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I'm sure it was upsetting to Karl Rove, but the incident where a crowd "swarmed" his house surely has its amusing side.
(For the most part the crowd was peaceful, but there was a time when "the crowd ... grew more aggressive, fanning around the three accessible sides of Rove's house, tracking him through the many windows, waving signs that read 'Say Yes to DREAM' and pounding on the glass. At one point, Rove rushed to a window, pointed a finger and yelled something inaudible.")
When Rove finally proposed that he meet with only two leaders, and the others all get back on the buses and disperse, they agreed. Then he yelled at the two spokespeople: "Palacios said that Rove was 'very upset' and was 'yelling in our faces' and that Rove told them 'he hoped we were proud to make his 14-year-old and 10-year-old cry.'
"A White House spokesman said one of the children was a neighbor."
For some reason this takes me back to a biography of the Duke of Wellington I read recently. The Duke returned to England after his heroics in the Napoleonic wars, and lived for another thirty years. The public's view of him went up and down, ranging from seeing him almost literally as a god, to shouting at him and swarming him, and even breaking windows on his house.
1820: someone plans to stab the Duke as he walks home, but loses courage at the last moment. When a plot against the Cabinet became known, the Duke proposed that Ministers dine at their usual place, but with pistols. Most of them ate elsewhere instead, but Castlereagh fell into the habit of carrying "pocket pistols at the dinner-table." A group of roadmenders with pickaxes stopped the Duke's horse, and demanded that he say "God save the Queen." He did so, with a flourish.
1831: "Parliament had been dissolved, and London illuminated for Reform [extending the franchise or vote to more people]. A cheerful mob paraded Piccadilly on the look-out for recalcitrant householders. Dark windows meant a Tory occupant; ... the Duke was the last man in London who was likely to put candles in his windows for Reform in order to oblige a mob; and presently the stones began to crash into the silent rooms...until a servant on the roof let off a blunderbuss...."
1832: the Duke rides from home, and a crowd gathers to confront him on his return. A magistrate offers to help, and the Duke says he simply needs to be clear on the route to follow, so he doesn't have to turn back on the mob. "They tried to drag him from his horse in Fenchurch Street; but two Chelsea pensioners appeared....There was some stone-throwing in Holborn....an obliging gentleman...drove a tilbury behind him for some time [and] gave valuable cover....Two policemen joined the little party...." The Duke made it home safely, being observed by many walking the horse slowly, staring between the horse's ears. This episode was on June 18--anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.
Of course, in happier times the Duke was often cheered in the street. One can imagine what he would have thought of the idea of having hired security with him at all times. When he died in 1852 the Duke was granted a state funeral, and had a huge funeral procession--perhaps the biggest in Victorian London?
Update: Good old Roy Jenkins:
"His state funeral, in St. Paul's Cathedral (although somewhat chaotically organized), was on a scale never previously seen for someone not a sovereign and only twice subsequently rivaled by other 'nonroyals' -- Gladstone in 1898 and Churchill in 1965."
One bizarre thing about the ongoing war/constitution-making in Iraq is that street-level accounts of what is going on vary so widely.
Margaret Wente at the Globe and Mail has probably been at the extreme of saying: Baghdad, at least, is like a Western city, and virtually everyone is better off than they were under Saddam.
Here is the other extreme: Nir Rosen, who calls Baghdad his "adopted city," in Reason Online.
He suggests the violence is pretty well constant, especially at night:
"You never hear about most of it because the press never hears about most of it. And if the press wasn't there, it never happened. Baghdad is a huge sprawling city with poor communication, and it is impossible for the press or the occupying army to know what is happening everywhere."
He speaks of increasing, not decreasing, religious hatred between Sunnis and Shiites:
"'We don't talk about civil war,' one Sunni tribal leader told me. "We just prepare for it.'"
What does the good news from the Governing Council and the Provisional Authority actually mean?
"Sunni and Shi'ite leaders were quick to condemn the new interim constitution for its secularism. They were united in calling the Quran their only constitution. They need not have worried since what happens in the walled-off 'Green Zone' of the Occupiers is a land of make believe that does not affect the rest of Iraqis living in the 'Red Zone' which is the rest of the country. Westerners who work for the Occupation in the green zone rarely venture beyond its walls; Iraq is as alien to them as they are to Iraqis."
I for one have been cheered by news that the university scene is not too bad, but:
"The minister of higher education has banned all student unions that are not ethnically or religiously based. He is forcing even Christian girls to cover their heads and instituting mandatory Islamic education."
