Free Republic

On July 12 1926, English writer and archaeologist Gertrude Bell died of an overdose of sleeping pills in Mandatory Iraq. (British ruled.) Bell seems an attractive woman to me, but she never married. Her work for understanding another culture came first. Wikipedia reports: ”She was simultaneously an Iraqi nationalist and a British imperialist.” She saw clearly how hard it is for The West to impose its ways on The East. She wrote of Arab leaders: “Men who have the tradition of a personal independence ……. will not in a day fall into step with European ambitions, nor welcome European methods....

Douglas Anthony Cooper of Montreal chides me for a throwaway line in last week's column about the antiwar crowd's sudden interest in property crime: "Steal the photocopier from Baghdad's Ministry of Genital Clamping and they're pining for the smack of firm government." "Some matters reside beyond the domain of comedy," writes Cooper. "The rape of the National Museum of Iraq and the torching of the National Library will be lamented by historians for centuries." He concludes, "A man of Steyn's sensibilities beneath the sneer I detect a partisan of Western civilization ought to find this an occasion of immense sorrow."...