I am not posting in that thread because it’s a much larger issue that I see on this board, and doesn’t apply merely to people burning corpses.
Armchair pundits need to read Machiavelli’s “The Prince” most desperately. This goes out to anyone who blindly defends the troops actions over in Iraq and Afghanistan. When people complain about things that offend “muslims” they are talking about how we are CREATING more enemies. You say that it’s ok if we can get some Taliban out of there, but if more people join the Taliban than we kill, that’s a bad thing. Do you understand how that works?
In the Prince you will find a treatise talking about how one cannot rule a vassal state if one does not have a docile populace, no matter how superior the might of the occupying power might be. If you have one nest of hornets that is hostile to you, it’s generally not a good idea to go stirring up the other nests of hornets while you attempt to deal with that one nest.
The fear that we have is that we are MORE in danger now than we were before 9/11. This isn’t even a matter of whether or not you support the war. This is a matter of wanting to WIN, if we are going to be involved. What many of us believe is that our tactics are causing us to LOSE. There are many of us who believe that if we aren’t playing to win, and we can’t have faith in the leadership leading us to a victory, then we should not be there.
There are lots of muslims who were not terrorists today, who might be tomorrow. Blaming it on the news media for covering these atrocities is retarded, there should be discipline and sensitivity among the leadership so that we CAN win.
Hell, while you’re at it read Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”, it will explain to you how it’s important to know one’s enemies.
I’m not as pissed at people having a different opinion about whether or not we should be at war. What pisses me off the most is the serious lack in understanding of fundamental strategy and tactics that all the Hawks in this country have, from the armchair pundit to Donald Rumsfeld.
Here here. These should be required reading material for all high schools. Children’s books should carry their messages.
My husband gives copies of Sun Tsu to his proteges at work. He believes that the book represents the rules of management in his environment better than anything else.
I am going to buy him the leatherbound “The Prince” and “Sun Tsu” as soon as I can. Hopefully for Christmas.
In addition to The Prince and The Art of War, a good translation of Thucydides is important to understanding war and foreign relations.
That said, trying to get the wilfully ignorant to read and reason is like spitting into the ocean, but less satisfying. The problem is that they view foreigners as something other than human beings like themselves: they apparently won’t hold a lifelong grudge if you kill a family member (intentionally or accidentally), they don’t value their own lives, their religion is “false”, and as you pointed out, the rules of mathematics don’t apply to them: kill one enemy and they recruit more than one every time you do it and you and I know that you are increasing in numbers.
They also seem to misunderstand the value of allies and sympathetic countries. By pissing off virtually every country in the world except the UK in launching the invasion, many countries feel free to look the other way as their internal ammunition dumps evaporate.
But I’ve learned from opposing the Iraq war that the population at large does not want to think and reason, but to react. That they react exactly as Osama bin Ladin wants them to doesn’t matter in the least to them. It gives them not the slightest pause.
Add to that The Lost Art of War by Sun Tzu II and Thunder in the Sky (a collection of writings by the teachers of Sun Tzu and others).
Sometimes, the folks who say, “You shouldn’t do that, you’re not respecting muslims!” are way off base, like when they critized the US for going into Afghanistan near Ramadan, but yeah, burning bodies as described isn’t exactly a good thing. Not when you figure that most of the Afghanis liked us, until we basically abandoned their country so we could go skipping through Iraq looking for what wasn’t there. (Good plan that.) Given that members of the Afghani government are pretty pissed about this, then we’ve got a real PR problem.
The creation of more enemies was predicted by plenty of Dopers, well before the war in Iraq started.
The Bush-ites all stated that they knew so much better.
What we have done, is simply to remind Mid East nations that they would be better off having nuclear devices as these would provide an effective deterrant to the US, as there is no hope of matching arms in the ground war.
Terrorism takes lots of froms, but now it has become the only mainstream way that Iraq ‘freedom fighters’ (that’s how they will see themselves) can answer back.
Far from making the west more secure, this has done pretty much the reverse.
