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The Spectacle Blog
J.E. Dyer hones in on two paragraphs from this New York Times report:
“Qaddafi has lost the legitimacy to govern, and it is time for him to go without further violence or delay,” Mrs. Clinton told reporters after a special meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council. “No option is off the table,” she said, adding “that of course includes a no-fly zone.”
But officials in Washington and elsewhere said that direct military action remained unlikely, and that the moves were designed as much as anything as a warning to Colonel Qaddafi and a show of support to the protesters seeking to overthrow his government.
Comments Dyer:
A warning is about something you will actually do. When you tell the “warnee” that you’re probably not going to do it, that you’re “just” giving him a warning, he doesn’t take that as a warning. He takes it as a bizarre, perhaps annoying exercise in irrelevance on your part.
Indeed. Read the rest for a discussion of how the Obama administration is behaving as if this were an exercise in game theory, and Qaddafi is “bound by the rules of a game to be persuaded by mechanistic ‘warnings,’ as if other rules in the game somehow prevent him from knowing that the warnings are a ruse to probe his will.”
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More Blog Posts by John Tabin
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/03/01/threats-are-less-effective-whe
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David W| 3.2.11 @ 8:33AM
Like a parent telling a child, if you throw that rock I'll spank you. The child throws the rock, the parent repeats the threat. The child throws another rock, parent repeats threat. Soon, the child is sitting in jail and the parent doesn't know what he/she did wrong. Is it time to say, "I'm so ashamed that our President is from the US?" (like the Dixie Chicks said about Bush being from Texas)?
Stan Redmond| 3.2.11 @ 10:50AM
Really. Can ANYONE look at Obama and feel the slightest bit of fear? Listen to his words and look at his actions over the years. He has perpetually picked fights he can't lose with people and entities (global warming) that can not fight back. He NEVER faced a tough election. He is ignorant of history and a genuinly stupid man led around by the likes of Wright and Soros.
One of the most insulting things you can do in Arab culture is (and I'm sure it's anywhere but the USA where it is fashionable amongst the egghead elitists) badmouth your own family (or tribe) in the company of others. Obama has done this constantly and the tyrants of the world have ZERO respect for him. Even myself, as an American, can never imagine Obama launching any kind of attack on any country for any reason.