Mr Obama thinks he knows who shot the Malaysian plane down: “Evidence indicates” it was done by “Russian-backed separatists inside of Ukraine”.  Whether he is right or not (or, blasphemy, whether he is telling the truth or not), he then added an interesting argument:

“It is not possible for these separatists to function the way they’re functioning, to have the equipment that they have … a group of separatists can’t shoot down [a plane] without the sophisticated equipment, the sophisticated training – and that is coming from Russia.”

So, I thought, has America stopped selling arms then? Otherwise how could he be giving Russia a lecture on the wickedness of supplying arms? Is he about to announce this new policy of no arms sales? So that never again would dictators be armed by any Western power to slaughter their own people?

Then I pulled myself together – No, I said, this is not a new Obama Doctrine, it’s just old-fashioned hypocrisy. But if he did announce such a policy, that would really be, like the equipment and the training, sophisticated.

Another interesting idea surfaced with this story last night. Planes often fly over zones, said Channel 4 News, “where anti-aircraft missiles are in the wrong hands”. This not only begs the question of whose hands are the right hands – it also imposes a limit on what we’re allowed to hope for, argue for, insist on, or demand. We must never think that a world is possible where there would be no missiles in anybody’s hands.