Oh that Hillary (addressing the topic of Iran)… Some words should never be uttered, not even in the heat of a national political campaign. If you like that kind of language, though, this is what you’re signing up for:
Post-blast corpses in Hiroshima, Japan
This photo and others like it were only recently released. They’re from August, 1945 — when I was born, coincidentally — and the entire series is available here. Be advised, however, that the close-ups are extremely gruesome. So too is the very idea that the U.S. would do this to a nation of 70 million people because someone jumped on Israel, which already has hundreds of nuclear weapons of its own.
Personally, I would like America to take an entirely different direction than more of the above. For some reason, I’d rather help people than kill them, and I wish our politicians would do the same. Great God Almighty, are there no grownups running for president these days?!?
Why yes, actually. One, to be precise.
Comment by K.J. Webb
1 May 5, 2008, 5:25 am o'clock |
History shows that there is normally a vast disconnect between what we we think we are signing up for based on the words of politicians and what we actually get from them. In 1916 Wilson ran on the slogan “he kept us out of war” - then promptly took us into war. LBJ ran against “scary” old Goldwater (remember the little girl plucking daisy petals followed by a mushroom cloud?) on a promise not to expand the war - and promptly expanded it. Nixon was the consummate cold warrior and red-baiter - and went to China. Dubya himself ran in 1990 promising an end to Clintonian adventures in foreign policy - and you know the rest.
All this comes about partly through the doctrine of unintended consequences, partly as outright cynicism and partly as the legitimate response of a leader, once in office, to the challenges of the day (sometimes a right response, sometimes a wrong one).
I like Obama’s coolness and cerebralness, and I also think his heart is in the right place. But words are easily spoken and have consequences the speaker may not desire. Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait because he had been told - or thought he had been told - by James Baker that the U.S. would not or could not respond militarily. Query: If Baker had told Saddam that it would mean war, would the first gulf war have actually occurred? Forty years of cold-war sabre-rattling never led to war or the use of the bomb. If the Soviets had felt they had a free hand in Europe, would they have made the same mistake Saddam made in Kuwait?
This is that oldtime realpolitik, which I know is hateful to you, John. I never liked it myself when I was a youngster, but the world, I discovered the hard way, is not built to the neat specifications of youths or dreamers.
Comment by John H. Farr
2 May 5, 2008, 6:44 am o'clock |
Hah!
Of your “oldtime Realpolitik,” the only part that’s true is “old.” Unlike you, I believe in evolution. Or have you always lived in a cave???