I would like to read some replies from those who agree with Bush’s foreign policy, see if they can genuinely justify this crazy war given what we now know about WMD.
I am becoming more and more convinced that many Bush Apologists do not care, at all, about winning. They just want to make sure that we’re involved in killing.
“It’s fine, as long as you don’t get caught, and even then it’s fine as long as the person who catches you doesn’t blow the whistle. But God help that whistleblower! Because we sure as hell aren’t responsible for our own actions.”
Amen. After 50 years of being the opposition party, the Republicans had learned to do a very good exposition of their theory had never met reality. Starting in the 1980s they have managed to get most everyone chanting their mantra and drinking their kool aid, and now they control the entire federal government. And guess what? Much of their theory doesn’t work when it meets reality. But they still spout it like Soviets worshipping Marx. Real politics and policy and governance require compromise and adjustments to fit real situations. It’s too bad the Democrats haven’t moved to opposition mode in order to criticize the policy results, but they have a lot of catching up to do to learn to be opposition.
I wish people would acknowledge that all wingnuts are balls out stupid. If you pick either the right or the left you’re a moron…period. It’s not about trying to fit your politics to the measurement of the French National Congress.
As long as we have the two party system in this country, we’ll never have effective representation.
That’s probably why the people who actually run our country aren’t even elected.
I think our constitutional system will always sort out into two main parties, unlike parlimentary systems. And while I would agree that many wingnuts (left and right) are just nuts, I’d have to say not all. Anyone who thinks they have a “system” or philosophy for politics is only slightly less goofy than someone who has a roulette system.
Philosophy, that is, thinking about reasoning, is a lot of fun, but when it meets reality, the competing interests of the governed sweep it away. Plato was a key advisor to some king on a fairly large island once and it just didn’t work out, even though king and Plato wanted it to.
And as much as people have in common, there are significant differences too. People don’t want to be ruled by a one size fits all solution. That, in my clearly not humble opinion, is why laissez faire is superior to any governing philosophy that tries to look at things only one way: it allows people respectability to do it their way and puts the consequences of success or failure on them as individuals. But when that fails, and it often does, it sometimes helps everyone to reach out and help the fallen get up again.
The way I see it is that you have two gangs, let’s call them The Bloods and the Crips. The Bloods where red and the Crips where blue.
Now these gangs formed to civilize neighborhoods where they were living, to bring some semblence of order to what was largely chaotic and violent. Basically a way to control the violence if you will.
So the Bloods and the Crips moved along for a couple hundred years, they gained more power until the only thing standing in the way of total and complete world domination was each other. They became obsessed with this idea, forgetting that their very existance depended upon the existence of their adversary.
Because the Bloods and Crips controlled the government, and the media, they were able to control the population. They convinced the people in their homes that they were on their side, that somehow their aims for world domination had something to do with the average person at home. They started using fear tactics to get what they want. They knew all they needed to do was control a small percentage of the populace of their nation, which they had built into the most powerful nation on Earth. So the Bloods told their people, that the Crips were a godless people, and the Crips told their people that the Bloods were stupid. Now the heads of both organization knew that these were irrelevant and merely a smeer campaign. They knew that what they were telling the populace had no bearing on reality, they knew what the populace’s fears were for they had helped to foment these fears.
The thing I have learned is I don’t need the Bloods or the Crips. I need people who want to see a better world, who want to solve their daily problems. I want to tell people that they no longer need the bloods or crips either. I want to show them that the bloods and crips have created a system in which there is no true law because they built loopholes in every law they have created. And when the Bloods and Crips bankrupt the institutions that gives them their power, I am going to watch them fall.
The Democrats and Republicans don’t represent me. I am not of their class, I need not be their serf. I need not pick one side or the other because I find both repugnant. Their power structures were not built to help me, I know this because I would need to conform to a very similar standard to join either one.
