Courage and Strength

Marc Ambinder astutely summarizes the Obama approach to the attempt to blow up the plane in Detroit.  An approach that I endorse, by the way.  Hat tip, also to Steve Benen, who has some good commentary on it as well. 

One does not intimidate enemies by treating every possible danger as if it is life threatening.  Rather, one intimidates ones enemies by treating things that terrify them, as if they do not bother you.  Cheney’s 1% doctrine wherein we treat even a 1% change of an opponent having a nuclear weapon as if it is an absolute certainty, is the very definition of cowardice. 

Are we really to believe that the main who treats a house cat as if it were as dangerous as a lion is to be feared, rather than the man who handles a lion as easily as one would a house cat.