidents named were Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite finance minister in the outgoing interim government, and Sunni Arab tribal leader Ghazi Yawar, the previous president of the interim government.
"This is the new Iraq -- an Iraq that elects a Kurd to be president and an Arab former president as his deputy," parliament speaker Hajem al-Hassani said after the vote. "What more could the world want from us?"
Talabani, hailed by a standing ovation in parliament, pledged to work together with all ethnic and religious factions to rebuild Iraq after decades of conflict and dictatorship, wire services reported Monday.
Jafari is the candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance, a largely Shiite Muslim coalition tacitly backed by the country's most influential religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The coalition won 48 percent of the vote in Iraq's elections for a 275-member parliament
In continuing violence, the senior Iraqi police official was kidnapped on a Baghdad street early Tuesday and at least 11 other Iraqis, including a cleric, a translator and a councilman, were killed or wounded. U.S. military officials reported the deaths of four U.S. service members.
Brig. Gen. Jalal Mohamed Saleh, the head of an armored brigade at the Interior Ministry, became the latest Iraqi official captured by insurgents. Saleh was pulled from his car in Baghdad's western district of Mansour, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.
Also Tuesday, around 9:30 a.m., a U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol in southern Baghdad, U.S. officials said. Four other soldiers were wounded in the incident.
On Monday, a U.S. Marine was killed by an explosion during combat in Anbar province, a hotbed of the insurgency west of Baghdad, the U.S. military reported Tuesday. And in Diyala province, two U.S. soldiers, an Iraqi soldier and about 17 insurgents were killed Monday during an hours-long skirmish at a remote location about 30 miles east of Baghdad, a U.S. military spokesman said.
That firefight began after an Iraqi army unit searching for weapons caches came under fire from small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. The Iraqis were given support by U.S. Army helicopters from the 42nd Aviation Brigade and U.S. Air Force warplanes, as well as from a mechanized quick-reaction force from Task Force Liberty's 278th Regimental Combat Team, according to Maj. Richard L. Goldenberg, spokesman for the 42nd Infantry Division.
"As the Iraqi army unit advanced, the insurgents fell back to prepared positions" where they had stored ammunition, Goldenberg wrote in an e-mail. "By evening, additional Iraqi army forces arrived to assist the attacking unit." He said combat "continued sporadically through the night as the terrorists attempted to break contact and escape from the scene."
Goldenberg said the protracted encounter with the guerrillas, who numbered two to three dozen, marked "the second instance in less than three weeks that terrorists and insurgents have been caught gathering in a remote location."
On March 22, U.S.-supported Iraqi police commandos clashed with dozens of insurgents in what Iraqi officials described as a remote training camp near Tharthar Lake.
Though the two incidents "do not yet indicate a trend," Goldenberg said, they "are strong indicators" that the insurgents "are finding less favor in Iraqi cities and populated areas."
Meanwhile, a man driving his daughter to her job as a translator at the city hall in Baqubah, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, was killed by gunmen, a hospital official said. His daughter, 26, was seriously wounded, the official added.
Elsewhere, gunmen killed Salim Hilal, a member of the Babil provincial council, as he headed to work in Hilla, officials told the Associated Press. Three bodyguards were injured. And a Sunni Muslim cleric, Hilal Karim, was killed in a drive-by shooting as he entered his mosque in New Baghdad, a neighborhood in the capital, police Col. Ahmed Aboud told the news agency.
In the northern city of Mosul, insurgents killed Kurdistan Democratic Party official Salim Ibrahim, according to a party official.
Also in Mosul, a freelance cameraman for CBS News was accidentally shot in the hip as he stood near a suspected insurgent killed by U.S. soldiers. The journalist was expected to recover, and CBS and the military said the camera was mistaken for a weapon, the Associated Press reported.
Barbash reported from Washington. Special correspondents Bassam Sebti and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad, Saad Sarhan in Najaf and Hassan Shammari in Baqubah contributed to this report.
