Is this so bad? My initial reaction to the announcement, yesterday, that the US would participate (given a set of conditions) in direct talks with Iran for the first time in 27 years was: well, good. Good for W and Condi and the new Chief of Staff and the whole gang. It's nice to see a pause in the swagger that usually passes for diplomacy there. (It also ocurred to all of us, again, that, if you really want George to talk to you, you need an actual credible threat of WMDs, not a flimsy fabricated one . . . but let's leave that parenthetical for now, in the spirit of being robustly diplomatic).
I found W's phrase "robust diplomacy" interesting and kind of weird. I mean, this is a word I'm used to hearing in the context of 1) wine; and 2) software (usually open-source software). So I didn't really know what he meant. I looked up robust to get a better feel for its connotations, and I think I found the definition that the speechwriter showed W when the latter asked what the word meant (I imagine W associating the word with software too, of course): "(of an intellectual approach or the person taking or expressing it) not perturbed by or attending to subtleties or difficulties; uncompromising and forceful."
Which is to say: not at all diplomatic. What a wonderful turn of phrase! "What you're seeing now is undiplomatic diplomacy, uncompromising compromise, unsubtle subtlety."
Anybody else working on a bomb shelter?
3 comments:
Hehe, swaggerin W. is such a robust hombre. There is some desperation in the air when W. mentions that D-word - diplomacy (with fingers crossed and hope to die). I think that Iranians know, since they are no dummies, that no nation with nukes have ever been atacked. Some incentive not to have them.
Yep. You gotta the bomb, you getta the robust diplomacy. You don' gotta the bomb, you getta the shock and awe.
Getta the bomb!
Beautiful summary of US foreign policy, Barba.
Post a Comment