As the world burns around us, perhaps it is worth revisiting an old post.
UPDATE: This morning's statement on the situation in Ukraine is on point. It has the tone of a child complaining to his parents that his brother is being unfair. 'Putin isn't making his friends behave and play by the rules!'
But there are no parents in the "International Community" or the "Community of Nations." It's just you. If Putin isn't behaving, you're the one who has to make him. What are you going to do about it?
Grim, Grim, Grim... Parents perpetuate inequality, with their insistence on "authority" and "rules" and "consequences".
ReplyDeleteWhy should anyone - least of all equals - have to listen to anyone else?
In the movie Flyboys, treating WWI fighter pilots, there's a scene when one of the young American pilots complains to his French commander that a German pilot had killed his buddy after the buddy had gotten safely to the ground. There had to be justice, he said, for that violation of accepted norms governing combat.
ReplyDeleteThe French officer replied with words to the effect of, 'You want justice? Up there, you're the guy with the gun.'
Well, that was the old way. Now we get on camera and say, 'No one denies that he has extraordinary influence over the direction of his machineguns. And if he doesn't stop pointing them at helpless people and shooting them to bits, he's going to find himself increasingly isolated.'
Beware the sternly wagging finger of international opprobrium... :p
ReplyDeleteIf Putin keeps this up, Obama will ask Putin to go into Time Out until he feels better about himself.
Maybe Obama thinks if he keeps talking so inanely, he'll make Putin so tired of him that he'll make some accession to shut him up. Given the visceral reaction I have to hearing Obama by now, it might work on me.
ReplyDeleteIt's not burning nearly fast enough.
ReplyDelete