By Caryle Murphy and Fred BarbashWashington Post Staff WritersWednesday, April 6, 2005; 6:10 AM
BAGHDAD, April 6 -- Iraq's National Assembly broke weeks of impasse Wednesday by electing a new president, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani, and two vice presidents.
Two senior Iraqi political officials said that the new appointees will move quickly to choose Ibrahim Jafari, a Shiite politician, as Iraq's new prime minister, the most powerful political post in the new government.
The decisions come in the face of mounting popular dismay over the time lag between the country's successful democratic election on January 30 and the organization of a new government charged with writing a permanent constitution for Iraq and replacing the interim Iraqi government led by Ayad Allawi.
Underscoring the urgency of the situation has been a surge in violence over the past few days, including a well coordinated full-scale assault by insurgents on Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison that left more than 40 U.S. troops wounded and the kidnapping Tuesday of a senior Iraqi police official. The U.S. military Tuesday reported the death of four U.S. service members.
Ali Debbagh, a senior official with the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, and Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurdish politician and interim foreign minister, said an agreement had been reached to name Jafari on Thursday.
Talabani is the first Kurd to be Iraq's president, a sign of the new clout of the minority that backed the U.S.-led invasion.
The two vice presidents named were Adel Abdul Mahdi, a Shiite finance minister in the outgoing interim government, and Sunni Arab tribal leader Ghazi Yawar, the previous president of the interim government.
"This is the new Iraq -- an Iraq that elects a Kurd to be president and an Arab former president as his deputy," parliament speaker Hajem al-Hassani said after the vote. "What more could the world want from us?"
Talabani, hailed by a standing ovation in parliament, pledged to work together with all ethnic and religious factions to rebuild Iraq after decades of conflict and dictatorship, wire services reported Monday.
Jafari is the candidate of the United Iraqi Alliance, a largely Shiite Muslim coalition tacitly backed by the country's most influential religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The coalition won 48 percent of the vote in Iraq's elections for a 275-member parliament
In continuing violence, the senior Iraqi police official was kidnapped on a Baghdad street early Tuesday and at least 11 other Iraqis, including a cleric, a translator and a councilman, were killed or wounded. U.S. military officials reported the deaths of four U.S. service members.
Brig. Gen. Jalal Mohamed Saleh, the head of an armored brigade at the Interior Ministry, became the latest Iraqi official captured by insurgents. Saleh was pulled from his car in Baghdad's western district of Mansour, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.
Also Tuesday, around 9:30 a.m., a U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol in southern Baghdad, U.S. officials said. Four other soldiers were wounded in the incident.
On Monday, a U.S. Marine was killed by an explosion during combat in Anbar province, a hotbed of the insurgency west of Baghdad, the U.S. military reported Tuesday. And in Diyala province, two U.S. soldiers, an Iraqi soldier and about 17 insurgents were killed Monday during an hours-long skirmish at a remote location about 30 miles east of Baghdad, a U.S. military spokesman said.
That firefight began after an Iraqi army unit searching for weapons caches came under fire from small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. The Iraqis were given support by U.S. Army helicopters from the 42nd Aviation Brigade and U.S. Air Force warplanes, as well as from a mechanized quick-reaction force from Task Force Liberty's 278th Regimental Combat Team, according to Maj. Richard L. Goldenberg, spokesman for the 42nd Infantry Division.
"As the Iraqi army unit advanced, the insurgents fell back to prepared positions" where they had stored ammunition, Goldenberg wrote in an e-mail. "By evening, additional Iraqi army forces arrived to assist the attacking unit." He said combat "continued sporadically through the night as the terrorists attempted to break contact and escape from the scene."
Goldenberg said the protracted encounter with the guerrillas, who numbered two to three dozen, marked "the second instance in less than three weeks that terrorists and insurgents have been caught gathering in a remote location."
