Conor Cruise O Brien

"Siege" we are told in the dictionary is the condition of being cut off from all sources of nourishment or reinforcement and thus becoming obliged either to surrender to the violence of the besiegers or to perish from famine and thirst. According to this criterion, Israel is just about the least besieged country on the face of the globe. No other human society is more in pursuit of external aid or more successful in obtaining it.

Nearly 40 years ago, I spent time with the late Conor Cruise O'Brien, one of the 20th century's most formidable intellectual journalists. Like many naturally contentious men possessed of restlessly great minds, he could be spectacularly wrong, but his firsthand experience of the world was vast, and he had a politician's gift for aphoristic profundity. He patiently explained to me, for example, that all the worst international controversies could be divided into "problems" and "situations.

Admirers of Conor Cruise O'Brien, the celebrated Irish writer, polemicist, statesman and diplomat, know him as a provocative and irascible intellectual whose stubborn refusal to adopt comfortable positions has drawn comparisons to Albert Camus and George Orwell.

Two of the English-speaking world's most influential political intellectuals died late this week. Their legacies, however, are as contradictory as they are relevant, which makes their respective lives worth a few moments of reflection. Paul Weyrich, one of the primary architects of contemporary American conservatism, was 66 when he died Thursday in Fairfax, Va. His comrade Richard Viguerie -- the direct-mail genius of the American right -- said that Weyrich deserved to be ranked alongside Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan as a pillar of modern conservatism.

Abba Eban in the opening paragraph of his otherwise unexceptionable review of my book "The Siege" provides a definition of siege which he ascribes to "the dictionary." I wonder whether he would tell your readers which dictionary? It is not the definition provided either by Webster or by the Oxford English Dictionary, and it doesn't represent standard English usage. What it describes--absolutely accurately--is the condition which all besiegers aim to bring about. In my title I use siege in its generally accepted meaning: an effort to cut off the besieged party and bring about its surrender.

Two of the English-speaking world's most influential political intellectuals died late this week. Their legacies, however, are as contradictory as they are relevant, which makes their respective lives worth a few moments of reflection. Paul Weyrich, one of the primary architects of contemporary American conservatism, was 66 when he died Thursday in Fairfax, Va. His comrade Richard Viguerie -- the direct-mail genius of the American right -- said that Weyrich deserved to be ranked alongside Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan as a pillar of modern conservatism.

Nearly 40 years ago, I spent time with the late Conor Cruise O'Brien, one of the 20th century's most formidable intellectual journalists. Like many naturally contentious men possessed of restlessly great minds, he could be spectacularly wrong, but his firsthand experience of the world was vast, and he had a politician's gift for aphoristic profundity. He patiently explained to me, for example, that all the worst international controversies could be divided into "problems" and "situations.

Twenty years ago Conor Cruise O'Brien tried to write a conventional chronological biography of Edmund Burke, the 18th-Century writer and statesman, and found he couldn't. His subject kept going flat on him. The problem, he tells us, is that the Burke he was trying to re-create--the calmly penetrating, supremely rational conservative thinker and orator--was history's, and O'Brien's, misapprehension.

You won't find many biographies, particularly from university presses, that make their title a first name: not "James" for Joyce nor "Leo" for Tolstoy nor "Immanuel" for Kant. Not only does Donald Harman Akenson use "Conor" as title for his account of the Irish writer, editor, diplomat, politician, polemicist, professor and peace- and trouble-maker Conor Cruise O'Brien; but he invariably refers to him that way in the text.

As if the slurs and mudslinging of a prolonged presidential campaign have not caused pain enough, along comes Conor Cruise O'Brien, the distinguished Irish journalist and diplomat, with an urgent demand to eject Thomas Jefferson from America's pantheon of national heroes.

Admirers of Conor Cruise O'Brien, the celebrated Irish writer, polemicist, statesman and diplomat, know him as a provocative and irascible intellectual whose stubborn refusal to adopt comfortable positions has drawn comparisons to Albert Camus and George Orwell.

As if the slurs and mudslinging of a prolonged presidential campaign have not caused pain enough, along comes Conor Cruise O'Brien, the distinguished Irish journalist and diplomat, with an urgent demand to eject Thomas Jefferson from America's pantheon of national heroes.

You won't find many biographies, particularly from university presses, that make their title a first name: not "James" for Joyce nor "Leo" for Tolstoy nor "Immanuel" for Kant. Not only does Donald Harman Akenson use "Conor" as title for his account of the Irish writer, editor, diplomat, politician, polemicist, professor and peace- and trouble-maker Conor Cruise O'Brien; but he invariably refers to him that way in the text.

Twenty years ago Conor Cruise O'Brien tried to write a conventional chronological biography of Edmund Burke, the 18th-Century writer and statesman, and found he couldn't. His subject kept going flat on him. The problem, he tells us, is that the Burke he was trying to re-create--the calmly penetrating, supremely rational conservative thinker and orator--was history's, and O'Brien's, misapprehension.

Abba Eban in the opening paragraph of his otherwise unexceptionable review of my book "The Siege" provides a definition of siege which he ascribes to "the dictionary." I wonder whether he would tell your readers which dictionary? It is not the definition provided either by Webster or by the Oxford English Dictionary, and it doesn't represent standard English usage. What it describes--absolutely accurately--is the condition which all besiegers aim to bring about. In my title I use siege in its generally accepted meaning: an effort to cut off the besieged party and bring about its surrender.

"Siege" we are told in the dictionary is the condition of being cut off from all sources of nourishment or reinforcement and thus becoming obliged either to surrender to the violence of the besiegers or to perish from famine and thirst. According to this criterion, Israel is just about the least besieged country on the face of the globe. No other human society is more in pursuit of external aid or more successful in obtaining it.

Gunfire from mercenaries caused the plane crash that killed U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold in 1961 in Africa, two former U.N. officials said in a letter published Friday. The mercenaries were hired by Belgian, American and British mining companies that feared their business would be hurt by Hammarskjold's attempt to mediate a dispute in Zaire, a copper-rich former Belgian colony, according to the letter in The Guardian. The mercenaries were hired to intercept the U.N.