Yet there is little doubt that, with the start of a phased American troop withdrawal, the bugle has been sounded for a fresh bout of political and military scrambling to shape the destiny of a perilously fragile nation.
Few realised it at the time, because few were listening, but that speech provided a blueprint for pretty much everything he has done, for how he would re-shape a country that was perilously close to total collapse.
Using diverse approaches, from historical to social scientific, textual criticism and hermeneutics to storytelling and scientific reasoning, students will gain familiarity with religious traditions and forms of politics that shape their lives, yet remain perilously obscure, and a deeper understanding of how religion has had, and continues to have, cultural and political impact.
And it gives even less opportunity to encourage the kind of 21st-century digital skills – such as reflective judgment about how technology is shaping our beliefs and relationships – that we now see to be perilously lacking.
Uganda fits all perilously neatly into this mould.
But systems thinking is still perilously weak in an NHS bent out of shape by an excessive focus on competition.
As shears snip perilously close to the face, as a new shape and style reveals itself, and as one begins to feel more beautiful, an uncommonly close friendship emerges, often for a lifetime.
She throws shapes, barefoot and clad in a white trouser suit, backlit by orange lights: there are moments when she throws shapes with such abandon that we seem perilously close to the world of interpretative dance.
She throws shapes with such abandon that we occasionally seem to be venturing perilously close to the world of interpretive dance.
I had just finished telling Ungaro about my first experience ordering an haute couture suit -- Chanel, black faille, vaguely hourglass in shape -- throwing in for drama my doubts about having entered such a perilously chic world.
perilously close to deflation.
