The very public row over the Israeli Government's humiliation
of US vice-president Joe Biden has led to excited speculation
that the US Government might actually defy Israel this time.
Don't hold your breath.
There are notable differences between Woodrow Wilson, the
28th president of the United States, and Umaru Yar'Adua, the
current president (more or less) of Nigeria.
Everybody assumes that Mossad, the Israeli foreign
intelligence service, carried out the murder of Mahmoud
al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas commander, in Dubai last month.
Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina's finest writer, dismissed the
Falklands War of 1982 as two bald men fighting over a comb,
but it killed almost 1000 British and Argentine soldiers,
sailors and airmen anyway.
"We astounded the world in 1990 and in 1994, and we shall do
so again," wrote former South African president FW de Klerk
on the 20th anniversary of the day in February 1990 when he
announced the end of the apartheid system.
Eight months ago (and 10 months before regional elections
were due to be held all over the country), French President
Nicolas Sarkozy raised a vital issue before the French
Parliament.
At the Iraq inquiry in London on January 29, former British
prime minister Tony Blair found a new way to defend his
decision to join George W. Bush in invading Iraq in 2003: the
what-if defence.
Barack Obama had worse failures to address in his State of
the Union message on Thursday, but a few days before, he
owned up to the most foolish miscalculation that his
Administration had made in its first year in power.
