In this, the year we mark 70 years since the Suez crisis, one fun fact rates a mention. Anthony Eden held a first-class degree in Arabic and Persian. The man who led Britain to disgrace in the canal had not just a fine mind but one steeped in the very region that would trip him up. Few western leaders have been as literate about what was then called the Near East. (He had met the King of Iraq in his twenties.) Few western leaders have got the place more wrong. Eden ate from the tree of knowledge but could not make up for what he so lacked in judgment.
As another Middle Eastern farce goes on, seethe, by all means. But don’t, as seems to be the fashion, blame the war on stupidity. Even if it is true that Pete Hegseth will never trouble the admissions panel at Mensa, brilliant predecessors have fared worse. The big brains of Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld did not help them in Vietnam and Iraq. Hegseth’s alleged nickname at the Pentagon, Dumb McNamara, rather undercuts itself. To invoke that cleverest of fools is to tacitly admit that intellect is not the issue.