Tuesday 8 March 2011

Dimensional Theory

I sometimes feel sorry for Daniel Larison, watching him try to make what sense he can from the word soup of idiotic political commentators.  This comment from Conrad Black:
NATO (the U.S. Sixth Fleet in practice) can’t take out Libyan air defenses at no or minimal cost, we should all start studying Arabic and spending an hour a day with our foreheads pressed to the floor.
prompts this response:
[I]n what universe does that sentence make any sense?
That would be the universe where the only two types of military are those the massively superior American forces can crush without any difficulty, and those that are so powerful they can invade the mainland US.  A world in which everything is either a bug to be squashed or a terrifying monster to fling one's own be-shatted pants at in hysterical desperation.

In short, it's a world in which hawkish political commentators reveal themselves to be simultaneously dangerously bloodthirsty and pitifully craven.

Oh, wait.  I guess that's our world.  Forget I said anything.

1 comment:

Tomsk said...

Could that be the Conrad Black who once controlled the Telegraph and is now a convicted fraudster? Best to ignore him.

There is an important question in this debate and that's if and when the West should intervene militarily. I think Obama's judgement on the Arab uprisings has been spot on so far but I don't envy him trying to find a good line to take with Libya. Particularly as Russian and China look set to veto any substantive action at the UN. I fear post-Iraq that we're in much the same situation as we were post-Somalia in the nineties, looking on helplessly at this decade's Rwanda/Srebrenica.