
 |
|
May 24, 2013
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
January 2, 2008
/ 24 Teves, 5768
The world in which we live
By
Paul Greenberg
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
This is the nature of the world in which we live. The phrase has been echoing in my mind since news came of Benazir Bhutto's assassination news that shocked but did not surprise. It wasn't just that the news might have been expected, it was expected. All understood the danger. It was often cited. It just wasn't dealt with. The world just hoped for the best, and did not prepare for the worst. All acted as if nothing could be done, and sure enough nothing was.
This is the nature of the world in which we live: A country like Pakistan, which was once of little strategic consequence in the Great Game of Nations, has become a nuclear power an increasingly unstable nuclear power. All recognize the gathering danger. It is regularly cited. But all act as if nothing can be done except hope for the best, and the worst awaits. As the fate of Benazir Bhutto so poignantly demonstrates.
This is the nature of the nuclearized world in which we live: It's not so much the number of countries who've managed to acquire their own Bomb that worries, but which ones. There are those leaders for whom a nuclear weapon is a deterrent, and others for whom it is something more, dangerously more.
Who's really worried about the British or French having the Bomb? Or the Chinese? Or even the Israelis? But a nuke in the hands of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or one that falls into the hands of a terrorist gang like al-Qaida as Pakistan falls apart … that's worrisome.
For once fanatics get their hands on a nuclear weapon, they'll use it, else they wouldn't be fanatics. To some a nuclear Armageddon isn't a calamity to be avoided but a consummation devoutly to be wished and brought about. That's the nature of the ideologized world in which we live in.
Just worrying about such a danger won't help. It won't do to just wring our hands. Or deliver solemn speeches. That's not a solution; it may be the biggest part of the problem. For that, too, is the nature of the world in which we live: Procrastination always beckons, action is so much easier to delegate than to take which means no one may ever take it. And one day we wake up to see flaming skyscrapers. Or a political figure who was a key to her country's hopes of stability struck down, and not just Pakistan but the world shakes.
There may have been only one leader who could somehow have made Pakistan a democracy. And now she's gone. Her party, perhaps the one truly national civil institution in her country, is in shambles and may never recover. No Bhuttos, no real opposition party. (In Pakistan, opposition politics is largely a family affair.) Now her country a nuclear power, lest we forget teeters on the edge of becoming another failed state. With consequences far beyond Pakistan. And we Americans, like the rest of the world, will have to deal with it, holding the hand Death now has dealt.
Now and then, like every morning, an editor glances at a news wire full of violence, danger, chaos and crisis, and thinks: This is the nature of the world we live in, and it is futile to wish the cards we'd been dealt were different. Instead, those whose lot it is to conduct this country's foreign policy will have to choose the lesser of so many evils. Whether it is making an alliance with a Stalin the United States has done that before or propping up a minor dictator who holds a major weapon, this is the world we live in. We must accept it and at the same time strive to make it a better, safer one. Quite a trick. If economics is the dismal science, it's positively cheerful compared to statecraft.
Even a single assassination can lead to a worldwide conflagration. It's happened before. The name Gavril Princip may turn up now only on Jeopardy or in other games of trivial pursuit, but his assassination of an Austrian archduke in the summer of 1914 led to results anything but trivial. That's the nature of the world in which we still live.
It's a world in which a military dictator like Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, who used to cozy up to al-Qaida and the Taliban for his own reasons, decides to change course when the same terrorists attack his American patron. Like politics, survival makes strange bedfellows. Now the Pakistani strongman, who may not be so strong, is an ally an ally of convenience. But whether his notorious intelligence service has gotten the word is another question. That, too, is the nature of the world in which we live. It's divided not just into governments but within governments.
If there is a single qualification for leadership in such a world, if there is a single qualification for president of the United States, it's the willingness to recognize, and the determination to deal with, the nature of the world not as we might wish it but in which we must live.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
Paul Greenberg Archives
© 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|