I do not care to scorn flexibility even feckless flexibility, bat, bat, bat, bat, save! I admire the diplomatic flexibility in evidence:
"Here's a thought for you."
"Psych! I said, that was just a thought, can't a guy think aloud in public without being taken for a nutter?"
"But that is a good idea. We can do something with that idea. That was a good one."
Hmm, damn, it could give them the advantage. This could turn out poorly. We could be made the fools. More importantly, I could be made the fool. The boss, the communal project, might whimsically contradict me and in flight say the opposite of what I'm saying here. It's happened.
"Check that." We're not going to go through that again. Smells too much like Bush, "Sorry."
"We'll probably go with a strike. That's the thing. A strafing. To make the point that you pay for using those weapons. We're going to Congress. The whoooooole shebang."
Talking about it openly like this and so broadly, strike or no strike, will work to put the fear in Assad. Obama said it will change the calculus and it did. See what happened? Warships repositioned, Congress assembled, UN discussions, conferences between nations, all dragged in staring straight at Assad and a flake could pop off any second. Fear Obama or deride him as too absurd to occupy his position but that is exactly why you must live on edge moment to moment and like Saddam Hussein you will never be comfortable, not for one conscious or unconscious second, you must keep moving. Because now, any moment, voooomp.
See how clever that is? We don't have to assume responsibility for all of it. We're the wild card. The UN really can do it. They can take full responsibility. And if the UN fails, the UN fails, it has nothing to do with us. We did our best. They'll take care of things just fine.
Meanwhile on our side, the United States of America, we bumble it, fumble it, bounce the problem, to Putin, to Congress, to France, to Britain, to Defense, to State, to UN. And we know because we've seen, how the UN comports in live war. They make ludicrous powder blue targets and abruptly close shop and go home. It is not possible to confirm or follow through with anything that is agreed upon. That is the nature of the situation.
But it doesn't matter because blame falls elsewhere, and that is the important thing, we're free of it. Please stop dragging us into these things and go directly to the UN.
Recall Hans Blix. Let's do that again. There is a flexible guy. I recall at least a full year or thereabout of Hans Blix saying he was getting no cooperation whatsoever from Saddam Hussein at the time. The deal was, at the time, cooperate or be smashed. Looking back, this is how I recall Blix's reports: He's not cooperating, he's not cooperating, he's not cooperating with the new thing, he's playing games, he's not cooperating, I'm telling you he's not cooperating, he's jacking me around, we're being made fools of, he's not cooperating, we're just going through motions, he's shifting things around, the gates are locked, I get no cooperation at all, why are you attacking? You Bastard! You weren't supposed to do that! Bush is a war criminal.
