East is East, and West is West

Oh, East is East, and West is West,
and never the twain shall meet
Till Earth and Sky stand presently
at God's great Judgment Seat

--The Ballad of East and West, Rudyard Kipling
________

Peggy Noonan wrote a fuzzy, feel-good piece on fighting men this weekend, but her conclusion is pie in the sky (To Old Times.)

The hub of the piece is her experience in 1991 in Normandy when, following an unexpected hot air balloon landing in an old farmer's field, she and her party were toasted by the old man who brought out an old bottle of Calvados he had waiting for just such an occasion. He said he had not seen Americans since the Invasion, and was toasting "To old times."

She rightly muses about the "kindness and generosity" demonstrated by American troops, and contrasts that with a Red Army statue in Vienna, which had the local nickname of "The Unknown Rapist." She chalks the bad behavior of the Russian soldiers to being born into a world of communism and atheism, among other nasty influences.

In her pollyannaish conclusion, she "hope(s) some day they [our soldiers] get some earned tenderness, and wind up over the hills of Iraq, and land, and an old guy comes out and says, "Are you an American?" And they say yes and he says, "A toast, to old times."

But perhaps, he'll go back into his abode, tote out an AK, and say, "This is for what you did to my cousin/mother/brother/wife." I would not want to make a bet on that one.

Like Jakes Barnes said, it's pretty to think so. If your own country doesn't thank you (Noonan admits the "soldiers are used to being used"), perhaps the other side will. However, the glaring fault of her analogy is that we are not fighting for the Iraqis, but rather, against them.

I seriously doubt a bottle of Calvados is in the offing.

--Lisa