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Thread: Strategic Narrative

  1. #21
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    Bob's World,

    Poor governance is much easier than good governance - and that is why poorly governed spaces abound.

    Good governance means institutions, taxes, law enforcement etc. All of these institutions are very difficult to build and maintain, so elites tend to choose the easy way out.

    A trade off is usually made between the costs of good governance and the benefit of leaving things the way are. In many cases the costs outweigh the benefits (I am speaking from the POV of a Karzai or a Kabila).

    How do we make good governance less costly for the likes of Karzai and Kabila?

  2. #22
    Council Member Bob's World's Avatar
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    We don't solve this. This is a question for the people of Afghanistan to work out with their own government. When effective legal means are available to work these things out we call it "politics"; when such means are not available we call it a wide range of things depending on who one asks, but I call it "insurgency."

    What is adequate varies widely by country, by culture and over time. Those societies which develop trusted and certain systems to legally make necessary adjustments create the flexibility and populace control necesary for stability. Those systems that become overly rigid and inflexible hold strong until they break, and when they break they break hard. Most societies that have flexible systems now had to act out illegally and typically violently, to break some pre-existing inflexible system. Too often one has to tear down the old to build new, and too often what is built looks far too much like what was there previously, only to have to tear it all down yet again.

    This is all very natural. It has undoubtedly happened since man first organized into social groups. It will continue to happen.

    But the better we understand it, the better we can mitigate the negative aspects and effects. But step one is getting governments to step up and take responsibility, and that is more often than not the hardest step of all.
    Robert C. Jones
    Intellectus Supra Scientia
    (Understanding is more important than Knowledge)

    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

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    I like Western-Islamic World View Conflicts as a starting point (HT to T). The applicable project, The Struggle of Narratives-Attempting to Visualize It (11 pdfs):

    Project Description

    Background

    However else we characterize the current world situation, we must acknowledge that we are involved in a struggle of worldviews (or as some have called it, a "struggle of narratives"). It may not be a Huntington's "clash of civilizations" but it is most certainly a struggle of ideas. Among the topics we considered in this project are:

    What do we mean by struggle of narratives as a context within which diplomacy, politics and the use of force takes place?

    How is this more than simply the old battle for the "hearts and minds" of the populace?

    Can the pitched battle of the media be thought of as the "New Fog of War" quite different from that described by Clausewitz?

    How might a picture of this struggle look from the point of view of our visualization of public policy?

    Are there new ways to portray the ideological conflict that might help us understand this process more deeply?
    ...
    Wicked problems

    Our view is complex public policy issues constitute what Horst Rittel has called "wicked problems." We sometimes call them ill-structured problems and more informally "social messes."

    Wicked problems are situations that have these properties:

    complicated, complex, and ambiguous

    uncertainty even as to what the problems are, let alone what the solutions might be

    great constraints

    tightly interconnected, economically, socially, politically, technologically

    seen differently from different points of view, and quite different worldviews

    contain many value conflicts

    are often a-logical or illogical
    ... (much more)
    JMM Comments on the Western-Islamic World View Conflicts chart.

    I'd suggest that someone more qualified than myself check out the bullet points for the Traditional Islamic View and for the Militant Islamic Beliefs (the latter appear to be based on Maududi). Whoever does that should be a firm Muslim Traditionalist. I'd also suggest that the Islamic World is not so simple; e.g., the basic division between Sunni and Shia.

    Western Constitutional / Democratic / Capitalistic Ideology is scarcely a monolith with huge differences in Worldview between various blocks. I'm drawing out in my head at least a half-dozen blocks - and they are not all "Western". So, the Western Constitutional / Democratic / Capitalistic Ideology as stated is an idealized set of bullet points.

    Taking the "Western Constitutional / Democratic / Capitalistic Ideology" as a given, solely for purposes of discussion, one should add a "Western" Left Hook (POW !, as the cartoons say) entitled "Western Attack". That to match the Islamic Left Hook entitled "Militant Counterattack" (POW !). Of course, that immediately leads to an argument as to who attacked first - ah, yes, competing narratives.

