Thursday, April 24, 2003
"U.S. Planners Surprised by Strength of Iraqi Shiites"
I've just skimmed through this article in the Washington Post, with thanks to Avedon's Other Weblog.As Iraqi Shiite demands for a dominant role in Iraq's future mount, Bush administration officials say they underestimated the Shiites' organizational strength and are unprepared to prevent the rise of an anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist government in the country. Can the US Gummint really be that naïve? I can't put myself in the position of the Shi-ites, but maybe I can scale down the problem to a level I could imagine:
Let's say for a moment that I'm going about my normal daily life at home when, all of a sudden, thugs break in and hold me and my family hostage. They wreck the place, threaten us with extreme violence, and generally make life a living hell for us.
After many days, all of a sudden a Police SWAT team bursts in and, whilst they wreck a whole lot more of my stuff, they round up the thugs and cart them off to prison. I'm relieved, elated - I have an impromptu celebration with my liberators - handing out beers and cigars all round. I am incredibly grateful.
The question is: from then on, would I keep open house for all SWAT personnel? Would I envy their social habits and want to drop mine in favour of theirs? Would I aspire to become a SWAT officer myself?
Of course I bloody wouldn't. I'd want them to leave politely and let me get back to the life I had before the thugs arrived.
posted by Plig |
02:03 |
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Forget the sentimental notion that foreign policy is a struggle between virtue and vice, with virtue bound to win.
Forget the utopian notion that a brave new world without power politics will follow the unconditional surrender of wicked nations.
Forget the crusading notion that any nation, however virtuous and powerful, can have the mission to make the world in its own image.
Remember that diplomacy without power is feeble, and power without diplomacy is destructive and blind.
Remember that no nation's power is without limits, and hence that its policies must respect the power and interests of others.
Hans Morgenthau
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts
Bertrand Russell
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one
Albert Einstein
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative
Martin Luther King Jr.
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man
Bertrand Russell
I think it would be a good idea
Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun
Pablo Picasso
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others
Groucho Marx
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it
Mahatma Gandhi
Always make new mistakes
Esther Dyson
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