On March 22, U.S.-supported Iraqi police commandos clashed with dozens of insurgents in what Iraqi officials described as a remote training camp near Tharthar Lake.
Though the two incidents "do not yet indicate a trend," Goldenberg said, they "are strong indicators" that the insurgents "are finding less favor in Iraqi cities and populated areas."
Meanwhile, a man driving his daughter to her job as a translator at the city hall in Baqubah, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, was killed by gunmen, a hospital official said. His daughter, 26, was seriously wounded, the official added.
Elsewhere, gunmen killed Salim Hilal, a member of the Babil provincial council, as he headed to work in Hilla, officials told the Associated Press. Three bodyguards were injured. And a Sunni Muslim cleric, Hilal Karim, was killed in a drive-by shooting as he entered his mosque in New Baghdad, a neighborhood in the capital, police Col. Ahmed Aboud told the news agency.
In the northern city of Mosul, insurgents killed Kurdistan Democratic Party official Salim Ibrahim, according to a party official.
Also in Mosul, a freelance cameraman for CBS News was accidentally shot in the hip as he stood near a suspected insurgent killed by U.S. soldiers. The journalist was expected to recover, and CBS and the military said the camera was mistaken for a weapon, the Associated Press reported.
Barbash reported from Washington. Special correspondents Bassam Sebti and Naseer Nouri in Baghdad, Saad Sarhan in Najaf and Hassan Shammari in Baqubah contributed to this report.
Europe influence seen as positive
Europe - and France in particular - are seen as benevolent forces in a world largely scornful of US influence, a poll taken in 23 countries suggests.
The survey found that, on average, 58% of people want Europe to play a bigger role than the US in world affairs.
France emerged as the single country with the best reputation abroad.
The survey was carried out by polling group GlobeScan and the University of Maryland with some questions provided by the BBC World Service.
Of the 23,518 people polled, 47% said the US had a negative effect on the world, with US neighbours and allied countries being among its biggest critics.
Overall, 15 of the 23 countries surveyed said the US had a negative influence in the world.
Our survey shows that Europe's star has risen as America's has declined under the Bush administration Doug Miller GlobeScan
Disapproval for the US was highest in Argentina, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Canada and Mexico.
Countries where people regarded the US most favourably were the Philippines, South Africa, India, Poland and South Korea.
After the US, Russia was the country with the least positive reputation abroad among those questioned.
China was largely seen to be a good influence in the world with, on average, 48% of people regarding it favourably. The survey showed support for China's growing economic role - but little enthusiasm for its military potential.
The poll was conducted between 15 November 2004 and 5 January 2005 and the sample was limited to major urban areas in eight of the countries.
The poll's margin of error ranges from +/-2.5 to 4%.
France 'best'
In 22 of the 23 countries polled, people felt Europe had a generally positive influence on the world.
France had the best reputation of the big nations, viewed favourably in 20 countries.
French influence was opposed by a majority of people in the US alone, while its biggest supporter was its historical enemy, Germany, where some 77% felt France was a force for good.
Although 55% of US citizens felt greater European influence would be a bad thing, 34% of Americans felt the opposite - a statistic which the report's authors claim reflects deep political divisions within the US.
India appeared to be the only nation more or less equally divided over whether greater European influence would be beneficial for the world.
Influence of trade
The results show trade to be an effective tool of influence, said Steven Kull, a director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (Pipa) at the University of Maryland which conducted the poll.
"What is notable here is that Europe and China, which have engaged the world primarily through economic relations - or soft power - are widely seen as having a positive influence," he said.
However, "countries that have very large militaries and have recently used them in a prominent way - the US and Russia - are more often seen as having a negative influence", he said.
Doug Miller, of GlobeScan, said the poll was worrying for Americans.
"Our survey shows that Europe's star has risen as America's has declined under the Bush administration," he said.
