Sunday, July 30, 2006

Big Stick Diplomacy?

From a speech by Abraham Lincoln, Hartford Connecticut, 1860:

If I saw a venomous snake crawling in the road, any man would say I might seize the nearest stick and kill it; but if I found that snake in bed with my children, that would be another question. I might hurt the children more than the snake, and it might bite them.


Whilst the esteemed gentleman from Illinois was talking about the subject of slavery, The allegory may have other useful extensions:


A Red Cross worker carries the body of a girl pulled out of the rubble of the destroyed building after Israeli airstrikes in Qana, Lebanon, on Sunday.

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