    The parent webpage, R. Horn Home, leads to his Bio:

    Robert E. Horn is a political scientist with a special interest in policy communication, social learning, and knowledge management (especially in biotechnology and national security affairs). For the past 7 years, he has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University's Center for the Study of Language and Information. His career has been widely interdisciplinary, leading a team (in the 1960s) that developed an information system covering 400 federal programs on education and training, editing a standard reference work that evaluated over 1,500 educational simulations in 35 academic disciplines (in the 1970s), and creating, while he was a research associate at Columbia University, a widely used methodology for the analysis of any complex subject matter. He turned this research into an international consulting company, specializing in knowledge management, called Information Mapping, Inc., (in the 1980s) which he founded and was CEO of for 15 years. He has taught at Harvard, Columbia, and Sheffield (U.K.) universities

    His recent development of visual argumentation mapping has resulted in the publication of the Mapping Great Debates series, which, in the past year and a half, has received a full-page review in Nature, as well as being hung in a national museum in The Hague as part of an exhibit on information design as a fine art.

    Horn is also Vice President of the Meridian International Institute on Governance, Leadership Learning and the Future, which is a policy think tank. For the past several years, he has been leading a project exploring the possibilities for using highly visual cognitive maps to aid the policy making process (especially science and security matters). His most recently published book is Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century (www.macrovu.com). At Stanford he continues his research work in knowledge management and information design. His consulting clients have included Boeing, Lucent Technologies, Principal Financial, AT&T, HP, and other Global 1000 companies.

    This year he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for the work on the Information Mapping method from the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). He is a fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science and a member of its nominations committee. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and a recipient of the Outstanding Research Award from the National Society for Performance and Instruction (NSPI).
    Lots of "stuff" - too much "stuff" ? (you judge).

    Regards

    Mike

  4. #24
    Council Member Dayuhan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by KingJaja View Post
    How do we make good governance less costly for the likes of Karzai and Kabila?
    Who exactly is "we" in this picture? May I be excused?

    I don't think there is any "we" that can "fix" these situations... and in all honesty, even with the best will possible, I doubt that a Karzai or a Kabila could. Institutions and systems aren't built or installed, and the societies in question have to grow with them. Sometimes that means they have to break into less incompatible parts.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
    We don't solve this. This is a question for the people of Afghanistan to work out with their own government. When effective legal means are available to work these things out we call it "politics"; when such means are not available we call it a wide range of things depending on who one asks, but I call it "insurgency."

    What is adequate varies widely by country, by culture and over time. Those societies which develop trusted and certain systems to legally make necessary adjustments create the flexibility and populace control necesary for stability. Those systems that become overly rigid and inflexible hold strong until they break, and when they break they break hard. Most societies that have flexible systems now had to act out illegally and typically violently, to break some pre-existing inflexible system. Too often one has to tear down the old to build new, and too often what is built looks far too much like what was there previously, only to have to tear it all down yet again.

    This is all very natural. It has undoubtedly happened since man first organized into social groups. It will continue to happen.

    But the better we understand it, the better we can mitigate the negative aspects and effects. But step one is getting governments to step up and take responsibility, and that is more often than not the hardest step of all.
    In the language of the thread, I suspect that you may be imposing your personal narrative on situations where it doesn't necessarily apply. No narrative is universal.

    Insurgency is not necessarily about "a populace" and "a government". It can be about two or more subsets of a populace fighting for power. When one of those subsets happens to be the government we call it "insurgency", but the root conflict is populace vs populace, not populace vs government. Put the Taliban back in power and you still have insurgency, just with different parties wearing different hats. Of course we can imagine a unified government representing all the populaces involved, but we can imagine lots of stuff. Imagining it won't make it happen.