Story from BBC NEWS
Europe - and France in particular - are seen as benevolent forces in a world largely scornful of US influence, a poll taken in 23 countries suggests.
The survey found that, on average, 58% of people want Europe to play a bigger role than the US in world affairs.
France emerged as the single country with the best reputation abroad.
The survey was carried out by polling group GlobeScan and the University of Maryland with some questions provided by the BBC World Service.
Of the 23,518 people polled, 47% said the US had a negative effect on the world, with US neighbours and allied countries being among its biggest critics.
Overall, 15 of the 23 countries surveyed said the US had a negative influence in the world.
Our survey shows that Europe's star has risen as America's has declined under the Bush administration Doug Miller GlobeScan
Disapproval for the US was highest in Argentina, Germany, Russia, Turkey, Canada and Mexico.
Countries where people regarded the US most favourably were the Philippines, South Africa, India, Poland and South Korea.
After the US, Russia was the country with the least positive reputation abroad among those questioned.
China was largely seen to be a good influence in the world with, on average, 48% of people regarding it favourably. The survey showed support for China's growing economic role - but little enthusiasm for its military potential.
The poll was conducted between 15 November 2004 and 5 January 2005 and the sample was limited to major urban areas in eight of the countries.
The poll's margin of error ranges from +/-2.5 to 4%.
France 'best'
In 22 of the 23 countries polled, people felt Europe had a generally positive influence on the world.
France had the best reputation of the big nations, viewed favourably in 20 countries.
French influence was opposed by a majority of people in the US alone, while its biggest supporter was its historical enemy, Germany, where some 77% felt France was a force for good.
Although 55% of US citizens felt greater European influence would be a bad thing, 34% of Americans felt the opposite - a statistic which the report's authors claim reflects deep political divisions within the US.
India appeared to be the only nation more or less equally divided over whether greater European influence would be beneficial for the world.
Influence of trade
The results show trade to be an effective tool of influence, said Steven Kull, a director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (Pipa) at the University of Maryland which conducted the poll.
"What is notable here is that Europe and China, which have engaged the world primarily through economic relations - or soft power - are widely seen as having a positive influence," he said.
However, "countries that have very large militaries and have recently used them in a prominent way - the US and Russia - are more often seen as having a negative influence", he said.
Doug Miller, of GlobeScan, said the poll was worrying for Americans.
"Our survey shows that Europe's star has risen as America's has declined under the Bush administration," he said.
Story from BBC NEWS
A SICK FUCK
Zarqawi Driven by Emotion, Ex-Cellmates Say
Posted by: Editor on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 06:23 AM
By Suleiman al-Khalidi AMMAN, Jordan (Reuters) - During their years in a Jordanian prison, inmates remember Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in his Afghan dress weeping uncontrollably in the courtyard whenever he knelt to pray."Abu Musab cried constantly. He was very emotional,
almost like a child," said 35-year-old Yousef Rababaa as he recalled the young militant. Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born one-time street thug who is now the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, is remembered as a gentle man obsessed with Islam's past glory. His intense loyalty, his former cellmates say, went hand in hand with a fanatical adherence to his religion. He dreamed of an Islamic utopia where people would relive the puritanical lifestyle of the faith's early founders. The Arab Bedouin whose fanaticism condones the killing of fellow Muslims and is blamed by Washington for the beheading of foreign captives and suicide bombings that have maimed and killed hundreds, was a gentle almost stoic figure, his cellmates remember. They say his ability to mesmerize the closest people around him was another facet of a shadowy elusive character who has so far evaded capture. Rababaa who left prison with Zarqawi after an amnesty in April 1999 recollects how Zarqawi stood out among his peers for his piety. "Abu Musab would be as preoccupied with writing letter after letter to his old mother as spending long hours reciting the Koran," said Rababaa. It was piety of an extreme nature that molded Zarqawi's militancy, according to Islamists and experts who follow many of the young adherents of the Salafi brand of Islamist jihadis. "Emotions for militants like Zarqawi shape much of their behavior and mentality and drive them to wreak revenge for perceived injustices without thinking of the consequences," said Mohammed Najjar, a Jordanian scholar who follows radical Islamist political movements. Another cellmate, Khaled Abu Doma, 36, recalled the young Zarqawi's long days spent kneeling with another inmate on a mat in the prison courtyard as he patiently helped him memorize verse after verse from the Koran. Zarqawi would also wash other prisoners' clothes and scrub prison lavatories, chores which other prisoners usually shunned, Abu Doma said.