Chillingly, the bombers, whoever, they are, may be carefully performing for Western media: "At least we didn't have to go far; the resistance is considerate enough to strike close to the hotels and neighborhoods where the press reside."
Other highlights:
"Unlike the murderous accuracy of the Israeli security forces, who at least speak Arabic, the American security forces are a blunt instrument. They arrest hundreds at once, hoping somebody will know something. One morning in the village of Albu Hishma, the local US commander decided to bulldoze any house that had pro-Saddam graffiti on it, and gave half a dozen families a few minutes to remove whatever they cared about the most before their homes were flattened."
One thing that I think noone wants to talk much about is the whole phenomenon of ex-staffers rushing into print with a book about their experiences working with and for the decision-makers.
It's part of being a good, loyal staffer to stay out of sight, out of mind. It seems a major deviation from that understanding to go public within a few months of leaving, saying "look at me, look at me"--even if you have a lot of praise for former employers and colleagues.
Exhibit A would be Peggy Noonan. I like much of her writing, and I give her full credit for rising from an anonymous young speechwriter in the White House to one of these top echelon columnists. Her book on Reagan, unlike Clarke's book, was largely praise for her old boss. The somewhat newsworthy angle was that it was a bit surprising someone like her--a woman of Irish Catholic background, from a blue collar Democrat family, supported Reagan so strongly even before he gave her career a big lift.
So what's wrong here? Noonan's book, like all such books, brings the implication: "look at me, I'm so smart and accomplished". At the very least there is an implication: "not like some other staffers I could mention"; "boy, it's a good thing I was there to save the day". In practice it goes further: that former boss, for whom I continue to have great respect, was a little bit ... let us say ... lacking if he was left to himself. He needed a really energetic genius like me.
In the case of Reagan, Noonan's insinuations probably did no harm. Lots of people had already suggested in print that he was distracted and poorly briefed on many issues. She went to some trouble to indicate that he actually worked quite hard on specific speeches, making sure many of the words were his.
But what about Bush Senior? My theory, really just a guess, is that some of Reagan's staffers deliberately began to leak the news as to which speeches Noonan worked on--the D-Day ones, etc. Even there the idea was: we're not just a bunch of aging white guys from the country club, looking around for someplace to take a nap; look, we have a young, smart and funny Irish Catholic woman working for us!
As I say, this didn't harm Reagan, as far as I can tell. But poor Bush Senior constantly laboured under the perception that he had no ideas at all. He responded to this, unfortunately, by admitting that he might have lacked "the vision thing" (probably adding under this breath, "whatever the hell that is!"). Add the idea that Noonan is all kinds of smart, flexible and good with words (her book coming out in 1990), to the idea that Bush Sr. is indeed a kind of mannequin from the country club, and you deeply reinforce the notion that Bush Sr. doesn't have a chance against, say, Clinton (in 1992).
In short, it will usually happen that a book by a recently-departed staffer, if it succeeds at all, will diminish the former boss--you know, the one who has actually communicated directly with voters, and gotten elected. Not only that, these books collectively seem to reinforce the idea that staffers are young (or have far more credentials than the politicans), Machiavellian in a good way, just what a party needs to succeed, and they have to constantly work to make democratic leaders barely competent. There's something wrong here.
Update: According to a reviewer on Legal Libraries:
"Working in that speechwriting shop, Noonan gave Reagan some of his most successful emotional appeals: The D-Day anniversary paean to "The Boys of Pointe du Hoc," the tribute to the Challenger astronauts. She followed that up with one of the most effective political attacks in US political history, George H.W. Bushs evisceration of his 1988 opponent, Michael Dukakis, at the New Orleans GOP convention."
Obviously there are a lot of issues in this controversy that will take time to sort out. Bush's critics keep saying the Administration has been hesitant to make anything like a full story available. Even now they are digging out a limited number of documents to make Clarke look bad.
I'll repeat, like Kevin Drum, that the period before 9/11 is far less interesting than the period after. But still:
1. How did the approach to international terrorism change in the transition from Clinton to Bush? Less money or other resources, or more? Higher profile at decision-making tables and briefings, or less? More work on different possible responses to different crises--or some kind of master plan that took 8 months to prepare?
2. Has there been a focussed, intelligent attack on international terrorism, even to this day? Did the war in Iraq somehow detract from such an effort?
3. What are the indications that the war on Iraq is actually helping, not hurting, in the larger war (a possibility Clarke does not seem to allow for)?
