Planet Abell

Five years ago I wrote about the start of an era at Reuters . Now it's time to write about the end of two. Bernd Debusmann is leaving The Baron after one of the most storied careers not only at that news agency but but surely in journalism. He reported from more than 100 countries since joining the company in 1964 and, five years ago, was the marquee name when Reuters began an opinion service with three writers. They don't make them like this anymore. If ever there was a living Le Carré character, it is Bernd, from his lifelong passion of jumping out of airplanes (most of the time, I think, with a parachute) to the 7.65 mm round, delivered with a silenced pistol on behalf of someone who didn't care for his reporting. Bernd leaves with that bullet still lodged near his spine, and with the admiration of generations of reporters who got to watch how it was done, day-in-and-day-out, even on those rare occasions when he wasn't being shot, threatened or throw...

I take as a given that it is impossible for sovereign states to be consistent in any meaningful way, and that there are degrees of pretense to projecting consistency. What interests me here is that there isn't any particular US interest in eradicating the world of Gaddafi, and apart from the bluster of attacking his own people bent on attacking him (a peculiarly internal matter, one might even argue) no new one from a month or so ago. So given that world leaders pick and choose their rationales like fruit at a Middle East market, we can only judge (I think) the intent by how far today's rationale is from self-interest. As I see it, Obama's failure here is entirely in the realm of domestic politics, which as these things go is exactly the right place you want to weak when lives are at stake. Which has no bearing on the creation of a new precedent that cannot possibly be consistently adhered to without new conditions to tomorrow's rational for action, or inaction. [Libya ...