pragmatismo

"There is not and cannot be such a thing as a "war on terror." Terror is a tactic. There can be a global counter-insurgency struggle against al-Qaeda and kindred organizations. But a large part of such a struggle must be to deny al-Qaeda recruitment tools and propaganda victories. The way the Bush administration pursued the war against Iraq, as a superpower-led act of Nietzschean will to power, simply made it look in the Middle East as though al-Qaeda had been right. Biin Laden's message was that Middle Easterners are being colonized and occupied by the United States. " [Juan Cole, Informed Comment]
prmn

How'd we get into this? After 50 years of pretty consistently prudential foreign policy, managed mostly on a consensus of bipartisan agreement (yes, there are exceptions, but by and large, true), they decided to bet the national ranch on an idea. Actually it was a series of ideas, wrapped together in an odd tangle that could look like an odd jumble when viewed from outside. The key, however, was betting the national ranch on steep odds.
Only, they weren't confident the country would get behind such a riverboat gamble. So they lied about what they were doing. They didn't trust the people -- which might be an epitaph we should return to.
Now, what do we expect of people who make reckless gambles with other people's money? Of people who can't discipline themselves enough to distinguish between their hopes and reality? What do you expect of that ne'er-do-well relative who's always hitting you up for a loan because he's come up with a sure thing?
Do you expect those sorts of folks to take responsibility when things go bad? Or do you expect them to blame others?
Character, alas, really does count.
-- Josh Marshall May 19, 2004
prmn

We face in Iraq, like we did in Vietnam, an enemy who refuses to play by our rules and is clearly willing to die for his beliefs. Before we finished in Vietnam, we had dropped more bombs on Indochina than had been dropped on the remainder of the world in all the wars to that time. The U.S. military continues to believe in the might of firepower. But it also wrestles with the difficult task of establishing the appropriate balance between winning hearts and minds with aid and reconstruction and using force to root out insurgents. In Iraq, we have moved from „shock and awe‰ to building schools and hosting soccer games. We‚re now back to block-to-block searches of cordoned cities. [ SORRY, MR. PRESIDENT, BUT IRAQ LOOKS A LOT LIKE VIETNAM Ronald Bruce St John FPIF]
prmn

"a certain percentage of Americans was so traumatized by the September 11th terrorist attacks that simply conjuring up the memory of "I stood in the rubble of Ground Zero, dammit" stimulates a knee-jerk reaction of support for Bush," but perhaps there's something deeper at work. Describing a poll that found links between endorsing Dubya's re-election and belief in Bushite lies about weapons of mass destruction and al-Qaeda ties in Iraq, I speculated more recently about "a four-year experiment in self-inflicted mass brainwashing," a phenomenon that Juan Cole more eruditely referred to the next day as "a two-party epistemology" -- in essence, competing versions of reality based on what one's political beliefs are.
A few days ago, World on Fire had a keen essay on the separation between "argument versus policy," the tendency of the Orwell Bush administration to make up whatever theories or pseudo-facts were necessary to justify their actions. These arguments have usually involved the pressing of emotional buttons like "supporting the troops," avenging September 11th, not backing down to "terrorists," loyalty to the president, etc.
After nearly three years of having these buttons pushed relentlessly, even some non-hardcore Dubya supporters have invested so much in the Bushite scams that they can't bear to admit they've been swindled. To put it another way, they've gone so far down the road of fantasy that seeing how far they'd have to walk back makes the thought of turning around genuinely painful. And so they won't turn until they're literally forced to by the obstacles of harsh reality. It's easy to change a single opinion, but much harder to shake off an entire philosophy that has been built up through repeated emotional admonitions to "stay the course."
So, it's a slow process as disparate souls reach their individual breaking points, not a sudden flash that enlightens everyone at once. But one by one, they're figuring it out. Needlenose May 10, 04
prmn