Words matter. They matter between people, they matter in legal affairs, and they especially matter between nations.
Victor Davis Hanson gives a brief review of how sometimes a very few words have meant the difference between war and peace. For example, Secretary of State Dean Acheson (Truman Administration) left South Korea out of a public review of U.S. defense policy and a few months later the North Koreans, supported by the Chinese, rolled across the border en masse triggering the Korean War. More recently, George Bush's (H.W.) ambassador to Iraq told Saddam in 1990 that the U.S. did not believe its interests were affected by his dispute with Kuwait. He invaded a week later.
The Obama Administration is gushing words in diplomatic circles like the broken Gulf oil well. I don't think there is a nation anywhere on earth that he hasn't apologized to for some imagined slight or "dastardly" act committed by the U.S. He is behaving like Neville Chamberlain on steroids and, if you remember the end of the story between Chamberlain and Hitler, the story did not end well. This one won't either. Words matter and some tyrant somewhere is going to be emboldened and pull the trigger. Real people are going to get real dead. Then we will see whether Obama realizes the error of his ways or if he thinks the U.S. really should act like Lichtenstein.
townhall.com/columnists/VictorDavisHanson/2010/07/01/even_a_few_words_matter
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