Annals of mewling idiocy

In the annals of mewling idiocy emanating from Foggy Bottom, Secretary of State John Kerry must be given pride of place. Speaking to his friends at the Aspen Ideas Festival earlier this week, he contributed in a major way to man-made global warming. It was in his remarks at the festival that Kerry declared ISIS’s Istanbul massacre a sign of our success:

Now, yes, you can bomb an airport. You can blow yourself up. That’s the tragedy. Daesh and others like it know that we have to get it right 24/7/365. They have to get it right for 10 minutes or one hour. So it’s a very different scale. And if you’re desperate and if you know you’re losing and you know you want to give up your life, then obviously you can do some harm.

Kerry also declared our deal with Iran a great success: “Because of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Iran’s path to actually building a bomb has been closed off…” It’s painful. Does he believe his own bluster?

He went on to praise the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal as “a game-changer” (for the better). I bet you haven’t heard about that, probably because it conflicts with the current position of the presumptive Democratic nominee, who said the same thing when she served as Secretary of State.

This was embedded in much more of the wit and wisdom driving Obama administration foreign policy and national security strategy. Here is an excerpt:

Now, this is an ideas festival, and I want to talk to you about what I see after years of being involved in public life and about the problems we face, because I am convinced there are three particular challenges, each of which requires that we show that singularity of purpose and focus that our parents and grandparents did in the course of the last century. And that is to have a intense shared focus.

The first is violent extremism and the emergence of radical non-state actors, as opposed to state actors, which defined the last century for the most part.

I might just comment – I want to make sure publicly that I comment that just today, a bomb went off at the airport in Istanbul. Ten people we know are – according to the press reports, at least – are dead and some 40 wounded, and we are still collecting information and trying to ascertain what happened and who did it. And I won’t comment further on it, except to say that this is daily fare. And that’s why I say the first challenge we need to face is countering non-state violent actors, for a host of reasons.

The second is the need, more urgent than ever and more urgent, certainly, than some national politicians seem willing to admit, to preserve the health of our planet in the face of imminent climate change – happening climate change – and other environmental dangers.

And the third is connected to the other two, and it’s part and parcel of how we’re going to solve the whole problem. It is a global crisis of governance that will require leaders everywhere to cooperate, fight corruption, earn public confidence, inspire unity, and actually make decisions about issues that are relevant to the people who populate our countries.

May I just say whole thing here (video below, introduced by Walter Isaacson)?

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