What brings this to mind is an article I came across this morning about Jimmy Carter's boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the boycott being Carter's ill-considered response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The article described an encounter Carter had on an airplane years later, with an athlete who missed out on his Olympic experience due to the boycott. Carter said he was sorry, and he admitted that the boycott had been a mistake.
The boycott was a totally feckless response to the Afghanistan invasion. It punished the U.S. athletes, people who had trained all their lives for the chance to particiapte in an Olympics, while doing nothing to punish the Soviet Union. (And, of course, the Soviet Union reciprocated by in turn boycotting the 1984 summer games in Los Angeles.) The article mentioned that of the 466 U.S. athletes who had qualified for the team, 219 would never get to another Olympics.
Another weak and ineffectual president, Joe Biden, demonstrated his fecklessness when he described Bibi Netanyahu's genocide in Gaza as "over-the-top". My (sarcastic) reaction was, "Oh boy, that will sure make Bibi quake in his boots." A strong presidential response would have been to cut off all arms shipments to Israel until the genocide stopped. But Biden's response wass totally feckless.
Another example of fecklessness was when a friend of mine advocated not buying products made in Mexico, as a protest against how the Mexican companies mistreat their workers. My response was, "How will not buying their products lead to the companies treating their workers better? If anything, denying the companies a market for their products will cause the companies to tighten their belts, i.e., treat their workers even worse."
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