OR MAYBE it’s a town so committed to optimism–every Congress a fresh start, every presidency a new dawning–that somber contemplation of mortality is alien to its very nature.
In Washington, even the darkest cloud must be found to have a silver lining–and the protocols of power demand that the discovery of this silver lining must be attributed to the president’s inspiring leadership. The starkest events are thus diminished even as they are remembered. So, beneath a brilliant sky with a breeze to crack the flags and lift the last of the summer’s humidity, 10,000 or more people gathered on the lawn outside the Pentagon this morning to commemorate September 11 and, especially, the 184 people killed when American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the western wall of the giant building that morning. On the dais was a rollcall of Washington power: the president, the secretary of Defense, the civilian and military leaders of America’s armed forces, sundry spouses. In privileged rows close by was a panoply of native and foreign dignitaries. There were bands; a sea of pale summerdress uniforms, and a civilian throng in shirt-sleeves and sunglasses. Yet for all the bunting and ceremony it was an oddly unimpressive occasion. To this observer, at least, more a campaign rally than a commemoration.
The tone was established by the music. Whoever thought to set bleeding chunks of the Gettysburg Address to a refrain so schmaltzy that it sounded like a reject from “The Little Mermaid” should be put to conducting USO troupes around Yemen for the rest of their career accompanied into exile by whomever wrote the second effusion–“A Hero for Today”–a tune of such banal and confected “inspiration” that it could (and no doubt will) slot painlessly into Act 2 of a touring production of “Les Miserables.” One listened, and remembered the offerings of earlier days–Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” Leonard Bernstein’s “Chichester Psalms,” or for measured triumph Richard Rodger’s “Victory at Sea”–and one wondered where American gravitas had fled. When, exactly, did showbiz take over everything, even obsequies ?
The speeches were as predictable as the music, if less cloying. First Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs; then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; finally the president: all businesslike, brief, saying the obvious things in obvious ways. Appropriate, certainly; but none approaching–or seemingly even aspiring–to the sublimity of President Reagan’s soliloquy on the Challenger dead; or the sweep of his speech on the cliffs of Pointe de Hoc on the 40th anniversary of D-Day.
For this of all days, one wondered, why couldn’t the White House bring itself to ask Peggy Noonan for help? Her words gave Reagan wings. What we heard at the Pentagon today were essentially sales pitches for the war on terror–to include the coming assault on Iraq. (Bush: “There is a great deal left to do. And the greatest tasks and the greatest dangers will fall to the armed forces of the United States.” Rumsfeld: “But the terrorists aspire to even greater destruction. Unless they are stopped the light of history will fade from this day, turning its gaze instead to subsequent days, when not thousands but tens of thousands of lives could be lost.”)
It was General Myers who summoned the best phrase of the morning–and the most thought-provoking misquotation. The impact of the American Airlines jet effectively destroyed an entire side of the Pentagon; but in less than a year the building has been restored–a Herculean effort by what Myers felicitously called “the hard-hat patriots” of the construction crews, hundreds of whom were at the ceremony. “In the process [of reconstruction],” he told them, “you turned this building into another symbol, one of American resilience.”
Then came the misquote. Saying that the lesson of 9-11 is that a new generation of Americans has been called to service and sacrifice–“Now it’s our turn to bear the burden–for our children, for our grandchildren, for our fallen comrades, for America, for the world”–Myers invoked a figure from the era of the American Revolution. “The British statesman Edmund Burke once suggested: ‘All that is needed for evil to prosper is for a few good men to do nothing. I guarantee you that will not happen….”
Fascinating and revealing. Because the quote as given in most reference sources is rather different: “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing” is the commonest version. Myers version echoed the Marine Corps’ recruiting slogan– “A Few Good Men”–and conflated that with Burke. Thereby turning an observation about the need for collective action by the many into a call to arms for the elite few. Edmund Burke, patron saint of Special Forces.
The irony runs deeper. Because Burke never actually said either version. It’s probably the most famous single invented quote. (Who invented it is uncertain.) What Burke actually said was very different–but even more germane to President Bush’s efforts to unite his warring cabinet and then persuade America’s skeptical allies to support an assault on Iraq. In a speech he gave in the British Parliament in April 1770, Burke urged his quarrelling colleagues to heal their differences and listen to each other: “Whilst men are linked together, they easily and speedily communicate the alarm of any evil design. They are enabled to fathom it with common counsel, and to oppose it with united strength. Whereas, when they lie dispersed, without concert, order or discipline, communication is uncertain, counsel difficult and resistance impractical….” Burke wound up with the sentence that has been pillaged ever since: “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
In other words, Burke was saying, two heads are better than one–and 10 heads are better than two. Or, to put it another way: ask what your allies think; they may have good ideas.
A useful prescript as President Bush prepares to address the United Nations General Assembly tomorrow.
