Bahrain: Shouting in the dark
al-Jazeera English has broadcast an outstanding documentary on the ongoing repression in Bahrain:
Quote:
Bahrain: Shouting in the dark
The story of the Arab revolution that was abandoned by the Arabs, forsaken by the West and forgotten by the world.
Bahrain: An island kingdom in the Arabian Gulf where the Shia Muslim majority are ruled by a family from the Sunni minority. Where people fighting for democratic rights broke the barriers of fear, only to find themselves alone and crushed.
This is their story and Al Jazeera is their witness - the only TV journalists who remained to follow their journey of hope to the carnage that followed.
This is the Arab revolution that was abandoned by the Arabs, forsaken by the West and forgotten by the world.
AJ Arabic has rather downplayed Bahrain since GCC intervention there, so the broadcast of this on AJE is quite interesting.
Long ago in a Galaxy far away.
I was told that most people could identify problems with about 90% assurance and about 80% of those would broadly agree on the pertinent issues and they would be generally correct. I was told not to waste much time on that front end because the assessment of what was wrong was relatively easy and generally straightforward. It was also said that excessive effort on the front end often led to much second guessing and revisions of the generally more accurate first impressions.
Instead I was to search for solutions to the identified problem(s), solutions that should not be based on ideal circumstances but that could be applied in the messy real world; they should invariably be based on worst case possibilities. Never on desirabilities, not on 'probabilities,' rather only on the most adverse potentialities. I was given several examples of actual problems and attempted solutions and was shown how those solutions rarely worked because they were based on flawed perceptions by decision makers and the fact that people invariably and messily intruded -- mostly by not doing what everyone thought they would or should do. That and rejection of potential worst case scenarios...
"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose..." :D
I've been watching the US in the world for a long time. We get things right often but we err equally often -- and most errors are due to the wrong person being in the wrong place at the time a decision was needed. Luck of the draw in a democracy.
We are tolerated due to our wealth and the fact that most Americans, gauche as we are, are pretty decent and it is not them but the US government that has proven it is not too reliable in anything less than a MAJOR crisis. That is due not to evil intent but to a form of government that is not conducive to coherence -- by design.
The guy who taught me that initial bit above also emphasized that a 75% solution today was almost always better than a 95% solution tomorrow -- he noted that only rarely since TR and Elihu Root et.al. introduced excessive bureaucracy has the US been capable of the rapidity of action to do that...
I wouldn't change that. I would attempt -- have long attempted -- to embed knowledge or awareness of those traits in the minds of those who would affect US foreign policy. Those domestic pluses and international shortfalls have led to far more failures of the US on the international stage than any other single thing IMO.
Folks should also recall that we bribe a lot. We do that reasonably well. So did the Byzantines. As did the Mongols. Difference between those two and us other than the eras and mores of the day is twofold. The amount of political toughness available should bribes fail (as they often do...) and the concentration of power to act as opposed to our deliberate diffusion of it to deter action. We have problems in both areas. Still, we've bribed well and bullied and bluffed rather poorly for years.
Influence others? Very rarely.
Never reliably...