The flotilla fiasco, as it is now being called, provides us with a textbook case of how nations get themselves into wars. The run-up to wars is frequently not a matter of clearly defined and contrary objectives from two hostile powers, but rather a muddled, tangled mess. Nations usually don’t march quick-step to war, but rather stagger, bumble, blunder, and trip into them. I don’t know for certain that war is going to break out in the Middle East, but it sure is starting to look that way.
In this case, the bumbling is being done by an anti-Semitic Europe, Turkey, humanitarian activists with heads of stone and hearts to match, the clueless president of these United States of America, an evil Hamas, a tone-deaf Israel, and above all, a wouldn’t-it-be-nice approach to international relations. Fix it in your minds, everybody. Dithering causes wars. Wishing that wars would never, ever happen does not make them cease to happen. It does make them happen a little bit later, and a lot messier. Getting the Nobel Peace Prize for maintaining an average temperature of 98.6 for three weeks straight almost guarantees a conflagration on your watch.
A cacophonous symphony of chaos and war is building to its discordant crescendo, and the kettle drummer is starting to sweat in the back.