I wish I was like you/easily amused

I’m watching what’s going on and the feeling is we’ve hit a beat between action. You’re watching a movie in the middle of an intense action sequence, you pause. This gives the character a chance to take in the scene, reassess, and to decide to withdraw or attack. Usually, just before the real butchery starts.

That feeling of pause in the middle of conflict, makes me feel like I’m waiting. Waiting for the main action to resume. The news is a little repetitious and not much new is hitting the wire right now. When too many things come in too fast the mind comes to a new set-point for input. With the action paused, and my mind still running at full tilt, I take in the scene around me and I wonder – what next?

Are we Butch and Sundance, about to go out in a blaze of glory, or are we Nelson about to cross the ‘T’? Or is this like Britain and Suez? We look for analogies to help us understand the current moment but it is unique. It is unique but will be like something in the past. And we can only make that comparison at some date in the future, after the action is finished, and we survey the bloody battlefield.

Of one thing I am convinced. The mismanagement of both the war and international relations will create a world the standing of the US is clearly diminished. To be allied with the United States seems less like being part of the Justice League¹ and more like having an ‘arrangement’ with the Empire in Star Wars. An agreement that can change at any time, on any whim, for the perceived self interest of the United States, and at the expense of the ally.

1. Although as Carney pointed out, not every country felt like it was allied with the Justice League. ↩︎