Miscalculations

You don’t have any

You don’t have any communication between the Israelis and the Iranians. You have all sorts of local triggers for conflict. Having countries act on a hair trigger – where they can’t afford to be second to strike – the potential for a miscalculation or a nuclear war through inadvertence is simply too high. Dennis A. … Read more

The blindness of bigotry,

The blindness of bigotry, the madness of ambition, and the miscalculations of diplomacy seek their victims principally amongst the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power and of authority, and is generated in … Read more

The margin of

The margin of safety is always dependent on the price paid. It will be large at one price, small at some higher price, nonexistent at some still higher price. Benjamin Graham

War is the unfolding

War is the unfolding of miscalculations. Barbara Tuchman

As Bush said, after

As Bush said, after detailing some of Saddam Hussein’s charming practices: “If this is not evil, then evil has no meaning.” It’s not as if anyone is worried that we’re making a horrible miscalculation and could be removing the Iraqi Abraham Lincoln by mistake. Ann Coulter

Our intention to regard

Our intention to regard the closing of the Straits as a casus belli was communicated…to the foreign ministers of those states which had supported international navigation in the Straits in 1957 and thereafter. There can be no doubt that these warnings reached Cairo. One thing was now clear. If Nasser imposed a blockade, the explosion would ensue not from ‘miscalculation’, but from an open-eyed and conscious readiness for war.
Abba Eban