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Jewish World Review Oct. 16, 2002 / 10 Mar-Cheshvan, 5763

Tony Snow

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Musings

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Jimmy Carter has won the Nobel Peace Prize, sealing the award's irrelevance and exposing the growing gulf between Europe and the U.S.

The former president got the award less for what he has done, that what he's said. He has spoken passionately and often about peace, unfortunately he assembled the most disastrous foreign policy record in the postwar era -- one marked by communist advancement and American impotence.

Carter understood the link between democracy and peace, but he also ignored the importance of using power to secure the blessings of liberty. Since leaving office in mild disgrace, Mr. Carter has badmouthed each of his successors.

The Chairman of the Nobel Committee actually echoed his criticism of President Bush. This lays bare the signal difference between Americans and Europeans these days: Europeans venerate poses; we celebrate accomplishments. Jimmy Carter got the tribute he long has sought, and he earned it. But now, the challenge of peace falls to George W. Bush who, one hopes, will succeed where Jimmy Carter failed.

I have a short fuse for race-baiting, and that's why I have no use for Harry Belafonte's idiotic claim that Colin Powell is a house slave in the Bush administration.

What a shallow thing to say. Belafonte managed to convert a national conversation about war and peace into a tacky discourse about old racial grievances. He also insinuated that there's only one acceptable "black" view on the topic of war with Iraq -- that assertion itself is a grotesque, racist claim. He also engaged in the ancient trick of using slurs in place of arguments.

Belafonte knows better. He participated in the 1963 march on Washington -- along with such white colleagues as Charlton Heston. But like many veterans of the Civil Rights movement, he has difficulty letting go of the bad old days, the times when racism enjoyed not only freedom of action, but respect in some places of power.

Those days are gone -- and in the post September 11th world, we have new enemies, and guess what? Colin Powell is not one of them.

The Beltway Sniper has earned a place in hell, and almost surely will get it.

After we have consoled the families of the dead and maimed, we in the Washington area will have to take up an equally challenging chore. We gotta find some way to restore our children's childhoods.

When I was a kid, the worst I had to worry about was running into a bully after school or maybe encountering an automobile when dashing across the road without looking both ways. My children have entered a much different world. Fear has become the background noise of their lives, as constant as the whisper of the wind. They believe that jets regularly crash into buildings, and bad guys hunker down, as a matter of dark and evil course, in trees and alleyways.

Evil has entered their experience shockingly and directly. It shouldn't be that way, for the one thing children ought to learn most forcefully is the presence of love, goodness and nurture. Once the madness and panic fade away, our kids - not politics - will have to come first.

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