A tectonic plate slipped about ninety feet over 750 mi of the sea floor in the Indian Ocean unleashing a massive earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter Scale. The Richter Scale is logarithmic, meaning that this earthquake was roughly 100 times the magnitude and released up to 961 times more energy than the 1989 World Series Quake in California (7.5 on the Richter Scale).

Wow.

The 2004 earthquake occurred largely in the ocean. The real terror was silently moving through the open ocean as the massive amount of water displaced when the sea floor suddenly dropped 90 feet over the length of a fault for 750 miles generated enormous waves of energy.

If you had been out at sea floating in a life vest over the epicenter of the 2004 Sumatra quake, you would have barely noticed the amount of energy ripping through the water. A slow, calm rise and a slow, calm fall. Tsunamis have very long wavelengths in the open ocean.

Fifteen minutes after the massive earthquake, the high energy waves reached Indonesia's coast. As they crawled up the continental shelf towards the shore, the confined space in shallower water changed the shape of the waves, decreasing their wavelength and greatly increasing their amplitude. By the time they reached the shore, they were much larger in height and in period than normal waves.100,000 people dueled with the sea that day in Indonesia and lost. Four hours later, a calm day in Sri Lanka became hellish as walls of rapidly moving water moved inland at great speed. Those people had little to no warning. 27,000 dead.

Three days later, tourists returned to the beaches demolished in Thailand.

And now we have come full circle in a way. 2004, the year of the Tsunami. Quakes and tsunamis. Causes and effects. Violence and calm. Barely noticeable waves in one place wreaking havoc in other places. Turbulence…

And then calm.

I call 2004 a tsunami year partly because we are just now gaining perspective on the great displacement of power and culture caused by the earthquake we felt on September 11, 2001. We can see that some great waves have already arrived and done their damage, and other great waves are still traveling through the open ocean. When will they break, and how destructive will they be when they do?

We now understand that the wave of goodwill for America has crashed against the shore and greatly disrupted our soft power infrastructure. With approval ratings not cracking 5% in most Arab countries and barely better in many European countries our ability to talk about freedom credibly has been disrupted. That wave first broke in March with the Abu Ghraib prison abuse revelations and has been curling up the coastline since, recently smacking against the shore in Guantanimo Bay, Cuba, where abuse was even worse. It has engulfed the Defense Department and has begun to trickle into the White House and the Justice Department. From the Statue of Liberty to a dehumanized figure in a black cloak wired and standing on a box. In one violent wave our legacy of goodwill, human rights and benign intent was washed away like a shanty town exposing the raw earth, the stuff all powerful nations have had whether they admit it or not: ruthlessness toward other humans. So the earthquake of September 11 laid bare the ruthlessness and nihilism of Islamic fundamentalism and the resulting tsunami revealed our own dark side. Such an exposed destruction of our soft capacity to preach goodness and hope only helps those who massacre children for political causes, who commit genocide in Sudan under our watch. Expect more 11-Ms, more hatred, more sadness.

The War in Iraq was too young in January 2004 to determine whether it was an aftershock of 9-11 or part of a growing tsunami. We now understand that history is moving with a long wavelength in Iraq. The war has been a holding pattern since May 2003 and the events of 2004 have brought this reality home. The slow ramping up of the insurgency has caused us barely to notice the differences between the start of the wave, the crest and the trough, but we do know that there is a wave. The insurgency has grown, become more sophisticated, become bolder, freer, more intimidating, more "having an effect." Not catastrophically, but through the cumulative power of beheadings, bombs in the green zone, bombs in mess halls, bodies in Mosul, burnt bodies strung up on a bridge, murdered aid workers, murdered police and murdered election workers...

And we just tread water. Nothing yet to force us out, but nowhere near enough power to stop the wave. Throwing in milestones-- the transfer of power on June 30th, the showdown in Fallujah first pursued, then postponed and then completed, the selection of a strong Iraqi leader in Prime Minister Allawi or the rejection of Ahmed Chalabi-- as effective as throwing spitballs. So we ride the wave in the open ocean in our uparmored (or not, who pays attention to these things anyway?) rubber ducky inner tube.

1,331 Americans dead. 9,981 injured. Evacuate the coastline. More to come.

2004 was the year of the tsunami in other ways, too. On October 16, 2003 New York Yankee Aaron Fu**ing Boone drove Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield's first pitch into the left field stands to clinch the American League pennant in the bottom of the eleventh inning of Game 7. The greatest ALCS played up to that point ended in an earthquake-- a massive rupture. It knocked the breath out of Red Sox fans. It hurt so badly. I took a day off, sick, heartbroken. Similar seismic activity crushed the hopes of the Chicago Cubs the night before. Both of the most beloved and hard-luck teams in baseball were five outs away from meeting in the World Series when the plates slipped and shook destiny.

