Sunday, February 06, 2005

Tyger! Tyger! Burning Bright

''Ch'i 'hu nan hsia pei'' goes the Chinese proverb, translated in 1875 as ''He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount.''

The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs interprets the old Asian metaphor as ''Once a dangerous or troublesome venture is begun, the safest course is to carry it through to the end."

So writes William Safire.

Well, that's Arik Sharon to me, as I once wrote of Yitzhak Rabin. They know deep down that they both made a wrong decision but, deep in their psychological morasses, they cannot admit their errors and will just plod, or even push, through the situations they've created just to get it over.

They are reall afraid of the Tiger and we citizens suffer.

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