Barking at shovels

The Fun-house Mirror of History

I just love observations like this. I don't know what the hell it might prove (and of course, historical analogies can be selected to prove any point at all), but the symmetry is certainly sweet.

In the Suez Crisis of 1956, it was "a strongly interventionist Britain and France, closely allied with Israel, [that launched] a pre-emptive strike on the Middle East's worst dictator, but [were] forced back by American refusal to tolerate the European recolonization of the region or Western favoritism for the Zionist enterprise. The mind boggles." (Bruce Rolston, in Flit.)

The Arab dictator in question was Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the attack was principally in response to Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal, though the French were also angry about Nasser's support for the Algerian independence movement. (Bartleby's)

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