    Imagining "a society" with an inflexible "system" that needs to become flexible overlooks the reality that in many conflict areas there are multiple societies with irreconcilable expectations, lumped together in arbitrarily designated "nations" based on little more than the whims of colonial cartography. I don't know how realistic it is to expect systems to grow that will accommodate those parts, and it's definitely unrealistic to think any outside power can make that happen.

    The idea of "getting governments to step up and take responsibility" seems to assume that the government is something separate from the societies and populaces it governs, and does not necessarily reflect their divisions. Again, not realistic. We are not going to persuade any government, anywhere, to do what we want it to do if it sees that action as opposed to its own interests. They may fake it in exchange for concessions (we make that easy), but not much more.
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

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    Who exactly is "we" in this picture? May I be excused?

    I don't think there is any "we" that can "fix" these situations... and in all honesty, even with the best will possible, I doubt that a Karzai or a Kabila could. Institutions and systems aren't built or installed, and the societies in question have to grow with them. Sometimes that means they have to break into less incompatible parts.
    By we I meant the global community.

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    Posted by Dayuhan,

    Insurgency is not necessarily about "a populace" and "a government". It can be about two or more subsets of a populace fighting for power. When one of those subsets happens to be the government we call it "insurgency", but the root conflict is populace vs populace, not populace vs government. Put the Taliban back in power and you still have insurgency, just with different parties wearing different hats. Of course we can imagine a unified government representing all the populaces involved, but we can imagine lots of stuff. Imagining it won't make it happen.
    This is a fair point, and the bottom line is there is no universal cause or solution to insurgency. The narratives vary widely among different groups, and we as an interloper will not effectively counter any narrative.

    Imagining "a society" with an inflexible "system" that needs to become flexible overlooks the reality that in many conflict areas there are multiple societies with irreconcilable expectations, lumped together in arbitrarily designated "nations" based on little more than the whims of colonial cartography. I don't know how realistic it is to expect systems to grow that will accommodate those parts, and it's definitely unrealistic to think any outside power can make that happen.
    I know Bob appreciates this, but what seems to be overlooked by his theory is that violence actually serves a purpose, no matter how unpleasant it may be. If a peaceful solution was first desired, and second feasible, then the parties would have pursued a peaceful solution.

    The idea of "getting governments to step up and take responsibility" seems to assume that the government is something separate from the societies and populaces it governs, and does not necessarily reflect their divisions. Again, not realistic. We are not going to persuade any government, anywhere, to do what we want it to do if it sees that action as opposed to its own interests. They may fake it in exchange for concessions (we make that easy), but not much more.
    I don't governments reject responsibility in most cases, but on the other hand they don't care about the insurgent's views or objectives. If the insurgents are effective enough militarily they can force the government to care. Governments and insurgents have to reach a point where they desire a political versus military solution. It isn't a matter of taking responsibility, because they already know why there is an insurgency.

  7. #27
    Council Member Bob's World's Avatar
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    A few items worth considering and discussing.

    1. what is it when one segment of a populace battles another within some state. Neither battling, presumably against or to change the state, but rather simply to sort out some issue of localized power, wealth, grievance, etc?

    In the US we have called such things "feuds" as in the Hatfield's and the McCoys; also "Range Wars" or "Water Wars" as parties in an expanding West battled for control of critical grazing, or more often, water resources. More modernly "turf wars" between rival gangs of various criminal nature. But we don't call them insurgencies. Which such activities often cause challenges to the local authorities and impact the local populace, they are not politically motivated and are not driven from some base of political grievance within some segment of a populace, so IMO, are not insurgency.

    We must learn to classify such illegal violence among the people by the nature of its roots, not by the nature of the form or tactics that it ultimately adopts. When we do this we shift from setting out to defeat the symptoms of such problems to one of setting out to actually resolve them in a relatively enduring manner.

