One Of Those Days…
Lots of news today, but nothing that excites me to comment much.
Hillary Clinton to engage Iran and Syria? Fine, but as we’ve seen from North Korea, nations with bad intentions can play nations with good intentions like a fiddle. I’m going to be watching this with great skepticism.
Citigroup to break up? Okay by me…while the world was throwing rotten tomatoes at the CEO of GM, Citi has largely got a pass (at least until very recently) for what has to be some of the worst management of a major corporation in modern times. Too big to fail? Then anything that makes them smaller seems like good news to me.
Nannygate redux? Yawn – I’ve definitely seen THIS movie before…
Obama dines with the elite of the conservative punditocracy? Well, there’s nothing new about soon-to-be-inaugurated presidents wooing the opposition.
Just nothing new under the sun in the news today…
Boy, Hillary sure got the rubber stamp treatment for her new job. She is not Bill and so not responsible for what he does or for that in which he is engaged, but, still, nary a question? As for Iran and Syria, I’m willing to bet Hillary is no Madeline Albright, and that’s a good thing (re: being schooled, tooled, and punked by N. Korea).
Well, off we go!
The problem with North Korea, Iran, and Syria is that we insist on the delusion that they care what the United States government says or does. We have no authority (moral or practical), they know it, everyone knows it, and so on forever. The claim that North Korea “played” us almost seems to assume that North Korea needs to worry about us in some sense. They don’t, and didn’t. No amount of foreign policy can alter reality.
They played us in the sense that they took advantage of our willingness to do or not do certain things in return for a (false, as it turns out) promise to suspend their nuclear program.
Are you arguing that we shouldn’t talk with Iran and Syria at all? I agree with the premise that talking with them is pointless, we have nothing they want that we could offer for them to give us what we want.