Word: napoleonic
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Africa's wine once had a reputation to rival Europe's. In the 19th century, vin de Constance, a Cape Town dessert wine, was the A-list tipple of its day, served to Napoleon on his deathbed and celebrated in print by Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. But before the end of apartheid in 1994, white-only rule and a system of paying black workers in highly alcoholic runoff had left a pronounced sour taste in international markets. Postapartheid, South African wine has reformed - there are growing numbers of black customers and vintners - but its quality has come under fresh...
...West possibly do? A number of Iran watchers recommend that in the postelection turmoil the Obama Administration should simply reset its clock. "We should continue to allow the rifts between political élites, and the rift between the people and regime, to widen on their own," suggests Sadjadpour. "As Napoleon once said, 'If your enemy is destroying himself, don't interfere.' The truth is, we don't know how sanctions on refined petroleum could play out, and our bottom line should be to do no harm to the prospects for political change in Iran...
...lawyer, Courtenay Griffiths, had earlier denied that Taylor was an "African Napoleon bent on taking over the subregion," saying instead that he was a "broker of peace." Griffiths does not dispute the horrors of the war but says Taylor was not the heart of darkness directing it. "The case is all about linking the crimes to Mr. Taylor, but the evidence has been riddled with inconsistencies," he said. (Read "Charles Taylor Trial Starts...
...course, Uncle Napoleon had a point. Iran has been a long-standing target of foreign meddling. It was not just the CIA-assisted coup in 1953 against the popular democratic Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, which Obama mentioned in his Cairo speech. It was also the Western support for the Shah and, worst of all in the minds of Iranians, the U.S. support for Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, including the provision of chemicals that Saddam used to concoct poison gas. This remains an open wound in Iran. (See "In Tehran, Terror in Plain Clothes...
...seems clear that Obama's carefully calibrated remarks about the events in Iran were intended to address the Uncle Napoleon factor, and also to keep the door open for negotiations with the Khamenei-Ahmadinejad regime. It seems equally clear that the criticism from Senator John McCain and other neoconservatives was, in part, an emotional response to the events in the streets, but also an effort to score political points against a popular President and, long term, an attempt to prevent any negotiations with Iran from taking place. McCain won and lost during the course of the battle: the terrible events...