    2. "...they (governments) already know why there is an insurgency." Certainly sometimes this is true. I am sure there are many times government officials privately admit that actions within their control or that are directly or indirectly the cause of government action or policy are at the roots of the insurgency they face; while officially they blame ideology, religion, economy, foreign agents, internal malign actors, etc, etc etc and set out to defeat the symptoms. And yes, where no legal means are available to force such governments to make changes, illegal and violent means will often be taken up by such populaces in efforts to force the government to change. Bill actually validates my position with his counter position.

    But do we think that some populaces prefer to fight and die and bring state violence down upon their self, their families and their communities when effective, trusted, and certain legal means that make sense within the context of their culture exist to address their grievances with that same government??? I need a couple of examples, because I can't think of any. I mean real examples, not ones like Afghanistan where sham elections of certain officials in Kabul exist, but where people have no true means to address the Northern Alliance monopoly of governance, and certainly no means that is rooted in the traditional processes of their culture and history.

    3. "No one root cause." Totally agree. "Poor Governance" as I define and apply it is a broad family of critical perceptions between a populace and their governance. Insurgency is political and is about illegal popular challenges levied against a government by a segment of its populace. Other types of violence are not insurgency. It does us no good to lump such violence by the very character of the violence, but we must focus on who the conflict is between and what the essence of the movement is. Far too many types of conflict are lumped under insurgency these days. The most glaring example is the rise of criminal drug cartels in Mexico. Certainly they challenge government, but their primary purpose is profit and power by individuals and small business/family organization. That is not insurgency and requires a very different solution set to be applied against it.

    Another example is AQ. What Kilcullen calls "global insurgency" conflates what are dozens of separate nationalist movements and localized grievances, that are indeed in most part each a unique insurgency against some government or another, all under the common banner of AQ who conducts UW to leverage those diverse pools of insurgent energy to their common cause, while applying a common unifying ideology. That is UW, that is not "global insurgency" any more than the efforts of the US and the Soviets to leverage the insurgent energy of various populaces to their larger Cold War goals in that era were "global insurgency."

    We need to clean up our lexicon and how we group and define these things.

    I know with great certainty that Bill Moore, Dayuhan and Bob Jones all are in about 90% agreement on these matters, yet we flog each other over the 10%. Yes, the 10% is important, but much of it is because the lexicon of this field of conflict is such a muddy mess.
    Robert C. Jones
    Intellectus Supra Scientia
    (Understanding is more important than Knowledge)

    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

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    Council Member Dayuhan's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
    In the US we have called such things "feuds" as in the Hatfield's and the McCoys; also "Range Wars" or "Water Wars" as parties in an expanding West battled for control of critical grazing, or more often, water resources. More modernly "turf wars" between rival gangs of various criminal nature. But we don't call them insurgencies.
    I don't know that you can reasonably compare the Hatfields and the McCoys to, say, the Muslim/Christian tensions in the southern Philippines or Nigeria, or the Israeli/Palestinian issues, or the Shi'a/Sunni violence in so many places, or... well, the list goes on. There are divisions in many places that vastly exceed anything the US has known since the civil war.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
    But do we think that some populaces prefer to fight and die and bring state violence down upon their self, their families and their communities when effective, trusted, and certain legal means that make sense within the context of their culture exist to address their grievances with that same government???
    Again, I think you're assuming a grievance with the government, and not considering the possibility that some people just plain want power. If the grievance is that they have the power and we want it, there are certain problems with trying to supply avenues for resolution, especially when nobody's interested in sharing.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
    "Poor Governance" as I define and apply it is a broad family of critical perceptions between a populace and their governance.
    I realize that. I just think that in many cases those involved in the conflict may not be defining and applying the term as you do.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
    Another example is AQ. What Kilcullen calls "global insurgency" conflates what are dozens of separate nationalist movements and localized grievances, that are indeed in most part each a unique insurgency against some government or another, all under the common banner of AQ who conducts UW to leverage those diverse pools of insurgent energy to their common cause, while applying a common unifying ideology. That is UW, that is not "global insurgency" any more than the efforts of the US and the Soviets to leverage the insurgent energy of various populaces to their larger Cold War goals in that era were "global insurgency."
    No argument from me there; I never bought into the "global insurgency" construct.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
    I know with great certainty that Bill Moore, Dayuhan and Bob Jones all are in about 90% agreement on these matters, yet we flog each other over the 10%. Yes, the 10% is important, but much of it is because the lexicon of this field of conflict is such a muddy mess.
    Probably true on the 90%, but I suspect that we argue over the 10% less because its important than because we are a contentious bunch by nature.
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

  9. #29
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    Big religious divides are very real. Sometimes it is just religous difference for the sake of religion.

