Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Q: What Do You Call A Participant In A Two-Sided Contest That Is Not On Either Side?

A: A referee.

We're not trying to depose Gadaffi*, we're not trying to help him stay in power, we're not trying to help the rebels and we're not concerned with what the place looks like if they win. All we want is to see that the game is played cleanly.

From 20,000'.

With the participants practically indistinguishable from the air.

With civilians being hard to identify when lots and lots of them are armed and shooting.

This is the perfect mission for the Obama Administration. We keep our hands clean, we don't really get involved, we pass moral judgment on both sides, but we exhibit no understanding at all about how things actually work.

You shot up the hospital! That was a clear foul! Airstrike time!

* - I'm about to give up trying to find the correct spelling of his name.

2 comments:

Kelly the little black dog said...

Have you ever noticed that there is never a single correct spelling when we don't like that person.

tim eisele said...

Of course, the reason why there are so many variations on his name is that the "correct" spelling is in the Arabic alphabet, and there is no universally-agreed transliteration from Arabic to Latin characters.

It doesn't help that the Arabic alphabet doesn't include most of the vowels, so whether or not to include them in a Latin alphabet transliteration is kind of a judgement call by the translator.