I’m not saying there shouldn’t be laws, I’m saying I am not coming up with a rubric because this is a judgment call and it’s better to use sense - weighing factors like national security and the potential for lives being lost - than try to make up a rule. The New York Times made those considerations in publishing the Pentagon Papers: they received something like 23 or 24 volumes of the study, which was about half of it, and published only from the volume that summarized the study, not the details.
George II is an idiot.
But, never forget that as of today, more than one in three Americans approve of what he has done, and is doing.
Democracies are representative of their populations. George is an idiot. We, on the whole, are idiots. Please, world, stop listening to us!
Tris
I don’t think they are stupid. I do think they have an agenda that isn’t what most people think it is. I think their agenda is carving out power structures in a world global system. I believe they recognize the imminent demise of the state as the primary organizational structure in the world.
However, I think Bush the Elder was a lot more effective at this than the son. Though, I think that Bush the Younger hides behind a facade of jovial idiocy.
I simply think that their priorities are not the same as our priorities, and so when they fail to fulfill the priorities we think they should have they just put Bush up there to say some stupid shit, and we chalk it up to stupidity rather than intentional manipulation.
But…please don’t misconstrue this to mean that I think that he is some diabolical supergenius. He’s playing the game of aristocracy, and recognizes the way the wind is blowing from a system of states based on geography to a system of corporate bureaucracies networked and decentralized.
If anyone is wondering about the current US administration’s agenda regarding Iran, yesterday’s Washington Note includes this little tidbit in an article detailing the staff wrangling over how to engage Tehran:
These guys are not stupid, but they are dangerous, and beholden to an ideology that does not admit to compromise, dialogue with adversaries, or any of the other commonplace diplomatic channels that make a leadership appear “weak” at home.
The more public this thinking becomes, the better; this administration is going to have to justify covert activity and explain their plan to others in Congress before I’m going to trust it can work and isn’t part of yet another failed war plan.
The one advantage (pale and thin, admittedly) of having extremists in power is that by definition they are extreme in their beliefs so eventually they will disagree about something and have a violent schism and destroy one another, thus clearing the way for more sensible but less ruthless people to fill the vacuum, at least until the next wave of extremists moves in. Lather rinse repeat.
Well we would, but you got them damned big sticks and teeny carrots you like to switch around on us.
I think any action in Iran is a bad idea because they guys in charge really don’t understand the place they want to mess with. There is a fundimental flaw in the plans of the current administration and that is that they think everyone thinks and believes as they do.
“Oh Iranians only want to have nice houses and big cars and democracy like ours.”
Well yes and no. They have their own unique culture, and history and therfore a different worldview and I’m not talking the cartoon religious fanatics they are portrayed as. We can’t expect them to see everthing as we do or value all the things we do.
The entire Middle east is not America Junior waiting to blossom into the lands of the free. We can’t expect it.
Sticking the pudgy fingers of the West into the batter and stirring things up is not necessarily gonna make the cake we want.
Thank you for putting that so succinctly. I’ve tried explaining that in my own rambling profuse manner and confused the hell out of people many a time.