    They are also very much exploited by those with agendas to gain political power, or can be a source of political causation when a government favors those of one religion and creates perceptions of unfairness or oppression of those of another religion.

    So long as Israel is dedicated to the concept of a "Jewish State" they will have conflict with those citizens who are not jewish, and by extention, with their non-Jewish neighbors as well. That may not seem fair, when one has a "Muslim State" next door in Saudi Arabia, but one must recall that the Saudis established their state long before CNN, BBC and others started putting the play by play of religious genocide and oppression on the 24-hour news.

    Israel occupied by force, and then forced a system onto those who lived there. The fact that they did so with so much help from others robs them of the legitimacy they would have had if they did it all on their own. Now it creates perpetual friction for them and for those who help them. I understand why Jewish people want a state to call their own, and I understand why they want it where it is. I also understand why those who live there will never willingly accept such a concept as it forces them into a subjugated role. Religion is the issue, but the forum is one of politics. This is insurgency with regards to the Muslims of Israel. If one is merely looking at Jews and Muslims hating or fighting each other in general around the globe, or similar between Shia and Sunni, that is not insurgency.

    We must make critical distinctions along the lines that matter. Too often we focus on what is obvious rather than on what is important. Or as often, the government places the focus on what is obvious because it wants to shift attention from what is important.

    Israel will happily discuss the evils of Muslim terrorists attacking the Jewish state. They are unlikely to spend much time discussing the inherent unacceptablity of forcing a Jewish state onto Muslim people.
    Robert C. Jones
    Intellectus Supra Scientia
    (Understanding is more important than Knowledge)

    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default I rarely -- almost never -- comment on the 'Palestine' issue.

    It's too much an emotional as opposed to a rational subject for too many on both sides of the issue. FWIW, I'll say up front that I believe both sides have erred and badly so; both have much for which to atone -- and neither is likely to do much atoning...

    However, this from Bob's World is too simplistic to not comment:
    Israel occupied by force, and then forced a system onto those who lived there...
    IIRC, the Jews also were willing at the time (Dec 1947) to accept the UN General Assembly 'Plan of Partition with Economic Union' -- the Palestinans and the Arab League refused to do that and attacked. All that falls in 'shooting oneself in the foot' territory...
    The fact that they did so with so much help from others robs them of the legitimacy they would have had if they did it all on their own...
    That means our assistance from France in the 18th Century robs us of legitimacy, right?
    Israel will happily discuss the evils of Muslim terrorists attacking the Jewish state. They are unlikely to spend much time discussing the inherent unacceptablity of forcing a Jewish state onto Muslim people.
    Nor will their opponents spend much time discussing (in English or for foreign consumption...) the disappearance of the State of Israel from the ground -- they've already done it on the maps...

    It's okay to have a view on things but to shade the truth to make a point can badly undercut important messages.

  11. #31
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    I can say with considerable certainty, that while I at times mix my metaphors or get my facts wrong, I have never intentionally "shaded" any facts to make a point.

    That said, yes, France's support to the Colonies absolutely undermined the legitimacy of our movement. Consider the subsequent decades of British harassment of American shipping and their burning of our capital as exhibit one. Ultimately we EARNED our legitimacy on our own right, but it took time. While I doubt the British government had come to that conclusion by the time they agreed to the Monroe Doctrine, they were always pragmatic enough to recognize the value of forming convenient allies to meet shared interests...

