Saturday reading

- "Indeed what is now needed is not more “diplomatic” beating around the bush but hard talk. Otherwise, we might be living a case study for future school-texts. One that illustrates the thesis that too much patience and concessions to the wrong party and on the wrong issue augment the danger that peace’s advocates attempt to avoid." George Handlery on the Iranian nuclear crisis.

- "But I think some valid correspondences still remain between the Phoney War and the period between September 11 to the present. Both are marked by an attempt to maintain a disintegrating status quo long after it became imperative to exchange it for a new model of relationships. Both are marked by miscalculation as political leaders find themselves struggling to overtake the tide of events. Both mark the end of the last boundaries between the familiar and the dark, unknown future. What did Churchill feel, one wonders, in those desperate days when he did not know the end yet went on?" Wretchard on the historical precedent for the period since 9/11 (one of his best ever, IMO)