World must see our compassion

I have two wishes for the new year:

 •  A 2-year-old in an Iranian orphanage, after a 2003 earthquake there had killed 28,000 people, cried out to a visitor, "Mister, hug me." I hope that the man did hug that precious child, and I hope even more that he was an American.

Maybe if enough Americans hug enough children in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, they won't hate us anymore. If they stop hating us, they won't kill us, and if they don't kill us, then we won't kill them.

 •  A portrait of Abraham Lincoln hangs over the mantel in the State Dining Room in the White House. The mantel has an inscription that comes from a letter written by John Adams, from a then-unfinished White House, to his wife, Abigail: "I Pray Heaven Bestow the Best of Blessings on This House and on All that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but Honest and Wise Men ever rule under this Roof."

As Sidney Poitier sang at the end of one of his movies, Lilies of the Field, "A-men, a-men, a-men."

Richard Amundson, Augusta