    As to the 1947 UN Plan of Partition, I don't know the details of what that entailed or why any of the affected parties made any of the decisions they made based upon the contents of the same.

    But I do know that if China helped create a "Spanish State" in California based upon some historical claim of Spanish right and a residual populace that Americans everywhere would fight that decision to the bitter end, regardless of what the UN might declare. And that is without any religious undertone. Sometimes religion is a big factor, sometimes it's just a big smokescreen to the real issues.

    These are not black and white issues, obviously, but the human dynamic cannot be discounted. Human nature is a constant that provides a solid point of departure for attempting to understand these things. Certainly more reliable than official government statements, insurgent narratives, or post facto histories of unknown agenda.
    Robert C. Jones
    Intellectus Supra Scientia
    (Understanding is more important than Knowledge)

    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Perhaps a bad term...

    Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
    I can say with considerable certainty, that while I at times mix my metaphors or get my facts wrong, I have never intentionally "shaded" any facts to make a point.
    Cherry picking? Selective quoting better? Down Bob, just kidding.

    We all mix metaphors and get twisted on facts; I'm as guilty of that as anyone. I also sometimes inadvertently, truly unintentionally, cherry pick -- don't realize I've done it until later...
    ...These are not black and white issues, obviously, but the human dynamic cannot be discounted. Human nature is a constant that provides a solid point of departure for attempting to understand these things. Certainly more reliable than official government statements, insurgent narratives, or post facto histories of unknown agenda.
    True dat. Very much so...

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    Not to worry, no offense assumed or taken.

    I do think, however it is very important that we separate in our thinking how populaces perceive and respond to certain politically driven situations that affect their lives, and how government perceive and respond to those same situations.

    To the example cited, the response and perception of the nations of the Arab league are one thing; the response and perceptions of Muslim Arabs finding themselves suddenly living in a Jewish state another; and the perceptions of Muslims everywhere else many other things yet again.

    Personally I wish all of the affected parties the best, and mostly just wish the US could come to a more workable perspective and approach to the situation. We get ourselves "fixed" to impossible situations; and then dedicate ourselves to all manner of ass-pain to attempt to force everything else to conform to the "impossible dream." The creation of Israel; the creation of South Vietnam and our support not just to it, but to the Diem government as well; the creation of GIRoA out of the Northern Alliance and our dedication to preserving their centralized monopoly on Afghan governance; etc.

    We seem to think that if we want something, if we think something is good and proper for our interests as we perceive them; then because we are so good and proper ourselves (in our own self-image, flawed as that may be) that everyone else will want and think the same in regard to their own interests. Words like "pragmatic" and "values" and "democracy" get used so often in high-level political/policy realm in DC they must start to lose their meaning. Just saying them isn't enough, just thinking of them in terms of our perspective and interests is not enough. It seems we still think it is. We make the rules, so what we do is "legal." Then we define "legitimate" to essentially mean the same as legal, so we delude ourselves into believing that whatever we do or create is then in turn "legitimate" as well. We don't separate how people think and feel from how governments think and act. We don't get it, but we think we do. And we think we are both right and in the right, so therefore justified to overcome any opposition to our efforts. That is a dangerous combination.
    Last edited by Bob's World; 03-22-2012 at 10:22 AM.
    Robert C. Jones
    Intellectus Supra Scientia
    (Understanding is more important than Knowledge)

    "The modern COIN mindset is when one arrogantly goes to some foreign land and attempts to make those who live there a lesser version of one's self. The FID mindset is when one humbly goes to some foreign land and seeks first to understand, and then to help in some small way for those who live there to be the best version of their own self." Colonel Robert C. Jones, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

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    Default Narratives as Identities

    I have been following the twists and turns of this thread with interest, not only for its content but for the way that the concept of narrative is being used. It strikes that “narrative” is being discussed primarily like an object that we posses, a thing we can “drop” or “adopt” and something that political leaders tell.

