Liberal Talk Radio

On this, the week of Iraqi elections, this image seemed poignant:

I was at Seattle’s wonderful MOHAI museum yesterday, where they have an exhibit celebrating the first round-the-world flight, in 1924, which took off from Seattle. One of the pilots wrote this passage in his journal en route from Belgrade to Baghdad. In case you can’t read it, here’s what it says:

From Baghdad to Belgrade, July 9 – July 12, 1924

We crossed the snow-capped Taurus by the route of the Berlin Baghdad Railway. When the airplane comes into its own, it is destined to have an immense influence on the peace of the world. it will bring all peoples into contact, and war will soon be out of date.

Keep in mind that this is just 10 years after Belgrade was the epicenter of World War I, and only a couple years after the creation of the state of Iraq, and the first Iraqi kick-the-Brits-out revolution.