Words of Wisdom

John Kerry is continuing to be a real font of wisdom these days, and I cannot resist commenting on a couple more of his recent witty remarks. The unfortunate part is that I’m sure he did not intend them to be witty, but that is beside the point.

He justified our assistance to Saudi Arabia in bombing Yemen by saying that we were “not going to stand by while the region is destabilized.”  When one comes upon a raging bonfire and throws gasoline on it, one is not “standing by,”  so I think Mr. Kerry’s statement is entirely accurate, but not with the meaning that he intended.

He then assured Israel that the United States can walk and chew gum at the same time. (He said “do two things at the same time.”) The two things we could do simultaneously, it turned out, were to “push back against Iranian attempts to project its influence in the area”  and “reward Tehran for providing guarantees that it was not building nuclear weapons.”

Aside from the fact that Iran has already provided that guarantee by signing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which Israel has not done, the “reward”  to which Mr. Kerry refers is lifting sanctions that we have imposed on Iran for decades. So by that standard, one person could reward another by no longer beating him over the head with a brick. It takes a rather weird mentality to consider that a reward, but American foreign policy is certainly based on some rather weird forms of thinking.