The Dumb Idea Hall of Fame: 5 Surefire Ways To Screw Up The Middle East
In my 25 years of government service, I came up with more than my fair share of bad or just plain dumb ideas (see Arafat, Yasir, invitation to the Holocaust museum). In fact, I consider myself something of an expert on the subject.
But life’s about learning, right? And like Justice Potter Stewart’s famous 1964 opinion on pornography, these days I’ve come to know a bad idea when I see one.
The Middle East provides a particularly fertile ground for both the birth and demise of dumb ideas. And they come in varying shapes and sizes. Here are five candidates for some of the most inconsequential, ill-advised, or potentially dangerous dumb ideas proposed during the past year or so.
I’m grandfathering them in as potential nominees for the Dumb Idea Hall of Fame, a new feature to which I intend to devote at least one column a month.