Friday, October 31, 2014

Are politicians in the West cowards or just dumb?

Sweden recognizes the state of Palestine with its Hamas Charter calling for the killing of Jews. An Obama administration official is happy that in his assessment it is too late for Israel to attack Iran.   Defense Secretary Hagel belatedly writes a memo to the White House criticizing Syria strategy.

How dumb can you get?  How is this possible?  When will they all wake up, especially regarding Iran?  What comes to mind is a paragraph from George F. Kennan’s  Memoirs 1925-1950 , page 143:


The experience taught me something about the behavior of human beings in adversity: the untrustworthiness and failure of a minority at one end of the human spectrum; the rather passive response to leadership on the part of a majority in the middle; the extraordinary faithfulness, courage, and general excellence of a few. I came away with a new admiration for one portion of mankind, but a portion which, as I now recognized, would never be more than a minority. For the majority at the center, I felt a mixture of sympathy and solicitude. For the remainder there was only horror and repulsion.”