The explosive fall of 2003 unleashed a tsunami, a massive wave of anticipation and hope on the part of Red Sox fans. This was the most anticipated season in the history of the Red Sox. Not content to wait for April games true fans this time paid attention to off season trade deals in the manner of seasoned sports nerds. Stephen King decided that no tale of horror could compete with the torrid Red Sox/Yankees rivalry, so he planned to document this season--day after day, game after game-- in a book entitled simply: Faithful. Johnny Damon grew his hair out, resembling for Red Sox Nation the Lord and Savior of all humanity: What Would Johnny Damon Do? Nomar Garciaparra, burned by a botched off-season attempt by the Red Sox front office to replace him with blue-lipped wonderboy Alex Rodriguez, returned a different man-- he had had enough and it showed. The loss of A-Rod to the Yankees' business machine, the New York Times gloated, was just the latest example of the Yankees showing the Red Sox what winners do.

As the season got underway, the momentum kept building with the Red Sox going on an early tear, pulling out to a sizable lead over the struggling Yankees, dismantling them in their first 7 games together, sweeping one series and losing only one game in the other. It looked like Curt Schilling and Keith Foulke (great pitching) had beaten supposedly the most powerful hitting lineup ever assembled. But it was only June. The Red Sox swept the Yankees in Fenway, where they were unstoppable this year, and then packed their bags and headed to Texas to meet A-Rod's old team, the Rangers, where they were swept. The Red Sox skidded and sputtered until late July, when Sox catcher Jason Veritek landed a well placed blow to the face of Smacky McBluelips, the whineiest .260 hitter I have ever seen, and the Sox turned the corner.

The tsunami wave approached the shoreline compressing its wavelength and growing its amplitude. The Sox went on to meet the Yankees again in the 2004 ALCS. The sea receded as the Red Sox dropped the first three games of the series. We thought it was over. We thought it was strange: all this anticipation and then the sea just pulls out and lingers. But we didn't know then that the tsunami was out there and it came roaring in without warning: Dave Roberts, a late season acquisition, stole a base everyone knew he was eyeing off of the fiercest pitcher in the league, Mariano Rivera, and Billy Mueller the Yankee Killer drove in the tying run in the bottom of the 9th of Game 4. That was it. The wave reached an enormous height and broke as the Yankees completed the biggest choke in the history of sport at the hands of the Red Sox, losing 4 games in a row and the pennant, sending walls of water toward the shore only to engulf the vacationing St. Louis Cardinals in a four game sweep of the World Series.

Keith Foulke recorded the last out of the 2004 World Series and Nike played a commercial portraying a young boy turning into a man and then growing old sitting in the stands of Fenway Park waiting to see that moment.

Eighty-six years after his first game, he did.

My own grandfather was not so lucky by two measly years. In the end, the great wave brought great joy, but churned up some sadness as well. Red Sox Nation remembered our fallen. We wish you all could have seen it.

Tsunamis generated by earthquakes past traveled through the political season this year and broke on November 2, 2004. The November 7, 2000 contested presidential election earthquake was powerful, deeply shaking the core values of American voters. 9-11 or no 9-11, George W. Bush could not conceal forever that he presided over a divided country, where nearly half of the people could not be fooled by marketing into believing that he was some kind of a giant. I think he is a weak, conniving, little twerp of a man: a usurper, an authoritarian. An embattled presidency from day one, the tidal wave broke this year after the most expensive and negative campaign in American history. Echoes of previous quakes contributed to the wave, whether as the Swift Boat Veterans and left-over debates from the Vietnam Era or accounts of the death of Jesus Christ himself in cinema. Internet boom and bust on the Howard Dean campaign trail yielded "anybody-but" alternative John Kerry, who built up a head of Joementum as the poster boy for "anybody-but" thinkers everywhere.

We don't blame you, John, they corked their bats from the start. We pretended along with everyone else that they were hitting home runs legitimately.

The tsunami roared in and gave us four more years of President Bush. All the incompetence and 49% approval ratings in the world couldn't stop the wave. Still, those wrong exit polls are fishy. Was this wave real or have we just not come to quite yet? Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) will challenge the election, but the damage is done. The voting machines have spoken.

And so 2004 was the year of the tsunami. Crashing waves. Traveling waves. After all is said and done in 2004, the world seems to be moving slower once again. After human squabbles, man-made terror, man-made hatred, greed-driven schemes, bombs, bombs and more bombs, we are reminded at the end of it all that we are still frail in the face of nature. For all of the control we wish to exert on people, countries, friends, family, our own possibilities, our own opinions...

Bullets will kill 100,000 in Iraq over two years; tsunamis will wipe out 150,000+ in a single day. And we are for a week, put back in our place by dumb luck, unable to blame it on some intentional action on the part of a group or enemy with an axe to grind.

Locked in a holding pattern in Iraq, refocusing on domestic politics at home, responding to natural disasters, sensational trials and sexy “love nest” scandals capturing our interest once again, we close 2004 with a world moving more slowly than it has seemed to us at any point since September 11, 2001.

An eerie calm it is.

Google has gone public. The great wave has dumped us back in the 1990s. And yet we know so much more now. So much debris still left to clear…

And, undoubtedly, more waves on the way.

Happy New Year.

*As I write this, my family friend Tom has left his home and will be heading to Iraq. Be safe, Tom.

I agree with Chris Bowers wholeheartedly. Use the comments to develop our foreign policy frame. Let's really discuss this. How about a "Global Campaign Against Despair."