Word: spinelessness
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...aged and elderly Cambridge-area crowd at the First Parish Church at an event sponsored by Harvard Book Store. “We’re not going to compromise anymore because that is the compromise already.” Though he avoided calling out the White House as spineless for suggesting compromise, he joked that some “spinal transplants” that he had performed on Democrats in Congress were “rejected.” During the question-and-answer session, a middle-aged woman pressed Dean on what “rank-and-file?...
After Obama's Inauguration, things got worse. Officials in the new Administration made no secret of their contempt for Karzai, whom they viewed as spineless and inefficient, too tolerant of drug smugglers. Allegations that some members of his family were in the drug trade didn't help. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described Karzai's administration as a "narco-state." And last week, another meeting with a visiting American - special envoy Richard Holbrooke - descended into angry words...
...American political establishment had no interest in starting other human rights expeditions in Africa—so it dithered while the Rwandan genocide was being perpetrated. At State Department press briefings, officials refused to acknowledge that genocide was occurring, despite internal documents clearly stating that it was. This spineless denial delayed the placement of U.N. troops that could have averted the bloody 100 days during which Hutu militias slaughtered at least 800,000 Tutsi citizens. Intervention was simply politically inconvenient...
...personal turning point that opened his eyes to causes larger than himself, transforming a vain jet jockey into a servant of his country. It was also a political turning point that forged his views on foreign affairs. McCain saw Vietnam as an honorable and winnable war botched by spineless politicians who tied the hands of American soldiers and betrayed their South Vietnamese allies, dishonoring the U.S. and emboldening its enemies. And those were not just knee-jerk reactions to his own traumas; McCain spent a year after his release studying Vietnam and its history at the National War College. McCain...
...herd of prize horses. "The raw meat in their mouths meant nothing to the wolves: only the murderous tearing of horseflesh mattered." More problematically, the book contains puzzling chunks in which Jiang details his pet theory: that thousands of years of farming have turned the Chinese into a spineless people who placidly accept direction from above and are too timid to seize what they want. If the country is to avoid decadence and decay, he argues, the Chinese must emulate the ferocious independence of the wolves and the nomadic Mongols who lived in harmony with them. And not just...