For the week of March 20 - 26, 2002

A Bush promise doomed by history?

Commentary by PAT MURPHY

---

If President Bush achieves his hyperbolic pledge to stamp out every trace of worldwide terrorism, then he’ll succeed where others have failed since the beginning of recorded time — changing the dark side of human nature.

Despite the most diligent efforts by armies, clergymen, social do-gooders and law enforcement, crime and sin and mayhem have plagued civilization uninterrupted since humans fashioned the first spears.

History, therefore, foretells doom for the president’s swaggering promise — usually before a cheering crowd at a military base — to failure.

Another cocky Texan and wartime president, Lyndon Johnson, vowed victory in Vietnam. He repeatedly claimed to see "the light at the end of the tunnel." But LBJ failed: an enemy with primitive weaponry and stealth resisted America’s most fearsome ground, sea and air forces. The defeat cost LBJ public support and he retired rather than face voters.

Military arms have never stifled the human lust for bloodshed by religious radicals, nationalistic revolutionaries, economic class warriors and heaven knows what other impulses and causes.

Forget foreign terrorists: we have our hands full with the homegrown variety — radical environmental extremists who sabotage, the Timothy McVeighs and skulking militias with loony aims, abortion clinic bombers, urban drug gangs, Internet hackers.

So, while Afghanistan may be rid of soldiers of Al Qaeda, President Bush’s pledge to spend whatever is necessary and take as long as needed to end terrorism everywhere should be regarded realistically for what it is: political cheerleading, or, more likely, a president trying to silence congressional questions about his military spending and hoping to make himself seem indispensable for a second term.

•

"Chutzpah" is Yiddish for gall and arrogance.

There’s a new Catholic equivalent for gall and arrogance — Cardinal Bernard F. Law, archbishop of the Boston Diocese.

Cardinal Law admits concealing the sexual molestation of hundreds of young men by more than 80 priests in his diocese and conspiring to keep the serial sexual abuse a secret by shifting priests to new parishes.

Now what would happen if, say, the principal of an elementary school discovered that male teachers had molested children, then transferred the teachers to another school without alerting authorities?

That principal would be fired from his job and charged with being an accessory to a felony, while the teachers would’ve been arrested and charged as sex criminals.

But Cardinal Law seems above the law: Massachusetts authorities have yet to lay a finger on a man of such power, despite his admission of complicity in concealing crimes.

Now Cardinal Law takes his arrogance to a new level by (a) dismissing his conduct with an airy apology, (b) refusing demands by parishioners that he resign, and (c) asking Boston Catholics to dig deep to help pay off most of $100 million in legal settlements he has arranged with men who were sexually abused by priests.

Cardinal Law’s gall can only get worse: he’ll undoubtedly show up at Mass to hypocritically lecture his flock on the evils and abomination of committing sins.

 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.