APOSTATES VERSUS BELIEVERS But Zarqawi's commitment to a purist brand of Islam put both Muslim and non-believers at odds with his ideology, said Laith Shubailat, an prominent Islamist dissident who spent years in prison for his opposition to Jordan's pro-western monarchy. Shubailat, an advocate of non-violence and a parliamentary democracy to limit the Jordanian monarchy's extensive powers, recalled that the young militant's view of the world made him reject moderates like him. "Zarqawi may be more faithful to the tenets of Islam, but he and his followers have gone astray in their search for the truth," Shubailat said as he recollected a morning when Zarqawi invited him for breakfast. "I was an apostate for them. They have no gray. You have to be white completely. They put difficult conditions," said Shubailat, whose belief in reform from within the establishment made it impossible for him to find common ground with Zarqawi.
SOLACE IN RELIGION Prison inmates and associates say Zarqawi found solace in an austere brand of Islam that gave him spiritual comfort from the social alienation he endured in a deprived upbringing. The childhood of Zarqawi, the son of an elder Bani Hassan tribesman, was shaped by poverty and the politics of the bleak industrial city of Zarqa, a melting pot of downtrodden Palestinian refugees and Bedouin tribes. Influenced by radical mosque preachers whom he encountered in the city, Zarqawi then in his late teens left in early 1989 for Afghanistan where his fellow Islamists were then fighting the "great infidels" -- the Soviet army. Zarqawi was among the last of the thousands of Arab volunteers who went to wage jihad (holy war) in Afghanistan, the most prominent of whom was Saudi born militant Osama Bin Laden. The alienated Muslim zealot who returned to Jordan in 1992 found a country going through rapid social change and could not come to terms with Westernizing influences. Within three years he had fallen foul of the establishment. He was arrested and charged for concealing explosives in a plot to destabilize the country. Zarqawi's four years in Jordanian prisons until his release in 1999 further distanced him from mainstream society but prepared him ideologically for his future endeavors, his prison comrades say. "Those prison years were critical in shaping Zarqawi's leadership qualities among his circle of followers that prepared him for his future role in Afghanistan and later Iraq," said Najjar. In September 1999 Zarqawi went back to Afghanistan before moving to Iraq where he is still thought to operate.
Zarqawi Driven by Emotion, Ex-Cellmates Say
Posted by: Editor on Tuesday, April 05, 2005 - 06:23 AM
By Suleiman al-Khalidi AMMAN, Jordan (Reuters) - During their years in a Jordanian prison, inmates remember Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in his Afghan dress weeping uncontrollably in the courtyard whenever he knelt to pray."Abu Musab cried constantly. He was very emotional,
almost like a child," said 35-year-old Yousef Rababaa as he recalled the young militant. Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born one-time street thug who is now the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, is remembered as a gentle man obsessed with Islam's past glory. His intense loyalty, his former cellmates say, went hand in hand with a fanatical adherence to his religion. He dreamed of an Islamic utopia where people would relive the puritanical lifestyle of the faith's early founders. The Arab Bedouin whose fanaticism condones the killing of fellow Muslims and is blamed by Washington for the beheading of foreign captives and suicide bombings that have maimed and killed hundreds, was a gentle almost stoic figure, his cellmates remember. They say his ability to mesmerize the closest people around him was another facet of a shadowy elusive character who has so far evaded capture. Rababaa who left prison with Zarqawi after an amnesty in April 1999 recollects how Zarqawi stood out among his peers for his piety. "Abu Musab would be as preoccupied with writing letter after letter to his old mother as spending long hours reciting the Koran," said Rababaa. It was piety of an extreme nature that molded Zarqawi's militancy, according to Islamists and experts who follow many of the young adherents of the Salafi brand of Islamist jihadis. "Emotions for militants like Zarqawi shape much of their behavior and mentality and drive them to wreak revenge for perceived injustices without thinking of the consequences," said Mohammed Najjar, a Jordanian scholar who follows radical Islamist political movements. Another cellmate, Khaled Abu Doma, 36, recalled the young Zarqawi's long days spent kneeling with another inmate on a mat in the prison courtyard as he patiently helped him memorize verse after verse from the Koran. Zarqawi would also wash other prisoners' clothes and scrub prison lavatories, chores which other prisoners usually shunned, Abu Doma said.
