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Thursday, December 15, 2016
[1791 - Three-fourths of the states having ratified the ten Articles, the Bill of Rights is adopted, amending the US Constitution]
[1832 - Gustave Alexandre Eiffel, engineer, designer, born in Dijon, Cote-d'Or, France]
[1890 - Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull and eleven others die during his attempted arrest near Grand River, South Dakota]
[1892 - J. (Jean) Paul Getty, oil magnate, born in Minneapolis, Minnesota]
[1904 - Kermit Bloomgarden, Tony Award-winning producer, born in Brooklyn]
[1912 - Stan (Stanley Newcomb) Kenton, orchestra leader, jazz pianist, born in Wichita, Kansas]
[1918 - Jeff Chandler (Ira Grossel), actor, born in Brooklyn]
[1922 - Alan (Albert James) Freed, Rock & Roll disc jockey, born in Windber, Pennsylvania]
[1928 - Friedrich Hundertwasser (Stowasser), artist, architect, painter, ecologist, born in Vienna]
[1961 - Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death by an Israeli Jerusalem court]
To Horace, To Horace!
The Bush-Cheney administration and its seven years of horribly costly and stupidly prosecuted wars validated the words of the poet Horace, written in 23 B.C.:
Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.
Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)
Odes, Book III, iv, line 65
President Obama, with somewhat better advice and a more reasoned and honest approach, tried to avoid his predecessor's history of terrible bungling. His initial decision to double-down in Afghanistan did not auger well, although his subsequent decision to withdraw most US forces by end 2014 was clearly a move in the right direction. Now, with another terrorist organization pushing the same old American buttons, we seem to be sliding down the familiar slope toward yet another grand venture into the Middle-East, determined to solve the millenia old entangled conflicts of warring tribes and religious sects by bombing some more brown people.
William's Whimsical Words:
Wisdom requires (at minimum) a sound plan for dealing with the inevitable conditions that follow the application of force, and a valid, speedy exit strategy.
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