Abbottabad-a-Bing

At a time when the moral compass for international affairs seems to be having significant difficulties pointing steadily in any direction, let alone North, Sordel would like to take a moment (with all due deference to Buffy) to suggest a new doctrine:

"What would Michael Corleone do?"

Much as the Obama administration chooses to say that justice was served on Osama Bin Laden by U.S. Special Forces, our ideas of what is just, proper and "right" don't really embrace murder.

Sordel is not being squeamish or scrupulous though. We all love it when bad things happen to worse people, and this is what makes Corleone justice so compelling. Helicopters, assassins dropping through the darkness ... sure, it's a bit "Part Three", but Michael would assent, just as long as he could brood over a Catholic rite while it was taking place.

Pilotless drones firing rockets into a meeting of the Five Families? If the shadows are suggestive of chiaroscuro and a snatch of Italian opera is played, why not?

Risible Whack-a-Mole while trying to kill Qaddafi in the ruins of Tripoli? The Don demurs.

Michael Corleone's guiding principle was not morality, but effectiveness, and it wouldn't be hard to be on the side of democratic governments were they more effective. Protecting civilians, for example, is such a laudable aspiration, but there comes a point when an incompetently attempted good deed is even less welcome than a boldly effected crime.

Unfortunately, there is an admitted flaw with this new guiding light.

The event most typical of the Corleone approach is not the raid on Osama Bin Laden that took place in 2011, but the attack on the World Trade Center that took place in 2001. Ultimately, an ethical system that is enamoured of effectiveness to the exclusion of all other attributes owes its existence to the man who has now become its latest and most prominent victim.

Justice has been served all right, but only the poetic variety.

Not Just For Christmas

David Cameron (whom, for these purposes, let us imagine in full Little Lord Fauntleroy garb with copious lace and silk knee-pants) must have cut an eager figure as he approached the harassed Obama for a new war. "I'll feed it, and walk it, and you won't even know it's there," he must have implored.

Forgetting that this is what Sasha and Malia told him about Bo (his only surviving election promise) the embattled president seems to have reluctantly agreed, the fit measurement of that reluctance being that he has left Libya in the hands of Cameron and Sarkozy while he addressed more pressing issues, such as the fact that his entire government is on the brink of being shut down.

And, indeed, Cameron and Sarkozy did walk the war, proudly and ardently ... for about twelve hours. Now, with matted fur and an unsettlingly wolfish expression of resentment, it is defecating on the hall carpet and howling through the night.

The last time Britain and France went on their own without American leadership was, of course, the Suez crisis, when at least we had Israel, the world's most bellicose nation, doing some fighting for us. As a world leader (and I use the the word leader loosely) the last news that you want to hear is that the U.S. has ceded control of the air operation to you.

This is a bit like a young comedian getting on the bill with Billie Crystal and then learning that Crystal isn't intending to do any of the jokes himself.

Currently, the losers in this situation are the Libyan rebels, who should really have looked up the phrase "Iraqi Kurds" on Wikipedia before they took up arms.

Disastrous though the current situation is, however, there is worse to come for the people of Libya. If NATO gets its way, and Qaddafi is toppled, normal civilians in Tripoli and Benghazi may well come to view these as "the good old days".

And as for the puppy ... it's a rottweiler ... with a gentle disposition ... and has never showed any signs at all of wanting to savage the small boys who currently only pay it attention to poke it with a stick.

Outsider Art

Not since the angel with the fiery sword told Adam and Eve that if their names weren't on the list they weren't coming in has humanity so strained with fury at the injustice of an exclusion.

It seems that Gordon Brown has been refused admission to the cool kids' table. President Obama's dance list was mysteriously full every time that Gordon's party planners suggested a Terpsichorean tryst. If it were a Jane Austen adaptation he would be hiding his face behind a fan and hissing to his sisters at this very minute.

According to FT.com, a spokeswoman has been attempting to play down what lesser news outlets are describing as a snub. "She argued that the two were talking informally all the time – including a short encounter in the kitchens of the United Nations in New York."

Let's script that out shall we?

Obama: "While I'm here can I get a club sandwich?"

Brown: "Mr. President, it's Gordon!"

Obama: "My error ... can I get a club sandwich, Gordon?"

Sordel's amusement at this serious insult that our leader has suffered at the hands of the Rebels (surely the most vexing since the Boston Tea Party) is not unmixed, however, with fellow feeling. I was myself excluded this week: from the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy.

Now, it must be acknowledged before I go any further that the exhibition had not, in fact, opened yet, but it was nevertheless galling to be forced to gaze impotently through the glass at corridors that will soon be thronged with milling culture vultures. By the time I am able to form an opinion on this particular exhibition the expiry date for such an opinion will doubtless have passed and I will be left bewildered by discussion of the next artistic sensation.

It was not an entirely wasted journey, however.

For those of us unable to pass the gate, the Royal Academy has provided a very large courtyard sculpture that is best described as a Fizzy Drink. Shiny polished spheres (something of a stock in trade to which Kapoor resorts for his more obviously institutional artworks) effervesce upwards in a loose column, providing reflections of the surrounding buildings and one another.

As a consequence, those of us unable to enter the exhibition were forced to contemplate our own bleak physiognomies peering back at us.

It would be nice to think that Mrs. Brown's little boy will also use his time in the wilderness to indulge in a little self-reflection. In a crowd of little versions of himself he might at last find some friends.