"Cutting off your nose to spite your face" is a phrase we're sure most of our readers have heard before. Maybe you've even done it to yourself a few times. We certainly have.
It's not an action we normally undertake when we are thinking logically and clearly, however.
Unfortunately, this spring short faces seem to be the fashion trend in many places around the world. It's like a style change gone horribly wrong.
In Washington, DC, certain members of the Republican Party seem intent on throwing a temper tantrum about the budget, as we pointed out on Tuesday. The political left isn't doing any better, as President Obama continues to cripple his ability to govern effectively by giving in to the idea that the political center is where those on the far right say it is.
The behavioral version of this fashion faux pas doesn't just stop in DC.
In Pakistan, the CIA has basically been thrown out of the country.
This isn't entirely an unseen or unexpected event. It's been reported that U.S.-Pakistan intelligence cooperation has been frozen since January, with no real thaw on the horizon. Things only got worse when Pakistanis captured a CIA contractor in January who had killed two Pakistanis who were rumored to work for their comparable security service, the ISI.
CIA Director Leon Panetta met with the head of Pakistan's ISI in DC on Monday, to try and straighten things out. So far, reports seem to suggest the only thing they may have worked out was that U.S. drone strikes could continue.
That the CIA has been expelled in a way not even the Russians were at the height of the Cold War is bad news, indeed, for the U.S., and its intelligence services, who continue to try and catch or kill al-Qaeda members either because the Pakistanis can't or won't. It's also bad news for the Pakistani government, which is not entirely stable or secure and in many ways more in danger from al-Qaeda than is America.
This is an action that is, in no way, good for Pakistan. Sure, it temporarily allows Pakistanis to square their shoulders, puff up, and say to each other, "See how we tossed those arrogant Americans out of our country?"
At least they'll have something to be proud of when the al-Qaeda operatives who are likely hiding in their midst overthrow their government, as al-Qaeda did the government of Afghanistan, not that long ago.
We'd like to say that this trend of insane, self-destructive, ego-driven actions by politicians is a temporary worldwide fashion aberration - like hoop skirts, zoot suits, or polyester Nehru jackets all were at one time or another.
We'd like to say that - but we're not sure we can.
What we can say is that it appears that leaders, both at home and abroad, are being too short-sighted for their own good - or ours.
After all, we understand behavioral fashion enough to know that cutting off one's nose to spite one's face is never a good idea.
Some things are just not meant to be cut short.
