Witless Arrogances

There is no reason to deny women high office. The justifications keep rolling in. They are fully as capable of doing the same thoughtless kind of job as men, and that is so often seen that it must be exactly what the public wants, as it imagines itself performing in the same roles. We have Iran to thank for providing the most recent evidence of this.

While in the latter stages of unsuccessfully striving to be the Democratic nominee for President, H. Clinton said that if Iran were to attack Israel with nuclear weapons -- which most authorities are saying the Iranians are years from having -- as President she would not hesitate to order a nuclear attack on Iran. And when asked later if she regretted saying that, she refused to back off that sentiment one inch.

Till she did that I was willing to give her the benefit of all doubts regardless, but that cruel and deeply violent statement and especially her demonstration later that she hadn't come to her senses in the least erased all my support for her. In addition to other criticisms I could make of her declaration, the worst is that it is so incomprehensible.

The main reason that it makes absolutely no sense is that there is a far greater likelihood that Israel will attack Iran instead. They have leaders who have said that they are thinking of doing just that. And, without declaring war, Israel has already staged destructive air attacks on a nuclear facility in Iraq -- some years ago -- and on one in Syria within the past year. But the military forces of Iran have not been known to attack Israel -- or anyone else -- in centuries. Furthermore, it is widely agreed that Israel has already had nuclear weapons for years, while Iran still has none. So who is the aggressor most likely to be, by far?

Would H. Clinton be even-handed as President, so that when, after failing to get the U.S. to do the job for them, the Israelis attack Iran, would she then order U.S. forces to launch a commensurate attack on Israel? Even the stones on the surface of Mars know the answer to that one.

And now we have another iron-jawed woman, Condoleeza Rice, doing as miserable a job of playing at being Secretary of State as her boss has done all along whike purporting to be President. While addressing AIPAC, she hammered nothing less than the rest of the world fof not keeping up with the U.S. and Israel in trying to prevent Iran from acquiring the Bomb.

"Diplomacy is not a synonym for talking," she said, with the implication that it must be combined with pressure tactics.

Does this mean that Iran can and should do the same? Is it in a position to apply pressure on the U.S. as well?

No. What it means is that, as the highest supposed diplomat in the U.S. government, Rice is not interested in negotiation at all. Using the country's preeminent standing, she prefers to use that power to dictate instead. In the eyes of herself and the rest of her faction, a superpower has no need to see diplomacy as anything more than a one-way street.

This is called exercising supreme arrogance, and in an earlier age it would not have been seen as becoming in a woman... or effective. But then, they are not there as women, are they? Yet to be there as anything else would just make them something less.