dfoley10

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Realignment
Amir Tahari, NY Post, America and Iraq, WE'VE lost the peace,' men tell you. We cannot make it stick . . . Europeans, friend and foe alike, look you accusingly in the face and tell you how bit terly they are disappointed in you as an American . . . [Liberation] stands in the minds of the civilians for one thing: looting. Never has American prestige in Europe been lower." Another media report from Iraq? No. This was novelist John Dos Passos in 1945, reporting for Life magazine, from newly-liberated Europe. Dos Passos knew, almost by instinct, what journalists learn in practice: Good news is no news. There was no point in reporting from Berlin on how people were able to sit in the ruins of cafes and speak freely for the first time in 13 years.