One of the most interesting things Clarke has said is that the Bushies were focussed on "Cold War issues," including missile defence and, yes, Iraq. I think in the latter case we should speak of "immediate post-Cold War issues," but the point is clear: let's take up where the last Republican administration left off, constantly implying Clinton screwed everything up.
Bush ran as a proud isolationist in 2000, and he took a lot of vacation time in his first eight months in office. But the neo-cons clearly had their opportunities to get to him: there is no longer a Communist threat, but there is another threat that is just as bad: radical Islam/terrorism. They probably presented the Mylroie material about Saddam being involved in everything bad that happened outside Iraq; and Chalabi material comparing Saddam to Hitler and Stalin inside. In conclusion, they would have suggested that regime change in Iraq would have positive ripple effects throughout the region.
In other words, I am guessing this was going on, perhaps with no great sense of urgency, before 9/11. I really don't think it was ever primarily about oil, or helping a few of Cheney's friends. (On the other hand, Bremer stands out even compared to his predecessor for wanting maximum involvement in Iraq by multinational oil companies; and Cheney's friends include both Haliburton and Chalabi).
I also don't think it was primarily some sort of flanking action to help Israel. Someone has written that Israel was actually much more concerned about Iran than Iraq. I think for a while Bush was truly focussed on the "road map," but it hasn't had much attention from him recently.
The people around Bush Senior probably tended to feel badly about the way Gulf War I turned out. They loved the idea of "making that right" (without, of course, admitting that they had ever done anything wrong). Bush Jr. could both continue and improve upon his father's legacy--surely the dream of many an older son.
But then the big question: how did this become the predominant plan, occupying far more resources than any other theatre of action, after 9/11?
It still made sense to them, I would suggest, to see the world as it was just after the Cold War. One can reason with big, powerful Moslem states, no matter how bizarre the regimes in place seem: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, even Pakistan. The much bigger problem is the "rogue states." But these are basically the rogue states of 10 years earlier. The Axis of Evil included North Korea--we are still waiting to find out exactly what kind of nuclear program they have. We are hearing more about Libya and Syria, even though they weren't officially in the "Axis." They are autocratic regimes, democratizing would seem to be good for them, and progress on this front will support the idea that invading Iraq made sense.
But: when was the last time anyone was frightened by Syria or Libya? Iran is not what it once was--it seems Pakistan was selling them nuclear technology, but in such small and outdated increments that they still have no actual weapons--and Iraq, as we know, was virtually defenceless. Some of these countries used to have air forces, and modern tanks. Now they're sliding into the true Third World, with the poorer African countries.
Meanwhile Bush has hardly said boo about Pakistan itself, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia. Everything is supposed to be copacetic with Russia, where the KGB has a tight hold. Turkey is our trusted NATO ally, period. Maybe Bush's critics are wrong in their specific predictions. Maybe he isn't generating recruits for the terrorists, or causing Al Qaeda to grow. It still doesn't follow that he knows what he's doing.
(Powell has apparently been leading the new diplomacy-based "Democracy" initiative, including a trip to Saudi Arabia to negotiate freedom for prisoners. Christopher Hitchens writes about Kurdish uprisings in Syria, clearly inspired by the autonomy of Kurds in Iraq, and bizarrely says Powell, "as usual," was in the wrong place at the wrong time.)
It all reminds me of the old saying that generals fight the last war. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Powell all remember Gulf War I very vividly. Maybe they started Gulf War II because they really couldn't imagine what the new war is going to look like.
Glenn Reynolds (and others) always asks: what plan do Bush's critics have? This is a fair question. I would go farther. It is probably true that the people (like Kerry) who now say: "great to be tough and deploy troops, but you didn't do it right, or in the right place"-- would not actually have favoured any big deployment of troops, or "tough" action, anywhere. It is only after Bush shows tough action is in their future that they say: OK, but do it differently.
In other words, there is some truth in saying the pro-Bushies are in favour of taking action against "terror," even if Iraq is only tangentially involved; the anti-Bushies are against action, or say they honestly don't know what to do.
From Al-Jazeera, of all sources:
"Before the American invasion of Iraq, its leader, Saddam Hussein, was one of the Arab world's strongest supporters of Palestinians. He regularly made lump-sum payments to surviving family members of suicide bombers and provided financial assistance for the families of bombers made homeless in Israeli reprisals."
