It Is What it Isn't

It's not my job to comment on oil spills in faraway gulfs. I was however intrigued to see this obvious comment, inserted in a series of statements effectively disagreeing with it:

Asked about the flow rate at a news conference at the White House on Monday, Adm. Thad W. Allen, the Coast Guard commander in charge of the federal response to the spill, said that as BP captured more of the oil, the government should be able to offer better estimates of the flow from the wellhead by tracking how much reaches the surface. “That is the big unknown that we’re trying to hone in and get the exact numbers on,” Admiral Allen said. “And we’ll make those numbers known as we get them. We’re not trying to low-ball it or high-ball it. It is what it is."

What an interesting idea: there's an objective truth to the matter, which is hard to know, but eventually it will come to the surface (sorry for the pun).

Now ask yourself if such a concept might be applicable to the matters I do deal with. Say, the Palestinians don't have a state because they're not willing to accept the right of the Jews to have one alongside them. Or, there are powerful groups in the Muslim world who are sworn enemies of the West and of the Jews, irrespective of how accommodating the West or the Jews may try to be. Or, the present Turkish government is informed by a deep animosity to the Jewish state, for fundamental reasons which are not easily influenced by fleeting events.