You only think you won’t choose a side. Not choosing is most definitely a choice, and a morally repugnant one too. You have already choosen your side: it’s the one that thinks all politics is a gang war and not about better government. It’s not the Bloods or the Crips, which are criminal drug gangs and not fair to compare political parties to. There are Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians, etc. and activists who go issue by issue. The most contemptible of all is the smug idiot who thinks he/she is superior because everyone else is “dirty” for trying to make the community better.
I don’t think everyone else is dirty, I think that any system that requires me to vote on whether or not to invade another country based upon my opinion of gay marriage is stupid and repugnant.
I didn’t say I am not choosing a side, I said I am not joining a gang that doesn’t have my best interests at heart. You can claim nuance all you want but if you self-identify as liberal or conservative, you are pigeonholing yourself into one side or another. If you truly think that politics is anything more than gang wars, then you’re simply naive. If you don’t realize that gangs form in order to bring more order to their neighborhoods then you don’t know a damn thing about the history of gangs and tribal affiliations. Neither the Democrats or the Republicans represent me, they have nothing to do with my views.
You can cajole me with your useless guilt and bullshit rhetoric about better government, but it doesn’t mean a damn thing. Neither the republicans or the democrats are doing anything for most of the people I know. I know people on both sides, people who are involved in politics, and it’s just a game. It’s Eagles vs Patriots. Look at how much we encourage people who have no clue about politics to vote. How many times have you seen someone trying to guilt an ignorant person into voting? What purpose could htat possibly serve? Why would you want someone who is completely ignorant deciding your future? What do George HW Bush, and Bill Clinton have to do with me? Would they really be on my side? Do they really care about me? Do you really think so? Do you think Howard Dean honestly gives a fuck what happens to me? What do they have to do with my life? All I ever see from them is getting in my damn way. All it is, is pork pork and more pork.
I am wondering if you know about Acxiom. Acxiom is a marketing firm that studies the spending habits and other relevant data of people in America. Political campaigns buy data from them. The data can be targetted down to individual groupings, like say who is a member of a particular church. So a candidate can go into a church in an area and tailor a speech specifically for that church, touching on it’s hotbutton issues specifically for them garnering support based on a very narrow idea. Both the Democrats and Republicans use this market data to design their campaigns, then they pander…pander pander pander. Look at Hillary Clinton, it’s nearly impossible to see where she stands on any particular issue. In New York, I have her and an used car salesman to choose from. Yeah, I feel represented. I get involved with local politics somewhat, because I am connected to individual people, but I go amongst liberals and they think I’m a rabid capitalist. Then I go to the republicans and they think that I’m a communist.
My views would most accurately be described as a libertarian socialist. If I were to run for office, which is where party affiliation would ever matter at all IMO, I’d try and secure both the Libertarian and Green ticket. Basically I believe in socialist structures, but with a cooperative corporation, you can live as a communist if you want to, and work with the people who are down with your vision, so what I see is a big government being in my way, I think that the individual can shape their destiny best, and that I want as minimal government as possible so that I can accomplish what I want. I want to not have to use code words to order drugs I am going to order anyway from my friends. I’d rather not have to worry about my drug dealer friends going to jail, when they are some of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and are only selling a product people want. I believe in alternative energies, and I am happy when the government gives incentives in the terms of lower taxation for alternatives to oil, that’s nice, because I know people who are working out businesses in alternative energy sources, and when that market blossoms you’re gonna see a lot of rich “hippies” who have not felt represented by the powers that be, pretty much ever.
Neither the Democrat or the Republican party represents me, I’m extremely fiscally conservative, and extremely socially liberal, which I believe go together, because most of our logistical capital in this country is spent on forcing people to behave a certain way, even when the behavior they are changing is non-violent. If cops weren’t out busting people for marijuana, they could be patrolling parks at night making sure there aren’t rapists there, and then I could throw parties in the gigantic public parks, where I won’t disturb anyone at night. Drug dealers wouldn’t be killing snitches.
Erek, while I don’t see anything in the above that demands an immediate picking apart, I would be interested in knowing what any of has to do with The Prince.