    I might suggest that in addition to a consciously adopted story that leaders—of states or groups—tell, “narrative” as it is intended in the conversation on this thread has a meaning more closely related to identity, stories we live in more than those we tell (like messages or novels). Say peoples’ and groups’ and states’ senses of self are all constructed of multiple narratives; we’re born into family histories, religions, regions, cultures, sets of particular expectations that our lives will go this way or that, and we have organizational and professional narratives, &c. &c. that change over the course of a life.

    An Afghan citizen, or American voter, or jihadist, has an identity made up of multiple narratives that preceded them and which flow through them, and which they also, in turn retell in a different way to others (think of nodes in a network, each node like a kind of clearinghouse through which ideas and stories and practices flow. Or like a prism—we refract the narratives we inherit according to our particular positioning).

    So while there are broad differences in belief between Islamic societies and Western ones that are worth drawing out for some purposes, there is no person or group that holds or purveys all of those views, or only those views, in a pure way, nor do members of cultures simply decide to adopt or drop elements of their cultural identity, unless they become so existentially distressing that they have to be thrown off (like being told that one is an American, but also only 3/5ths of a person). In this sense, narratives do play an important, if not causal, role in maintaining stable societies.


    It is somewhat odd to me that much mainstream analysis of highly vocal salafists and self-declared jihadists has so readily accepted their rhetoric on its face. We interrogate the symbolism and coding and rhetoric of our own political figures, and see that it is complex and maneuvers various cultural symbols to achieve political ends. I have never understood why we aren’t as sophisticated about our approach to extremist rhetoric. We (the institutional U.S.) are extremely poor at grasping the degree to which various actors in the Middle East manipulate and reconstruct tradition and religion in what are by all definitions modern states. Think of the Jumeirah malls in Dubai as an overt symbol of this process– what self-conscious Disneyification of an Arab Bedouin identity -- and for local consumption. That is just an easy visual symbol of more complex politics, though.

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    It is somewhat odd to me that much mainstream analysis of highly vocal salafists and self-declared jihadists has so readily accepted their rhetoric on its face. We interrogate the symbolism and coding and rhetoric of our own political figures, and see that it is complex and maneuvers various cultural symbols to achieve political ends. I have never understood why we aren’t as sophisticated about our approach to extremist rhetoric. We (the institutional U.S.) are extremely poor at grasping the degree to which various actors in the Middle East manipulate and reconstruct tradition and religion in what are by all definitions modern states. Think of the Jumeirah malls in Dubai as an overt symbol of this process– what self-conscious Disneyification of an Arab Bedouin identity -- and for local consumption. That is just an easy visual symbol of more complex politics, though.
    Doing that requires much more effort than sending a few graduate students to study those societies, it requires an ongoing communication with those societies. Sadly, the US and the West neither has the patience nor the inclination for that kind of conversation.

    I am an African, I live in Africa and I also know that the West narrative about Africa hasn't changed significantly since the 1600's. The same applies to the Arab nations.

    Why is it so? Slavery could be justified if Africans were deemed inferior. The Arab/Muslim World was branded an enemy, all enemies lose their humanity. It is easier to tell the Western people that "they hate us for our freedoms" than to initiate a useful conversation about where the hatred actually stems from.

    What is of interest to scholars is of little use to politicians. Politicians want a simple line, a simple story to sell to the populace. Complexity is frowned at. The present state of affairs will continue.

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    Quote Originally Posted by KingJaja View Post
    I am an African, I live in Africa and I also know that the West narrative about Africa hasn't changed significantly since the 1600's.
    That might be seen as one component of an African narrative about the West... a narrative that many African leaders have exploited to direct anger at the West that might otherwise be directed at them. Like many Western narratives about Africa, there's some truth to it, and also some untruth.

    Of course there are numerous overlapping narratives about Africa in the West, and numerous overlapping narratives about the West in Africa... and any discussion that assumes a single one is going to be very simplistic indeed.
    “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”

    H.L. Mencken

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