Sorry, folks - I was just too busy today to get a full-length post off. But, before the day is over, allow me to direct you to one of the most important interviews I've read in a long time:

Marek Edelman is the last surviving military leader of the heroic Jewish Uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. He recently spoke to a Polish television channel TVN24, and the interview has been re-published in a Polish weekly "Przekroj". It's not available anywhere else in English (or for that matter electronically), so I take this opportunity to translate and publish extensive excerpts from the interview. Edelman experienced evil many times in his long and distinguished life; he has also faced it and fought it bravely. What he has to say bears listening to.

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Interviewer: There are more and more voices saying that Poland shouldn't work so close with the Americans and that instead we should get closer to France and Germany.

[Marek] Edelman: France used to be a great power, culturally and intellectually. And what happened to them? They didn't want to fight for their own democracy, they thought it wasn't really their war [in 1939]. And they lost everything, because when you bend over and take it - even once - then you're finished. And what's that whole talk about the difference between American politics and European politics? There is no other politics but international democratic politics. If we withdraw from Iraq now, what do we have left? Cosying up to Iran and Saudi Arabia? ...

Interviewer: Is it possible to introduce democracy by force?

Edelman: Yugoslavia showed that it's possible... [Not to mention Japan and Germany - Ed.]

Interviewer: You used your own personal history and your moral authority to appeal for the intervention then.

Edelman: Yes... Those who say that you don't have to fight for freedom, don't understand what fascism is. I do.