How America lost the war of ideas

[omarali50]

Tangentially related: http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksd...-thoughts.html

[Ken White]

Most revolving around this extract from davidfbpo's original post:

...But it persists, and without a sea-change in Western attitudes and Western policy it will retain enough truth to be persuasive. Changing the perception requires changing the reality.

The author needs to improve his math skills, the west isn't going to change. Pleas and suggestions that the west 'must' do this or that are IMO quite specious and obscure the fact that we're all on this Earth and it is in our best interest to stay diverse AND to get along -- not love each other, just get along. No one should be encouraged to do things that go against their instincts and personal preferences so long as they do not afflict others -- afflict others and you become a fair target for unpleasantness. Rightly so and that applies to east and west, north and south, large and small, state and non-state...

I think omarali50 has, as usual, an excellent point:

...The author abruptly stops at that point, which may tell us that he is intelligent and doesnt want to make an ass of himself, but it tells us nothing else.

In fairness, he probably is a smart guy but his perceptions are clouded by his profession and proclivities, journalists tend to concentrate on the here and now but any 'war of ideas' is a very long term thing and in the post 9/11 milieu, it'll take years, probably decades, before winners and losers are identified. To suggest "loss" as a final decision in an effort that is far from over is quite premature.

Then Levi struck a chord with his response to this quote:

The question that haunted America after 9/11 – ‘Why do they hate us?’ – tended to provoke the wrong answers. It was falsely comforting to believe that America’s enemies did not understand it, and that the remedy was to harness the skills of Madison Avenue to demonstrate that the United States was a benign actor, a force for good that had brought the world science and technology as well as Hollywood and hamburgers.

That's even less credible. The "Why do they hate us " mantra was a US Media construct with little traction among most Americans outside the political and foreign policy self appointed elites. The 'hate us' bit never gained much traction outside those three realms -- and to a lesser extent, the vales of Academe and their clonettes, the Think Tanks (both of whom pay far more attention to the media than they should... ). Most Americans, in the immortal words of Canadian journalist Christy Blatchford, "...don't give a rat's ass what the rest of the world thinks."

The author then quoted Pillar and used the magic 'neocon' phrase, always a flaky and trite juxtaposition. I'm with Levi, it's a combination of those two and a great many more things, with the two political views being quite minor impactors.

America lost the war of ideas because it never entered that war.

Nor should we have, we're way too slow and cumbersome to play at that. We can do other things -- and probably will if we have to (we as a nation are not good at doing things unless we just really have to do them...).

I'm also with Levi on the Hamburgers, larger and greasier the better...

[Dayuhan]

If America has lost the war of ideas... does that mean the war of ideas is over?

Damn, I guess I'll just go boating. Bit of a relief actually.

You might argue that America is losing the war of ideas, or that America has fallen behind in the war of ideas. Your arguments might or might not be right, but at least they wouldn't be ridiculous, which the notion of having "lost" the war of ideas certainly is.

[omarali50]

LOL.
Thank God its over!
A friend of mine says he met a marine officer once who became interested in him after he learned he is Pakistani. But when my friend (who reads Edward Said for fun..so you can imagine..) started trying to explain "the war of ideas" to the officer, the officer lost interest, started fidgeting and eventually (apologetically and politely) said "I am really not good at this stuff; I am interested in kinetics".
My friend (who had never heard the term "kinetics" outside of high school physics) tells this tale as an example of American military obtuseness. But I am now convinced that the US might have done much better if more decision makers were more interested in "kinetics".
The war of ideas has not been good for common sense....
On the other hand, I may be getting carried away with the pleasure of being snarky. The war of ideas may not be lost and the US psyops effort may even be doing some good. We should not submit too easily to the pleasures of pessimism.