Go Ahead, Ruin My Day - Thomas Friedman
As the saying goes, to err is human, to forgive is divine, to which Id add: to ignore is even more human, and the results rarely divine. None of us would be human if we didnt occasionally get so wedded to our wishes that we failed to notice or outright ignored the facts on the ground that make a laughingstock of our hopes. Only when the gap gets too wide to ignore does policy change. This is where a lot of U.S. policy is heading these days in the Middle East. Mind the gaps on Iran, Israel and Iraq. Were talking about our choices in these countries with words that strike me as about 10 years out of date. Alas, we are not dealing anymore with your grandfathers Israel, your fathers Iran or the Iraq your son or daughter went off to liberate.
Thomas L. Friedman
Foreign affairs, globalization and technology.
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Lets start with Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party pretty well trounced the Labor Party leader, Isaac Herzog, in the race to form Israels next government. Netanyahu clearly made an impressive 11th-hour surge since the pre-election polls of last week. It is hard to know what is more depressing: that Netanyahu went for the gutter in the last few days in order to salvage his campaign renouncing his own commitment to a two-state solution with the Palestinians and race-baiting Israeli Jews to get out and vote because, he said, too many Israeli Arabs were going to the polls or the fact that this seemed to work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/18/opinion/go-ahead-ruin-my-day.html?_r=0