Nightline Closing Thought Dec. 12, 2003
W A S H I N G T O N, Dec. 12 -- The review in the next day's Washington Post wasn't exactly a rave.
It spared the Iraqis' performance, but critic Tim Page sniffed that the entire evening — a concert given by the Iraqi National Symphony Orchestra in Washington Tuesday night — "seemed calculated and politically directed ... a big photo op … a feel-good moment."
Maybe so. And so what?
John Adams famously wrote to his wife that he had to study politics and war so that his children could study mathematics and philosophy and their children could study poetry, painting and music.
Now, Adams probably didn't really believe that history progressed so neatly, or that politics and art could be separated so cleanly.
But when politics, even war, can make way for art freely expressed — even a feel-good moment, that is something worth fighting for.
Can that moment be repeated in Iraq? Will it last? We don't yet know. We do know that Hisham Sharaf has dodged bullets for the sake of his music. He and his colleagues in the symphony may not want to be part of politics, but with that kind of spirit and determination they are doing their part to build an Iraq where the biggest danger they face is a bad review.
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