Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review Dec. 31, 2001 / 16 Teves, 5762

Robert W. Tracinski

Tracinski
JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Sam Schulman
Amity Shlaes
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports

The real person of the year


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com -- THE usual end-of-the-year retrospectives are a little different this year: they begin with Sept. 11 -- and for good reason. Can you remember, off the top of your head, what was going on before the attack on the World Trade Center? Sure, there were debates on serious issues (and on many unserious issues), but nothing that approached the scale or urgency of the Islamic terrorists' war on America.

The most important part of any year-end retrospective -- the most important because it focuses not just on events, but on the movers of events -- is the selection of a "person of the year." But the most famous attempt at this, Time magazine's Person of the Year, fell short -- almost disastrously short.

A few weeks ago, Time hinted that it might choose Osama bin Laden as Person of the Year. Most people were outraged at the suggestion, but could not say exactly why. Time's excuse was that the Person of the Year is not necessarily good or evil; he or she is the person who had the greatest influence on the year's events. But that is precisely what would have been so vicious about choosing bin Laden (or Hitler, Stalin and Mao, as Time has actually done in the past). It assumes that evil is the most important and influential force in the world, that the bad guys drive history. They don't.

There have always been evil people in the world. In better cultures, evil men are not allowed to gain power; in worse cultures, they are given command of armies, schools or networks of terrorists. The old adage is true: all that is required for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing. So when we pick the Person of the Year, we should look to the people who really count: those who do something.

By that standard, Time's selection of New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is much better -- but still does not give credit where it is most deserved.

Yes, Giuliani deserves praise for projecting a confident, competent leadership, not just to his city, but to the whole nation. More important was his speech before the United Nations -- not mentioned in Time's profile -- where Giuliani condemned the attitude of moral equivalency that regards terrorists and their sponsors as just another side in a political and diplomatic conflict.

Nevertheless, the selection of Giuliani still grants too much importance to evil. He helped us survive the aftermath of the attack -- a noble task, but still only a reaction to evil and suffering. Time's choice still sends the message that evil is in the driver's seat, that the bin Ladens of the world create disasters, and the best we can do is to survive and rebuild afterward. But there is another job that is more important: the job of striking back at terrorists and eliminating their sponsors and supporters.

That's why I think the real choice for Person of the Year is clear-cut: Donald Rumsfeld.

Could anyone have imagined, on the evening of Sept. 11, that before the year was out, bin Laden would be dead or missing and his immediate sponsors, the Taliban, would be shattered and largely destroyed -- and that all of this would be achieved with a mere handful of American casualties? The victory in Afghanistan has ensured that terrorists did not get the last word in 2001.

That's why our military, and its top official, deserve to be honored as the most important driver of the year's events. As secretary of defense, Rumsfeld has the primary responsibility for shaping our military strategy. He has been its most public voice, in almost daily press briefings, and he deserves credit for sticking with his strategy in Afghanistan when many (myself included) criticized it as inadequate.

Credit also goes to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the hard-liner who articulated, early on, the principle that should guide a wider war: "End states who sponsor terrorism." But Wolfowitz's ideas have not yet won out against Secretary of State Colin Powell's compromise and coalition-worship. President Bush deserves credit for allowing our military to do its work without too much interference. But he has refused to support Israel's war on terrorism, and he can still negate the victory in Afghanistan by ending the war now, refusing to apply to Iran and Iraq the same resolve that succeeded in Afghanistan.

That makes Rumsfeld the real Person of the Year, because his performance over the past three months reminds us that we can do more than survive this war. We can win it.



Comment on JWR contributor Robert W. Tracinski's column by clicking here.

12/26/01: With friends like us ...
12/19/01: Ending the "peace process war"
12/11/01: The ruthless grip of logic
12/04/01: War powers without war
11/27/01: An Afghanistan Thanksgiving
11/20/01: The end of the beginning
11/06/01: The phony war
10/30/01: A war against Islam
10/23/01: The economics of war
10/16/01: A culture of death
10/11/01: An empire of ideals
10/01/01: Why they hate us
09/24/01: The lessons of war
09/20/01: What a real war looks like
09/17/01: America's war song
09/12/01: It is worse than Pearl Harbor
09/11/01: Out of the fire and back into the frying pan
09/05/01: The UN Conference of Racists
08/28/01: Waging war on profits and lives
08/20/01: The Bizarro-World War
08/08/01: The death toll of environmentalism
07/31/01: Where does America stand?
07/25/01: Barbarians at the G8
07/17/01: The carrot and the carrot
07/11/01: The real Brave New World
07/03/01: The child-manipulators
06/19/01: The scientist trap
06/11/01: The National Academy of Dubious Science

© 2001, CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.