Sunday, November 8, 2009

Hyperbolic trend?

The blog entry 'No surprise' discussed the situation in Honduras, while the 'UNSC Resolution 1887' entry covered the United Nations Security Council resolution on nuclear proliferation and nuclear disarmament... In both cases the Obama administration brought together parties with widely differing and/or contradictory perspectives, and then achieved 'success' in getting them to "agree" on a declaration, that was subsequently hailed as "historic," game-changing, etc., etc. However, in each of these cases a close reading of the text showed that a sufficient degree of ambiguity was included which allowed the various parties to 'agree' to the formulations, without actually having to change their positions to come to a commonality of understanding and purpose!

In the case of the "Teucigalpa / San Jose Agreement," subsequent events have demonstrated the true worth of the agreement (note, Honduras is not a case where one side violated the written agreement, it is a case of where the agreement turned out to be more aspirational than real), while with UNSC 1887 we have not yet come to a time when facts on the ground will show the strength or hollowness of the agreement...

OK, so two events do not a trend make... yet. However, in conjunction with other events such as the 'also hailed as historic' agreement with Iran over its enriched uranium (which is still up in the air), and the "unprecedented" Israeli settlement concessions (that turned out to be anything but, prompting SecState Clinton to spend the next several days 'walking back' her comment), there seems to be a slight whiff of "Wonderland" in the air...

The White Queen from Alice in Wonderland - Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

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