Zen stupidity: Special Diplomacy Edition

A crack squad of hand-picked Left-wing muppets has produced an international affairs panacea in a single, easy-to-flush-down-Guantanamo-Bay-toilets volume.

Robert Harvey and Geoffrey Howe have brought together a collection of nineteen wise men of global politics, including Jimmy Carter, Geoffrey Howe, Michael Heseltine, Zbigniew Brezezinski, Simon Jenkins and Henry Kissinger…

‘Wise’ here being a trendy new synonym for ‘capable of being out-thought by a panel of celebrity tree-stumps’, I suppose.

…who are united in their dismay at the direction that international relations has taken since 2001.

Laugh? Weep? Enjoy the rest of the puff.

They offer recommendations of how to unravel the mess that Western governments find themselves them in after their disastrous interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Unlike Jimmy Carter's human-rights intervention in the Shah's Iran which brought the world what helpful new development?

They suggest that the War on Terror has been misguided, poorly executed...

Well done - you got ‘poorly executed’ right, but it's a bit fish in a barrel, isn't it?

...and that the threat has been over-emphasised…

Well looky here and talk to me from over-emphasised.

…which has been used to introduce legislation that has to a severe erosion of our civil liberties.

So we need to get rid of all those statist politicians who used it, right, (like 99% of Labour and bring in some freedom lovers, yeah?)

[Confession - I actually wanted tightly-controlled 90-days incarceration for terrorist suspects but hey, that's just me.]

Now the authors turn the stupidity level up from ‘stun’ to ‘kill.’

For the future, they suggest we should focus on the really important issues that face the world today: nuclear proliferation and how to manage it…

Such as keeping talking to and about the Islamic Republic of Iran like all the Lefties do rather than, say, bombing the falafels out of their huge nuclear programme, for example?

….as well as preventing the fall of nuclear weapons into the hands of terrorists.

see above

As well as encouraging both Russia and the USA to reduce drastically their stockpiles of weapons. Averting humanitarian catastrophes with the promotion of freedom and democracy…

Like all those Middle Eastern countries whose despotic governments can’t wait to lose their power and privileges to the peoples’ elected representatives?

… without the use of force….

Hamas was elected democratically, lads. How’s that working out averting humanitarian catastrophes-wise?

The USA and EC should reconcile itself to the emergence of major new powers around the world such as Russia…

so new

…China…

who knew?

India, Japan, Brazil, Mexico…

Mexico? The economic, cultural and political colossus Mexico which runs those enlightening Gap Year tours of US farms and restaurant kitchens for millions of it citizens each year? That Mexico?

….and at some point South Africa and Nigeria.

Yes indeedy; all that oil, good health services, law and order, effective government and, wait a minute, I’ve got an email and…

Yep, quite coincidentally, it looks like a good business proposition…

I think I'll invest in Nigeria; it looks like an excellent opportunity.

In fact, I’m going to sign up for it, just as soon as I’ve bought this book….

Israel and Palestine: both the US and the EC need to work harder to find a lasting solution to this conflict.

Kittens are nice.

Russia needs to be drawn into the western economic and political community.

So are girls.

The security of energy supplies and a fair pricing policy.

Goes like…?

Global warming should be treated as a global priority, with solutions undertaken on an effective worldwide basis.

Likewise the global giant lizard threat.

The huge inequalities in wealth that exist both within and between states.

Is maybe due to some things that some other clever people might also know something about, d’you think?

The reform and improvement of the UN…

Which is going to happen with the co-operation of all those new freedom-loving superpowers you mentioned above, yeah?

…and NATO that reflects the new economic growth area of Asia.

Well, NATO’s fighting in Afghanistan – that’s got to be a good start, surely?

…and allows for a more consensual and effective international security structure.

Who consenting to what, exactly?

I mean, sheesh!

It’s nice to see that the world’s moron drought is lifting, isn’t it?

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I have a dream

I’ve decided not to swear much online, but a chap has to do something or else the anger just builds up and builds up and fills his world until he finds himself on top of a church steeple or some other tall building; stark naked and with nothing for company but a high-powered sniper’s rifle, some fondue forks, a deep-fat fryer and a cage full of hamsters.

I have a dream that one day it will be better.

One day; just for one day, I’d like to live through that day and not go to bed thinking that - spiritually at least – I can feel the cooling trickle of Gordon Brown’s genetic code darkening the seat of my pyjama pants.

One day; just for one day I’d like to think that the Conservatives, the heirs of Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher might have a clue; perhaps clue enough to oppose the man and the party that have bankrupted Britain and who mean to do so much more to harm the car boot sale of its surviving economy, and that their top leaders would show enough gumption, enough nous (and this is the leaders of a party whose basic, fundamental, simple-to-understand philosophy means ‘step away from the really, really stupid stuff that always hurts and use the things that you can see actually working) to pin some kind of blame on him and to promise without apologizing to do something different and stick to it, rather than giving the impression that they’d be more gainfully employed fellating farmyard animals on late night reality TV.

One day; just for one day in what’s left of 2008 or even in all of 2009 (I’m a patient person), I’d like to see someone very senior and who owns part of the government’s responsibility to protect us from violent mass murder and who controls one department or another whose budget runs into the billions recognise that an ideology exists whose thirteen-hundred year mission from God is to subjugate all of mankind into complete and unbroken obedience, and I'd like to see him acknowledge the idea that during those thirteen centuries of war and oppression, no powerful group or sect within Islam has sustained anything but minor modifications on the universal suppression thing, and that petro-dollar-rich death-cult fantasists are not exactly the same as falafel-eating ecumenical Anglicans would be, and that such a minister or official might adjust defence or security policy to acknowledge that situation in some kind of co-ordinated and, yes, sustainable way that is not girded around with apologies for the cultural insensitivities that might taint or characterize any government action intended to avoid getting some of the rest of us killed.

One day; just for one day I’d like to see one influential part of the multi-billion pound Welfare State actually perform one simple task with consistency and without making things worse, such as protecting a child who for whatever reasons (and let’s not be ungentlemanly here and blame, oh, to pick a scapegoat totally at random say "the Left") appears to have briefly lived in a man-made hell on earth.

I’m not saying that I expect such an organisation to have anything useful to say about how such a hell was created in the first place despite the oceans of money that have been spent over past decades to improve the lot of the poor, or how or even whether such a hell might be modified let alone abolished (one must be realistic, after all; wide-screen TVs with a hundred satellite channels in every hovel in the land is a sustainable and desirable ecological goal, but wiping chocolate off a sick child to check for injuries is just a science fiction pipe-dream). I'd just like to see that someone not yet sacked from such an organisation who might commit to and actually bring about some kind of change from previous cluster-related official behaviour that allows such satanic evil to perpetuate itself, decade after decade unchecked and unchallenged. Just for one day I’d like the senior officials of the welfare state behave as if they were the ultimate, court-of-last-resort protectors of childhood rather than acting as if they're merely the proximate sources of childbirth.

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