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  1. #1
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Default What the Quran burnings tell us

    http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/...rnings_tell_us
    Close your eyes, and imagine the following situation...

    Suppose the town or city where you live had a bunch of heavily-armed foreign soldiers living nearby. As part of their normal duties, they sent patrols down your street with some frequency, bristling with guns and other instruments of war. Imagine that these soldiers were from a very different culture and nearly all of them did not speak your native language, although they could occasionally use a local translator to order you around. You have been (...)

    I used this technique for the same purpose repeatedly; it shows the innate stupidity of the really quite primitive policy against distant extremists.

    Second-order effects appear to be too difficult to grasp for today's politicians and loudmouths / pundits. Well, either that or the West is stuck in political systems that let policy drift into stupid against the better judgements of the not-so stupid power elite.

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    Council Member carl's Avatar
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    Agree with the general thrust of your statement. I don't agree that the power-elite is not so stupid. These are the guys who have been gulled by the Pak Army/ISI for over a decade so far after all.

    The report A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility,

    http://www.michaelyon-online.com/ima...patibility.pdf

    illuminates the problem in much more, and much more alarming detail than the article you cited. We have screwed this up beyond recognition.
    "We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene

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    This is the nature of all occupation operations, and while the foreign occupiers may believe they're seen as heroes with white hats, the local population at best tolerates them, and more than likely learns to hate them over time, and usually that hate is returned so the cycle never stops.

    Surging in Afghanistan was inappropriate, and it only made it more difficult to change course, because no one likes to admit they got it wrong. A small presence of foreign forces would force them to depend on the Afghans, which in turn would result in a much different and more effective relationship with the Afghans. Too late now, but it concerns me when the Army wants to take the lessons learned from Afghanistan. What lessons did they take away from it?

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    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
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    Default Yep.

    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Moore View Post
    Too late now, but it concerns me when the Army wants to take the lessons learned from Afghanistan. What lessons did they take away from it?
    Dunno but if Viet Nam is any guide, it'll be mostly the wrong ones...

    Everything in that report Ol' Carl linked was absolutely predictable. Yet another example of why big bodies of troops in interventions are a really bad idea. Always have been (Carl's Roman Legionnaires probably had the same sorts of reactions and thoughts in Britain and Gaul...).

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    Default Has anyone read "Shooting of an Elephant" by George Orwell

    America's problem is not that it lacks book smarts, it lacks street smarts.

    I have watched, in anguish, over the past twelve years as America is being led down a path to disaster by smart men and women with degrees from the best Ivy League schools but little common sense.

    This is the same country where politicians from both major parties have an almost Pavlovian response to Israel ("Israel is the best thing that happened to mankind"). Where the most bellicose Israeli Prime Minister in recent times is given a standing ovation 29 times, where the US is one of the few nations on earth that plans to/planned to veto the Palestinian bid at the UN and plans to withdraw funding to UNESCO over Palestine.

    These same people also know that 70% of the Arab World watches Al Jazeera, yet you expect the Muslim World to love you!


    You are not going to get the Muslim World to love you by building an embassy the size of the Vatican in Baghdad. You've got to make bold changes to your Middle East policy.

    Anyway, this is Orwell's essay, it illustrates the relationship between colonised and coloniser. This is exactly the way my dad and grandad felt about the British.

    http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/887/

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    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by KingJaja View Post
    America's problem is not that it lacks book smarts, it lacks street smarts.

    I have watched, in anguish, over the past twelve years as America is being led down a path to disaster by smart men and women with degrees from the best Ivy League schools but little common sense.
    Couldn't agree more! America gets Zero respect in the world and yes College Degreeism is the biggest threat Mankind has ever faced.

  7. #7
    Council Member Fuchs's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by KingJaja View Post
    America's problem is not that it lacks book smarts, it lacks street smarts.
    This is - considering that the country is huge at about 310 million inhabitants - likely a systemic problem.
    The selection for leadership is certainly broken (to a greater degree than in some other places; it's brokene verywhere).

    On the other hand, looking at the current Republican Nominees for the #1 job of the country, I cannot resist the suspicion that it's not the process alone that's broken, if it's the process itself at all.


    It may be a cultural thing instead.

    Tolerance for BS is probably way too high, often with the excuse of free speech or under the pretense of balance (false equivalenciesbetween different political wing's BS).

    The idea that a country's prime responsibility is to keep its about 5-10% harmful A-holes away from power is underdeveloped because of an exaggerated believe in one's greatness.

    The readiness to learn from other countries' experiences and examples is underdeveloped.

    The readiness to believe science over ideology/mythology/religion is underdeveloped.

    The tolerance for big money influecne on elections and policy in general is overdeveloped.



    Then again, Germany gets it wrong as well. We allow an overdevelopment of political institutions; our parties are too well-rooted, too influential.
    Our federal government is run by people who excel in building party-internal alliances and at silencing/degrading their political opponents.
    Too many ministers are incompetent at everything else and ethics are at best mediocre.
    Our chancellor is so much focused on power that ideology is a mere tool for her, not a belief. This would be nice if she replaced it with rational analysis ona case-by-case basis, but instead it merely means that her policies are entirely unpredictable and can experience a U-turn any time, given some exogenous shock.
    Our tolerance for this political culture is shocking (but we got a new, more youth-supported party that appears to shake things up a bit like the greens did three decades ago).

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