Michel's Commentary
 
by Michel Dresser

12/18/2001  888WebToday

Henry Robinson Luce was the son of  missionaries, he had missionary blood in his veins.  Henry spent his life as a missionary.  He was the man who coined the phrase, "The American Century," to describe the hundred years just passed.  Henry devoted a large part of that century propagating American ideals -- democracy, capitalism, progress -- and he founded Time Magazine.

A quarter of a century ago, Time Magazine came up with the idea of naming a "Man Of The Year" and printing his face on the cover at the end of each year.

This year, Time Magazine is thinking of putting Osama bin Laden on the cover! Osama, of course, represents the very opposite of everything Henry R. Luce championed as "American."  Osama's Al Quaida network and their Taliban allies, in Afghanistan, are the last gasp of a fanatical, tyrannical and reactionary resistance to what they perceive as the evils of the modern world -- the modern world that is summed up by that twentieth century Mr. Luce rightly called "The American Century."  As someone  at the Pentagon supposedly joked -- "You can't bomb Osama back to the Stone Age, because he's already there!"

Of course, Osama is infamous. His is the face of a man who wantonly murdered thousands of innocent Americans.

Putting that face on the cover of Time Magazine, therefore, is an idea which has understandably provoked considerable controversy.

Its defenders point out that Time Magazine is interested in acknowledging newsmakers; and Osama has certainly made news.  They further observe that Time Magazine has not scrupled to display some notorious tyrants and mass murderers as "Man Of The Year" in past editions.

Adolph Hitler was "Man Of The Year" in 1938. Josef Stalin made it twice, once in 1939 and again in 1942.

But there is a difference.  Hitler was not recognized as "Man Of The Year" for his extermination camps.  Stalin was not singled out for having constructed the GULAG Archipelago.  Hitler had managed to make Germany a great power in Europe once again, after Germany's defeat in World War One. Stalin had consolidated power in Russia -- The man whose name means steel in Russian -- presided over a vast Communist Empire.

By contract, however, Osama bin Laden is known for one thing and one thing only he murdered a lot of people. Were it not for his acts of mass murder on the 11th of September, he would hardly merit a footnote in our recent history.  He would be remembered as the guy Bill Clinton claimed  to be trying to get, to distract our attention from his grand jury proceedings during the Monica Lewinski affair.

September 11, 2001, produced a wellspring of american heroes, any one of whom could deserve to be called "Man Of The Year."  In and of itself, just being a successful mass murderer ought not to be enough to confer the title on Osama.

And those are my thoughts......
 
 

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