I've seen something in the last few days that says Iraq under Saddam was the single biggest source of such payments; then there is a kind of throw-away line that about one-half of all such payments came from...the United States. Not the government, of course, but individuals supporting their favourite cause, like Irish-Americans supporting the IRA.
I need to find out more.
Maybe the U.S. is really having some success in cutting away the fuel that has fed the fires in the Mid East.
OK, this is perhaps one of the smaller points in the whole controversy about Richard Clarke.
Did Condi Rice somehow indicate that she was not aware of the existence of Al Qaeda early in 2001?
Instapundit links to Henry Hanks, who quotes from an earlier interview to show that Rice was plenty aware of Osama Bin Laden. But this doesn't really answer the question.
Clarke: "As I briefed Rice on Al Qaeda, her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard of the term before, so I added, 'Most people think of it as Osama bin Laden's group, but it's much more than that. It's a network of affiliated terrorist organizations with cells in over 50 countries, including the U.S.'"
Unfortunately, Clarke doesn't do himself much good by talking about her facial expression, but he says he was concerned that some people, even very influential people, might be worried about Bin Laden, while not being aware of the extent to which he was part of a multi-national, somewhat loosely organized organization, Al Quaeda.
The earlier Rice interview (October 2000; Hanks says a year earlier, but surely it was just three months or so) shows she was aware of Bin Laden, and his roots in a couple of countries--even that he might strike the U.S.; she doesn't mention Al Qaeda, and for all we can tell it might be true that she had no awareness that Bin Laden might be part of an organization that was active in 50 countries.
Lots of people now matter-of-factly go on as if Clarke has been refuted on this point; as far as I can see, he hasn't. I don't mean to disparage Dr. Rice--she has had a very distinguished career in a number of fields. I believe she has admitted her academic background was in the Communist/ex-communist countries, not the Middle East. It does seem possible that she had precisely the gap in her awareness that Clarke points to.
As soon as Richard Clarke took to the airwaves to criticize the Bush Administration, Condeleeza Rice was ready with a rebuttal. Clarke says the Bush folks did not take Al Qaeda, or international terrorism in general, seriously enough, either before or after 9/11. Before 9/11, probably very few people thought there was a major risk for the U.S. to deal with, so the debate as to who was worse, Clinton or Bush, is a bit beside the point.
The allegations about the time after 9/11 are more interesting. Were there senior people, including Wolfowitz, who kept saying Saddam must be involved in 9/11 somehow? Were these people persuaded by Laurie Mylroie? (Peter Bergen via Matthew Ygeliasis' blog and via Kevin Drum).
In any case Rice denies some of Clarke's main points. She says Al Qaeda was a high priority from shortly after Bush's Inauguration; that the old methods, which were presumably advocated by Clarke, would have done no good; and that an entirely new plan was devised, and was ready before 9/11.
Before 9/11: "We would attempt to compel the Taliban to stop giving al Qaeda sanctuary -- and if it refused, we would have sufficient military options to remove the Taliban regime. The strategy focused on the key role of Pakistan in this effort and the need to get Pakistan to drop its support of the Taliban. This became the first major foreign-policy strategy document of the Bush administration -- not Iraq, not the ABM Treaty, but eliminating al Qaeda."
After 9/11: "Once advised that there was no evidence that Iraq was responsible for Sept. 11, the president told his National Security Council on Sept. 17 that Iraq was not on the agenda and that the initial U.S. response to Sept. 11 would be to target al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan."
One could paraphrase a bit unfairly: it would be truly troubling if we actually planned to expend considerable resources on Iraq; thank goodness, we weren't such idiots as that.
How then did the Iraq invasion come about? There may be a growing consensus that it was not the smartest thing to do. Defenders of Bush's actions pretty much say simply: there is no turning back, or we will show weakness. Of course they also say things could still turn out fine: democracy, and all that. It is certainly fair to say things in Iraq could still turn out OK, even if "gloriously" has become unlikely. (I envisage Ahmed Chalabi being chased out of Iraq by a mob that is shooting at him. As he jumps to avoid the gunfire, cartoon-style, he keeps shouting "Dick Cheney! Dick Cheney!")
In a way the best argument for the U.S. invasion is one that is not mentioned by Clarke (as far as I know) nor by Rice in this piece. This was to the effect that Iraq could be a model for democratizing and Westernizing in the Arab world. It was big enough, and historically significant enough, to be a real test case showing that the trend was not inevitably anti-Western and anti-democracy.
