On a tricky, vexing, thankless business; the new movie about Golda Meir; what we owe the cops; and more
Sometimes — in fact, often — I’m glad I’m not the “decider,” to use a George W. Bush word. We all know that you don’t deal with terrorists, or terrorist regimes. You don’t negotiate to get hostages home, for example. For one thing, that just leads to more hostage-taking.
Think what Putin has done in Russia.
So, the principles are clear. And yet, there is the human factor, to borrow from Graham Greene. The human factor. The stubborn, unignorable human factor.
I will quote from a report from the Associated Press, published Monday morning:
Americans detained for years in Iran arrived home Tuesday, tearfully hugged their loved ones and declared “Freedom!” after being let go as part of a politically risky deal that saw President Joe Biden agree to the release of nearly $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets.
Bad, right? Regardless, we have been here before.
President Reagan traded arms for hostages, as he finally admitted. I remember Peggy Say, whose brother, Terry Anderson, an AP reporter, was one of the hostages in Lebanon. She campaigned for her brother and the other hostages tirelessly and nobly. She would be out in front of the White House, blasting Reagan as a cold-hearted SOB for clinging to some foreign-policy theory and turning his back on the suffering of innocent American citizens. It seemed to me that the media, by and large, agreed with her.
Well, Reagan was soft, or rather: human, and cognizant of the human factor. He violated principle (if you want to call it that). And then, it seemed to me, the media came down on him for that.
“Can’t win,” thought my Reagan-loving, Reagan-defensive self.
Israel has had long, painful experience in this area. All of our lives, we have seen Israel negotiate prisoner swaps. We have seen Israel trade prisoners for corpses — not live Israeli prisoners or hostages, but corpses.
In 2004, Israel traded 430 Arab prisoners — who included some really nasty characters — for one live businessman and three corpses.
In 2008, it was one Arab prisoner for two Israeli corpses. And the prisoner was not some garden-variety guerrilla. In a column, I quoted from the Associated Press:
Kantar is serving multiple life sentences for infiltrating northern Israel in 1979 and killing three Israelis — a 28-year-old man, his 4-year-old daughter and an Israeli police officer.
Witnesses said Kantar smashed the little girl’s head against a rock and crushed her skull with a rifle butt. Kantar denied killing the girl or smashing her skull. Her mother, while trying to silence the cries of her other daughter, accidentally smothered the 2-year-old.
So, the Israeli government rewarded evil, right? Samir Kantar for two corpses of Israeli soldiers? The government saw it differently.
And in 2011, of course, the government traded 1,027 prisoners — that’s a lot: 1,027 — for Gilad Shalit.
This subject involves many factors: political, strategic, psychological, moral. If anyone speaks to you glibly about it, don’t listen to him.
And put yourself in the deciders’ shoes.
• There is a new movie about Golda Meir. It is called, simply, “Golda.” It is not a biopic, exactly — it is not the life of Meir (which is very interesting). It’s a movie about the 1973 war, the Yom Kippur War. The director is Guy Nattiv, and the writer Nicholas Martin.
Riveting, this movie is. I have a few quick points to make, of which the last is the most important. (At least one of the points is trivial — a mere language point.)
Helen Mirren plays Golda. Mirren is no doubt a theatrical great. Streep-level.
The movie falters, I think, in its treatment of Ariel Sharon. That treatment is cartoonish, it seems to me — stupid, and beneath the dignity of the film.
I have been around Henry Kissinger a fair amount. He is a very well-educated man who speaks excellent and careful English. I doubt he would say “9 a.m. in the morning,” as the script has him say. He would choke on the redundancy.
At the end, as the credits roll, the film uses “Dido’s Lament,” the aria from Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas. The film uses an orchestral transcription of the aria. I have seldom seen — heard? — so inspired a use of music in a movie.
Okay, my big point. Menachem Begin, one of Golda’s great political rivals, called her “a great Jewess.” He said this in Golda’s presence. “A great Jewess.” (I gleaned this tidbit from Yehuda Avner’s marvelous memoir, The Prime Ministers.)
She certainly was.
• Out of Palmdale, Calif.:
Authorities asked for the public’s help and offered a $250,000 reward as investigators searched Sunday for the assailant who shot and killed a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy as he sat in his patrol car at an intersection.
Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer, 30, died at a hospital . . .
(Full article here.)
They risk their lives every day, these policemen. We owe them so much. Without them, life would be unlivable.
• From New York City:
The loudspeaker on a quiet Staten Island street blasted demands at 117 decibels, louder than a dog barking in your ear. Pointed at a school that is sheltering some of the 110,000 migrants who have arrived in New York City over the last year and a half, the message could not have been more unwelcoming: “Immigrants are not safe here.”
(Full article.)
I can understand yelling at lawmakers and other governmental officials, responsible for policy. But doing this to immigrants, who are already disoriented and probably scared? Who have given up the only life they have known for the new and unknown?
• A notable — I would say important — column from Fareed Zakaria in the Washington Post:
The Democrats are confronting a crisis that could cripple their chances at the polls at the national, state and local level. I’m talking about immigration. It’s happening not only because Republicans are taking advantage of the problem but also because Democrats are unwilling to accept that their policy ideas on the issue are wrong and grossly inadequate to the challenge at hand.
• Let me pause for a language note. “. . . polls at the national, state and local level.” That should be “levels.” But: “the national, state or local level.”
End of lesson. (We can talk about the Oxford comma another time.)
• “Jules Melancon, Oyster Farmer Who Tried Something New, Dies at 65.” That is the heading over an obit in the New York Times by Clay Risen. It is a very interesting obit — interesting mini-bio, if you will. One of my favorite details: Mr. Melancon — Monsieur Melancon? — was from Cut Off, La.
My new favorite place-name.
• Speaking of the South — you can see anything in New York City, including a Mississippi State flag, flying outside an establishment:
I snapped that shot yesterday.
• Speaking of the South — a reader writes,
. . . if you’re ever in Nashville, let us know. We’ll go eat at the Loveless Cafe on Hwy 100 or Puckett’s Grocery in Leiper’s Fork.
I have looked at the menus, online. They’re made for me. Just for me, personally, somehow . . .
• Speaking of the South — Lauch Faircloth, the onetime U.S. senator from North Carolina, has died at 95. The Times’s obit quotes him as responding to some criticism this way: “It’s airy persiflage.”
Now, that’s how a southern senator should talk . . .
• One more obit: Howard Safir. He was the police commissioner in New York. One night, Bill Buckley invited him to dinner. I remember asking Safir about two things. First, his last name. That was also the last name of William Safire, the columnist. (The columnist added an “e” later in life, so that people would pronounce the name correctly.)
Second, I asked Commissioner Safir about his uncle: the cop who caught Willie Sutton, the notorious bank robber.
You could learn a lot at Bill Buckley’s table. I thank you for joining me, everybody. Later on.
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