APOSTATES VERSUS BELIEVERS But Zarqawi's commitment to a purist brand of Islam put both Muslim and non-believers at odds with his ideology, said Laith Shubailat, an prominent Islamist dissident who spent years in prison for his opposition to Jordan's pro-western monarchy. Shubailat, an advocate of non-violence and a parliamentary democracy to limit the Jordanian monarchy's extensive powers, recalled that the young militant's view of the world made him reject moderates like him. "Zarqawi may be more faithful to the tenets of Islam, but he and his followers have gone astray in their search for the truth," Shubailat said as he recollected a morning when Zarqawi invited him for breakfast. "I was an apostate for them. They have no gray. You have to be white completely. They put difficult conditions," said Shubailat, whose belief in reform from within the establishment made it impossible for him to find common ground with Zarqawi.
SOLACE IN RELIGION Prison inmates and associates say Zarqawi found solace in an austere brand of Islam that gave him spiritual comfort from the social alienation he endured in a deprived upbringing. The childhood of Zarqawi, the son of an elder Bani Hassan tribesman, was shaped by poverty and the politics of the bleak industrial city of Zarqa, a melting pot of downtrodden Palestinian refugees and Bedouin tribes. Influenced by radical mosque preachers whom he encountered in the city, Zarqawi then in his late teens left in early 1989 for Afghanistan where his fellow Islamists were then fighting the "great infidels" -- the Soviet army. Zarqawi was among the last of the thousands of Arab volunteers who went to wage jihad (holy war) in Afghanistan, the most prominent of whom was Saudi born militant Osama Bin Laden. The alienated Muslim zealot who returned to Jordan in 1992 found a country going through rapid social change and could not come to terms with Westernizing influences. Within three years he had fallen foul of the establishment. He was arrested and charged for concealing explosives in a plot to destabilize the country. Zarqawi's four years in Jordanian prisons until his release in 1999 further distanced him from mainstream society but prepared him ideologically for his future endeavors, his prison comrades say. "Those prison years were critical in shaping Zarqawi's leadership qualities among his circle of followers that prepared him for his future role in Afghanistan and later Iraq," said Najjar. In September 1999 Zarqawi went back to Afghanistan before moving to Iraq where he is still thought to operate.
Sunday, April 03, 2005
JP 2 is now safe in Heaven. Billions of people have felt his touch. RIP
A Man for All Seasons
The very modern papacy of John Paul II. April 2, 2005
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006504
When the white smoke curled up from the Sistine Chapel on that October evening back in 1978, it signaled that a new Pope had been chosen. His name was Karol Wojtyla. He came, as he said, from a distant land, and as he looked upon the faithful who had gathered on St. Peter's Square he offered words that would sum up his pastoral mission: "Be not afraid."