This could still be the mirror image of the WMD and "Iraq threatening the world" argument. The more certain the Bushies were that Saddam was practically defenceless, the more sense it made to invade--since this could presumably be done at little cost. Similarly, Iraq's remarkable freedom from religious fanaticism and terrorism--even, apparently, from fundamentalism on a large scale, acting through effective organizations--would be good signs. It is possible to disagree as to whether the Administration was lying or simply spinning, and even as to whether the invasion was a good thing or not, and still agree that this is what they were thinking.
Iraq was relatively secular, and (at least potentially) relatively wealthy, with an established middle class. It should be a promising place to build democracy. Of course it would be difficult to get permission for an invasion that was certainly not defensive, and was not even pre-emptive in any meaningful sense; but Saddam's regime was so brutal, it would surely be possible to get forgiveness later.
Some time ago, Stephen den Beste spelled out the "democratizing the Mid East" rationale for the war, and said the public couldn't face the truth, so some spinning about weapons and so on was necessary. Josh Marshall offered a similar analysis, but was more critical of what he called Bush's "lies." Daniel Drezner did a nice job of summarizing and then refereeing the debate, first on his own blog, then guest-blogging at Volokh.
Matthew Yglesias has an update on the Tapped site. David Brooks has given a passing mention to "democratizing the whole Mid East" in recent days, and Safire has written a column saying this is still the main reason for the U.S. invasion. But the best hope Safire can offer specifically is that Iraq may get more like Afghanistan. As Yglesias says, this would be neither a great situation for Iraqis, nor an improvement in the safety of the world.
Yglesias says the Administration has "climbed down" from their recently-announced Democracy in the Mid East initiative--which would apparently have been something like the Helsinki Accord on human rights. Recent news on Google is mixed. One story says the U.S. has challenged Saudi Arabia to free some prisoners; another says the U.S. has at least scaled back on the idea of any big new initiative.
Is the Bush team losing some of its ardour to change the world?
Yglesias also wonders if the Bush Administration has done much actual planning for the post-June 30 regime in Iraq.
OK, I know this gets monotonous.
I'm not a scientist, but I'm always glad to see an intelligent argument that says either: global warming isn't that bad, or there is nothing cost-effective we can do about it.
(One major argument in Bjorn Lomborg's The Sceptical Environmentalist (recently vindicated by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DSCD)) was that the major annual report on global warming (IPCC?) used to include a cost/benefit analysis--by far the most useful section for decision-makers. Then...they stopped including it. See Lomborg's exchange with Tom Burke.)
Here goes Ron Bailey on Hit and Run again.
But wait, didn't some Pentagon report recently confirm the worst predictions of global warming, combined with the need of drastic governmental actions? What does this mean?
I don't know. As I recall, the head of the Pentagon committee is about 80 years old. Maybe they need mandatory retirement.
Nice piece by Fred Kaplan on Slate, drawing on the NYT for yesterday and today.
The new Prime Minister of Spain has said:
"The occupation of Iraq has been poorly managed. ... If there isn't a change and the United Nations doesn't take charge of the situation and the occupying forces don't cede political control, the Spanish troops will return and the deadline for their presence there will be June 30."
This is very carefully worded. Is it really opposed to what the Bush administration is now saying? Ceding political control--not military control: the plan seems to be for the U.S. to withdraw from high profile sites, especially Baghdad, but they will still have a substantial military presence in Iraq for some time to come.
More interesting: the UN taking over, at least to some extent, from the U.S.? This might seem anathema to Bushies. Certainly there have been conflicting stories from members of the Iraqi Governing Council. Ahmed Chalabi seems firmly opposed to UN intervention. (I suppose it's possible that he's out of date on the Bush message). The Grand Ayatollah Sistani, who may be on his way to being a de facto ruler of much of the country, is strongly in favour of a UN presence. Paul Bremer, amazingly enough, is lecturing Iraqis to accept a considerable UN presence.
"In the morning meeting on Wednesday, Mr. Bremer warned the Iraqi leaders that they risked isolating themselves and their country if they continued to snub the United Nations."
Zapatero is simply asking in public that the U.S. live up to its own (apparent) pledges.
As Kaplan says, this seems to confirm that the real Bush plan is not quite the bellicose one that many neo-cons are still sticking to. Not regime change, with a real threat of violence, in a series of countries, but multilateralism in Iraq and perhaps a re-trenching.
