Monday, February 10, 2014

Kerry, You Magnificent Bastard

I believe this defense of John Kerry is in the Wikipedia entry for "damning with faint praise."

Really? John Kerry is a "magnificent" Secretary of State?

John Kerry has been U.S. secretary of state for one year, and he has already (1) rescued President Barack Obama from his ill-considered promise to bomb Syria if it crossed the “red line” and used poison gas; (2) opened serious negotiations with Iran on its alleged attempt to build nuclear weapons; and (3) taken on the job of brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord.

Huh.

For the first example of magnificence, you have to believe that we have no interest in trying to affect the outcome of the Syrian Civil War, that punishing a ruler for using poison gas (even if it was the cause of only a small fraction of the huge death toll) is wrong, and that Assad's survival is acceptable.

For the second, you have to believe that the negotiations are serious and have a chance of preventing Iran from getting closer to having nuclear weapons.

The author spends the article not defending his first two examples, but in discussing the third. And his wrap up to this third exhibit of magnificence?

French Gen. Pierre Bosquet, watching the suicidal charge of the British Light Brigade in the Crimean War in 1854, said: “It is magnificent, but it is not war. It’s madness.” Kerry’s foredoomed quest for a final peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians is magnificent too, in its own peculiar way, but it’s not diplomacy. It’s hubris.

So the third example is doomed to failure.

And this was an apparent fan of Kerry writing.