Opinions from past add perspective

Looking Back reviews opinions published in The Spokesman-Review during this week in history.

The state of soup, June 16, 1956: An S-R editorial noted the perilous status of soup at American lunch counters and dinner tables.

“It may be that one reason more attention is not given to soups is because they have lost stature. In the days when full-course dinners were the vogue, soup had an important place on the menu. Cooks in those days knew how to make soup, starting with a kettle full of bones and an armload of fresh vegetables, carefully simmering and blending until the result was a culinary work of art.

“Nowadays, the family’s Sunday dinner is more likely to consist of hamburgers and milk shakes eaten in the car at the neighborhood drive-in restaurant. In some families soup is seldom eaten, except when mother or father is having denture trouble.

”And in most families, when soup is eaten, it comes from the can. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with canned soup, It’s convenient and economical, But to some it lacks the newly perfected flavor and some of the substance of the home-made product. Indeed, some soup manufacturers even have been known to put tomato sauce in their clam chowder.”

Supreme Court, June 18, 1966: The editorial board took a look at the surprise retirement announcement of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger.

“Justice William Rehnquist, whom President Reagan will nominate to replace Burger as chief justice, probably is the court’s most consistent conservative. And at only 61 – the same age Burger was when he was appointed to the Supreme Court 17 years ago … What’s more, Rehnquist’s intended successor, Justice Antonin Scalia of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., also described as a conservative, is a mere 50.

“Reagan’s other Supreme Court appointment, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is but 55. Assuming Rehnquist and Scalia are confirmed by the Senate, this solid youth corps suggests the Supreme Court will have a conservative legal anchor for many years to come.”

Iraq War, June 17, 2006: Columnist Trudy Rubin wrote about the state of war in Iraq in a column headlined “Burden now rests with Iraq.”

“President Bush’s surprise trip to Baghdad this week underlined an unsettling truth about U.S. efforts in Iraq. The war effort, and his own political future, now depend on Iraq’s politicians. That’s why Bush had to travel to Baghdad to shore up its shaky leaders. The U.S. project in Iraq will turn on whether the new Iraqi government can improve its own people’s lives.

“The administration long ago concluded that Iraq could not be stabilized by military force. Any chance of halting the sectarian violence depends on whether Sunni and Shiite politicians can settle differences by political negotiations rather than bullets – and present a united front to the country. Otherwise Iraq’s national security forces will split along sectarian lines with little chance of standing up sufficiently for U.S. forces to stand down.”