We haven't heard much more about a "new Helsinki Accord"--emphasizing peaceful engagement, along with a commitment to human rights, in cooperation with one's most bitter enemies, partly to encourage domestic opposition to brutal regimes.
On the other hand, the desire to cease the present occupation of Iraq, and free up troops from the U.S. elsewhere, may be a desire not to escape from the war on terror, but to prosecute it more vigorously than Bush has done so far. Zapatero has also said: "My most immediate priority is to fight all forms of terrorism." Iraq may have been a digression from the beginning.
(Update: more and more of the "coalition of the willing," or whatever, are coming to this conclusion: Besides Spain, Poland, South Korea (via Kevin Drum), and Honduras (via Jim Pinkerton)).
Perhaps the U.S. wants to have sufficient forces available to go back into Afghanistan/Pakistan.
Update: Kaplan has a little fun with Bremer. This remark shows especially clearly how much things have changed:
"Mr. Bremer pointedly warned them [Iraqi leaders] of a 'confrontation' with the United States if the Iraqis failed to invite the [U.N.] back."
Ah yes. Accept multilateralism and the U.N.--or else. Perhaps not the way one would expect a liberator to address liberatees, but still.
Kaplan's line, commenting on the view that anyone who snubs the U.N. risks being isolated: "Ah, if only Bremer had issued this warning to America's leaders a year ago."
Meanwhile, there is a database available (.pdf file) of "misleading" remarks by Bush administration officials, particularly in the months leading up to March 2003, to the effect that Saddam's Iraq threatened the U.S., or anyone outside Iraq's borders; that Saddam had WMDs, or nukes; that he had ties to Al Qaeda and 9/11, etc. (via Hit and Run).
We finally bought the South Park video, so I have the song "Blame Canada" fresh on my mind:
All that hockey hullaballoo
And that bitch Anne Murray too.
We are once more in the midst of a hockey hullaballoo. Is the sport too lenient toward violence and fighting during games? Should they crack down harder on these activities which are arguably distractions from "real" hockey?
Don Cherry, Canada's biggest TV star, is in the middle of this. He appears for about five minutes during "Hockey Night in Canada" on Saturday nights. He prefers guys who are tough and masculine, whose names are easy to pronounce. He has a habit of belittling Europeans and "French guys."
He often makes the perfectly sensible point that if you don't allow violence to have an outlet in one way, it will come out in another. For one example, if you heavily penalize the use of fists in a fight, you will encourage the players who take shots with their sticks--since there will be less retribution. These are dirtier players, and they can inflict just as much injury--but it is often difficult to see what they are doing.
In fact there is a place for the "enforcers," who mete out rough justice for their team without relying on the referees to call penalties.
Cherry also argues that safety equipment such as visors may make players feel invincible, and this may lead to more serious injuries. This is surely a case that can be made.
Cherry has said the right things about the Bertuzzi episode--this was something like aggravated assault, and should be punished accordingly. He also implies, as I think many will, that there were ways for Moore's coach, and even Moore himself, to dispel the building pressure, with Bertuzzi getting more and more frustrated as he pulled at Moore's sweater.
As for what "real" hockey is: I'm not really a fan, but it seems clear that barely controlled violence is very much a part of the game. Big, strong athletes skate hard in what is really quite a small area. They are constantly speeding up and slowing down. They play short, intense shifts. They can't avoid constantly banging into each other, and checking is very much a part of the game. Fans like it when a fight breaks out--it is a release of pressure for everyone in the arena.
It's great to see a talented player who isn't a tough guy--such as Wayne Gretzky--succeed, but Gretzky has never had any illusions about the place of violence, and the need for enforcement. I think he likes the game the way it is.
Watching or reading about "old-time" hockey is amazing. I just saw a few minutes about Terry Sawchuk in goal. He barely wore any equipment at all--certainly not a helmet, and his padding was a joke by today's standards. In one playoff series, he distinguished himself by stopping slap shots from Bobby Hull. Sawchuk's body became covered with colourful bruises as the series went on.
I remember reading about the end of the playing career of Scotty Bowman, who I believe has the most victories of any coach. Bowman was hit over the head by another player--a two-handed shot with the stick that put him in hospital with serious injuries. The article said Bowman has never said a word of complaint about the other player--who went on to have more of a career as a player than Bowman did.
Part of hockey as it has actually been played is like boxing--a real test of toughness or heart. Regardless of your skills, you won't succeed without that.
Colby Cosh is all over this.
As for Canadians teaching American kids to have potty mouths, does anyone else remember MacLean and MacLean?
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