Stupid pundit Shakespeare quotes
James Schlesinger is a man with a long pedigree of government responsibility (Pentagon, CIA, etc.) that lends weight to his words. But someone should tell him to lay off the Bard.
On today's Wall Street Journal editorial page, Schlesinger adds his voice to the "Don't waste any more time with the U.N. -- invade Iraq now" chorus. But in his final paragraph he unwittingly likens President Bush to a murderous assassin. How's that?
Schlesinger writes that "The sequence of events, over the last six months, raises the question whether the president was right to take the issue back to the U.N. rather than move ahead early with the support of the willing.... It raises, perhaps underscores, the words from Macbeth: 'If it twere done when 't is done, then 't were well It were done quickly.' "
Uh, yeah. It doesn't require an advanced degree in Elizabethan drama to recall that these are the words of Macbeth, who is vacillating as to whether to go ahead with his plan to murder his king. The "it" in question is a crime, one that will ultimately bring down those who commit it.
Now, I don't think Schlesinger meant to suggest that the campaign against Saddam Hussein is a crime that will ultimately bring down those who commit it -- did he?
A quote is a dangerous thing in untrained hands!
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