Poor Choices Of Words...Start Wars

Poor Choices Of Words...Start Wars

Back in 1950, President Truman asserted that South Korea was outside our defense perimeter. And the result? North Korea invaded, starting the Korean War. President Bush gets endless criticism for "Bushisms"--sometimes clumsy or unique uses of English. So watch this clip of a speech that Senator Obama gave to the American Israel Political Action Committee where he says that Jerusalem must remain the capital of Israel and undivided--and then watch what happens when ABC's Charles Gibson asks him about that (over at Mitchell Blatt's blog), and Obama calls it a poor choice of a word, but can't seem to come up with a way to finesse whether it should remain undivided or not.

This is like "a little bit pregnant." (Although Obama has a solution for that!) Jerusalem divided is a binary choice: it will be, or it won't be. Regardless of whether it is or isn't divided, a poor choice of words by the President can start a war. Remember when the left got all twitterpated by Reagan's admittedly foolish joke during a radio sound check? "The bombing will start in five minutes."

Watching Obama's stumbling around, looking for a way to answer Gibson's serious questions about a serious problem, it strikes me that Obama needed to either say: "Yes, Jerusalem will remain undivided," or "This is negotiable." Watching him fumble around trying to come up with a non-zero, non-one answer to a binary question gives me the impression that his "great speaker" credentials are the sign of great delivery of a speech--not necessarily of great off-the-cuff eloquence. As someone once observed of Winston Churchill's ability to give great speeches, but not do so well at answering questions: "Heavy guns, but not very mobile."