US Secretary of State John Kerry is confronted by Fox News with a conversation\u00a0with an aide that\u00a0was supposed to be private but was caught\u00a0by an open studio microphone. He\u00a0criticises Israel’s attack on Gaza, saying sarcastically: “It’s a hell of a pinpoint operation.” That is presumably\u00a0a\u00a0reference to the rapidly escalating death toll over the past 24 hours from\u00a0Israel’s ground invasion.<\/p>\n
Such incidents\u00a0often look as though\u00a0they have\u00a0exposed politicians as mendacious, saying one thing in private and another in public. I think that is the wrong way to understand it. Most politicians are not cynical.\u00a0They\u00a0do not think of themselves as\u00a0bad,\u00a0deceitful or hypocritical\u00a0– even if we often do. In their own minds, they believe they are doing the best possible in difficult circumstances.<\/p>\n
Here Kerry shows that he is concerned to save lives and suffering through diplomatic action, even as the decisions he takes are guaranteed to result in\u00a0many more people dying unnecessarily and in horrifying circumstances. He cares about the\u00a0civilians\u00a0being killed in Gaza, it’s just that his\u00a0political priorities \u2013 the good fight for civilisation \u2013 require destroying or containing “bad guys” like Hamas. In his mind,\u00a0it is sad but unavoidable that civilians have to pay the price, as collateral damage.<\/p>\n
In other words, the problem is not that Kerry\u00a0has bad motives or intentions; it is that his ideological horizons are so limited and\u00a0skewed by his education and socialisation that his judgment\u00a0has been\u00a0profoundly corrupted and is inherently unreliable. That, unfortunately, is the problem with\u00a0most of\u00a0the people\u00a0who run our societies.<\/p>\n