In his inauguration speech, Barak Obama did everything but take a slip of paper out of his coat pocket, wave it above his head and intone "Peace in our time".
I'm afraid I think we're about to witness results almost as cataclysmic and far-reaching as those that followed the time when those words were in fact uttered by a major Western leader - and I'm by no means even remotely confident that, in the long run, those who we like to think of as the good guys will eventually prevail this time.
History has a nasty habit of repeating itself, and far too many of our current political leadership seem to have almost no appreciation of history at all and so don't even know what has happened before. I'm particularly concerned about one aspect of history that first appeared in the Spanish Civil War - the crippling, battle-losing effect of a 'fifth column'. This last point applies, I think, particularly in Britain.