Vladimir Putin is a liar, the Iranians are liars, and the Houthis are liars. Watching the daily news as a trained historian drives me nuts. The people our elites and the press pay attention to are serial liars.
The reporting of Mr. Putin’s latest flow of proposals as though he might be telling the truth requires rejecting everything we know about the KGB-trained dictator of Russia. Listening to the latest reports from Tehran requires a gullibility that ignores a full century of the Iranian dictatorship chanting Death to America. The Houthis manipulate the Saudis and others as they keep building up their strength both in Yemen and now increasingly in the Horn of Africa.
Our elites prefer to pretend that the words matter because it is the nature of diplomats to find excuses to talk. A Reagan-era negotiator with a military background told me with disbelief that in negotiating with the Soviets, a good meeting as measured by American diplomats was one which led to another meeting. The test was not if you were coming close to getting an agreement. The test was whether you could keep talking.
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