The Biggest Brains Of All Who Are Incapable Of Error

There's a piece in The Atlantic from Franklin Foer which contains a lot of bullshit (it's The Atlantic, it's Franklin Foer) so I don't even want to link to it (behind a paywall, anyway). It does make clear that the country is run by the bestest, smartest, most capable Foreign Policy Guys, and, despite that, they tried nothing and they're all out of ideas.

At 8 o’clock that evening, Sullivan dialed into a secure call with Biden, Finer, Blinken, and McGurk. Phil Gordon joined on the vice president’s behalf. As a group, they reviewed the past 11 months. Could they have done anything differently? Had they overlooked any opportunities for securing the release of the hostages?

Sullivan wondered if a deal had ever been possible. Hamas had just killed six of its best bargaining chips, an act of nihilism.

Over the course of two hours, the group batted ideas back and forth. In the end, they threw up their hands. There was no magical act of diplomacy, no brilliant flourish of creative statecraft that they could suddenly deploy.

After all the trips to the region, all the suffering witnessed on those trips, all the tough conversations, all the cease-fire proposals, the conflict raged on. Three hundred thirty-one days of failure, and the single day of success was still beyond their grasp.

The entire thing as framed as a hostage rescue mission - this is what they believed they were doing (or that is the story they want to tell) and Netanyahu's indifference to the hostages and regular sabotages are minimized. That is the obvious bullshit. Still this conclusion is amazing.