Pope John Paul II died today. In the post-Berlin Wall world this man did so much to shape, it's difficult to recall the much different circumstances that obtained when he assumed the chair of St. Peter. Former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro had been kidnapped and executed by terrorists. In Iran bloody protests were brewing that would within months pull down the Shah and usher in the ayatollahs. In the Soviet Union the dissident Anatoly Shcharansky (now the Israeli Natan Sharansky) was dispatched to the gulag, while Afghanistan had already endured the leftist coup that would, in short order, lead to a full-fledged Soviet invasion.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were still in the future, and so was a workers' strike called by an unknown Pole named Lech Walesa. Everywhere one looked, the truth of the Brezhnev Doctrine seemed brutally self-evident: Once Communist, always Communist. Oh, yes: The Catholic Church which this first Slavic pope found himself bequeathed was thought by many to be hopelessly irrelevant to the crises of modern times.
The bishop from Krakow knew all this--better than his critics. For this was a man eminently comfortable with modernity--even while he refused to accept modernity's most shallow assumptions. Just as he offered his first public words as pope in Italian to make himself understood by those below his balcony, he held that ultimate truths about man and his relationship with his Creator are never outdated, however much they require constant expression in new languages and new circumstances. As he never ceased to declare, Communism's core failure was not economic. It was anthropological, stemming from its false understanding of human nature.
Karol Wojtyla did not learn this from textbooks. He was old enough to recall how the twin totalitarianisms of our age--fascism and communism--were each once lauded by intellectuals as the inevitable destination and promise of the future. In Poland he tasted them both, yet he remained unintimidated. This experience would shape his entire papacy, a testament to his conviction that moral truth has its own legions.
And so he set that splendid Polish jaw against all the prevailing winds and . . . well, we know the rest of the story. Ironically, better than even some of his allies, the Communists themselves grasped the threat posed by a man whose only power was to expose the moral hollowness at the core of their claim. When the leader of Communist Poland tried to explain to the leader of the Communist U.S.S.R. that, as a fellow Pole, he knew how best to handle this new pope, Leonid Brezhnev responded prophetically. If the church weren't dealt with, Brezhnev retorted, "sooner or later it would gag in our throats, it would suffocate us." It did.
From today's vantage, even that victory has quickly receded into history. In the years since the Berlin Wall was pulled down, the new take on the Bishop of Rome was to try to distinguish between two popes: The liberal Cold Warrior who took on totalitarianism and the social scold who would replace it with a Christian authoritarianism of his own.
We had our own disagreements with this pope, notably over America's efforts in Iraq in two wars. But even in disagreement we have always understood that this pope was no schizophrenic. It is possible, as many who otherwise admire him do, to disagree with Pope John Paul's teachings on marriage and homosexuality, on abortion, and so on. But it impossible to understand him without conceding the coherency of his argument: that the attempt to liberate oneself from one's nature is the road to enslavement, not freedom.
In progressive circles in the West, religion in general and Christianity in particular tend to find themselves caricatured as a series of Thou Shalt Nots, particularly when they touch on human sexuality. But it is no coincidence that George Weigel entitled his biography of John Paul "Witness to Hope." For billions of people around the world--non-Catholics included--that's exactly what he was. Perhaps this explains why China, where only a tiny fraction of its people are Catholic, remained to the very end fearful of allowing a visit from this frail, physically suffering man, fearing what he might inspire.
We don't expect the secularalists who dominate our intelligentsia ever to understand how a man rooted in orthodox Christianity could ever reconcile himself with modernity, much less establish himself on the vanguard of world history. But many years ago, when the same question was put to France's Cardinal Lustiger by a reporter, he gave the answer. "You're confusing a modern man with an American liberal," the cardinal replied. It was a confusion that Pope John Paul II, may he rest in peace, never made.
A Man for All Seasons
The very modern papacy of John Paul II. April 2, 2005
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006504
When the white smoke curled up from the Sistine Chapel on that October evening back in 1978, it signaled that a new Pope had been chosen. His name was Karol Wojtyla. He came, as he said, from a distant land, and as he looked upon the faithful who had gathered on St. Peter's Square he offered words that would sum up his pastoral mission: "Be not afraid."
