Recent times make perfect sense, if you're walking on your hands. Otherwise it's all upside down.
Last week was a perfect example. The Brits foiled a terror plot to blow up airplanes, and since it reminded us there are still suicidal maniacs around, it felt like bad news. Then the West struck a deal with Hezbollah and its paymasters, and it was regarded as a positive development. Peace in our time, and all that.
It's a wonder they didn't pass out tiny collectible umbrellas from the Franklin Mint "Neville Chamberlain Collection" to solemnize the event.
The cease-fire resolution wasn't surprising; the United Nations may have created Israel, but it's been apologizing ever since. Nevertheless, let no one assert the document lacks teeth. As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put it: "This resolution has an arms embargo within it, and a responsibility of the Lebanese government to make sure that illegal arms are not coming into their country."
Yes, that'll work. You can well imagine the frosty reception that awaits an Iranian general who tells the mullahs he's found a way to slip new rockets into Lebanon:
"We will smuggle in the parts under the guise of providing reconstruction machinery; if satellites detect the tell-tale profile of the rockets, we will simply point to the damage suffered by the Lebanese Space Agency. Then we tattoo assembly instructions on small children and send them via diplomatic pouch. When the parts are in place — why are you looking at me that way?"
The mullahs look at one another, and one finally speaks.
"General, perhaps you were unaware of this fact, but all parties have agreed to disarm Hezbollah. Assurances were made to Ms. Rice. Do you understand? Assurances. Now rip up your mad schemes, return to base, and think no more of perfidious things."
Some insist that misbehavior from Hezbollah will hurt their credibility. Let the rockets falls, and the diplomats would feel betrayed. They'd feel like Hugh Hefner's girlfriend after she caught him with three blondes. Again. (And they were the SAME BLONDES, which was just insult to injury.)
The end result? Clarity. After innumerable breaches of trust and violations of previous U.N. resolutions as well as the complete disregard for a solemn "pinky swear, cross my heart" issued by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, that would be the moment when the scales fall.
After which some helpful aide will note, "Sir, your scales fell," and the diplomat will reattach them. To admit that Hezbollah, Syria and Iran are not acting in good faith, after all, implies that the U.N. may have to draft additional resolutions. That's fine; they've stocked up on toner. But after a while people may begin to suspect that U.N. resolutions do not have the power to melt gun barrels and plant blooms of love in the hearts of all. Then what?
Clarity! We will know what we're up against. But people with memories of elephantine persistence may recall a certain rhetorical formulation all the rage five years ago: You're either with us, or on the side of the terrorists.
Those were days of clarity and resolve, two things that horrify the international community. The diplomats live in a fog of smiles and sheathed knives, and the idea that one could behold the world in terms of Naughty and Nice threatened to upset the order that had kept the peace for the last 60 years. And by "peace," we mean no fistfights in the U.N. dining room. Outside of that, who cares?
But clarity is not enough without action; one can say that bank robbing is wrong, but it helps also to install alarms, stock up on exploding dye packs, hire cops and build prisons. It doesn't help that the penalty for being on the side of the terrorists appears as dire as for an overdue movie rental.
We've bought some time, but it will be time when the bad guys gather strength and the heirs of the Enlightenment spend their hours in the accustomed pastime: tearing themselves apart, pausing only to send honey to the enemies with the threat of nettles at a later date.
You can lose many things in the course of final victory. Focus isn't one of them.