Pope John Paul II died today. In the post-Berlin Wall world this man did so much to shape, it's difficult to recall the much different circumstances that obtained when he assumed the chair of St. Peter. Former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro had been kidnapped and executed by terrorists. In Iran bloody protests were brewing that would within months pull down the Shah and usher in the ayatollahs. In the Soviet Union the dissident Anatoly Shcharansky (now the Israeli Natan Sharansky) was dispatched to the gulag, while Afghanistan had already endured the leftist coup that would, in short order, lead to a full-fledged Soviet invasion.
Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were still in the future, and so was a workers' strike called by an unknown Pole named Lech Walesa. Everywhere one looked, the truth of the Brezhnev Doctrine seemed brutally self-evident: Once Communist, always Communist. Oh, yes: The Catholic Church which this first Slavic pope found himself bequeathed was thought by many to be hopelessly irrelevant to the crises of modern times.
The bishop from Krakow knew all this--better than his critics. For this was a man eminently comfortable with modernity--even while he refused to accept modernity's most shallow assumptions. Just as he offered his first public words as pope in Italian to make himself understood by those below his balcony, he held that ultimate truths about man and his relationship with his Creator are never outdated, however much they require constant expression in new languages and new circumstances. As he never ceased to declare, Communism's core failure was not economic. It was anthropological, stemming from its false understanding of human nature.
Karol Wojtyla did not learn this from textbooks. He was old enough to recall how the twin totalitarianisms of our age--fascism and communism--were each once lauded by intellectuals as the inevitable destination and promise of the future. In Poland he tasted them both, yet he remained unintimidated. This experience would shape his entire papacy, a testament to his conviction that moral truth has its own legions.
And so he set that splendid Polish jaw against all the prevailing winds and . . . well, we know the rest of the story. Ironically, better than even some of his allies, the Communists themselves grasped the threat posed by a man whose only power was to expose the moral hollowness at the core of their claim. When the leader of Communist Poland tried to explain to the leader of the Communist U.S.S.R. that, as a fellow Pole, he knew how best to handle this new pope, Leonid Brezhnev responded prophetically. If the church weren't dealt with, Brezhnev retorted, "sooner or later it would gag in our throats, it would suffocate us." It did.
From today's vantage, even that victory has quickly receded into history. In the years since the Berlin Wall was pulled down, the new take on the Bishop of Rome was to try to distinguish between two popes: The liberal Cold Warrior who took on totalitarianism and the social scold who would replace it with a Christian authoritarianism of his own.
We had our own disagreements with this pope, notably over America's efforts in Iraq in two wars. But even in disagreement we have always understood that this pope was no schizophrenic. It is possible, as many who otherwise admire him do, to disagree with Pope John Paul's teachings on marriage and homosexuality, on abortion, and so on. But it impossible to understand him without conceding the coherency of his argument: that the attempt to liberate oneself from one's nature is the road to enslavement, not freedom.
In progressive circles in the West, religion in general and Christianity in particular tend to find themselves caricatured as a series of Thou Shalt Nots, particularly when they touch on human sexuality. But it is no coincidence that George Weigel entitled his biography of John Paul "Witness to Hope." For billions of people around the world--non-Catholics included--that's exactly what he was. Perhaps this explains why China, where only a tiny fraction of its people are Catholic, remained to the very end fearful of allowing a visit from this frail, physically suffering man, fearing what he might inspire.
We don't expect the secularalists who dominate our intelligentsia ever to understand how a man rooted in orthodox Christianity could ever reconcile himself with modernity, much less establish himself on the vanguard of world history. But many years ago, when the same question was put to France's Cardinal Lustiger by a reporter, he gave the answer. "You're confusing a modern man with an American liberal," the cardinal replied. It was a confusion that Pope John Paul II, may he rest in peace, never made.
