Question from Lou Dobbs
Thursday, July 27, 2006 at 1:36PM At Six Flags Great America with Kev, but pull over for quick phonecon with Dobbs producer.
Question: Bush says "death squads" and others say "civil war." Who is right?
My answer?
Both are, to extent. Enough sectarian violence to describe as low-grade civil war. Also clear death squads are tools for minorities on all sides with designs on score-settling, secession strategies, full-blown civil war goals with eye to reconquering whole, etc. Also clear vast majorities of all 3 sides on side lines, not sure which way to jump.
So use either term, I don't care. Just having the discussion moves us collectively toward more realism on squiggly-line outcomes (or transition eras) for pretend straight-line Iraq.
The faster we move toward realizing that Yugoslavia's break-up-leading-to-today's-integration-"race" was actually a great predictor of short-term-zero-sum-fights-leading-to-nonzero-sum-outcomes, the smarter we become on how we're going to turn lotsa straight lines into squiggly ones in the rest of the Gap.
In the end, the neocons were a necessary but strategically immature phase for America. Now the serious thinking begins on inescapable truths, ones that are a whole lot more inconvenient than global warming.
As my lingo may indicate, emailing now with Bob Wright, thanks to Banning Garrett intro. Trying to lure him to possible Resilicon 2006 mini-blogger conference that Steve is threatening to hold!
DeAngelis really should try sleeping some time. I get tired just listening to his sked and he's constantly dreaming up more inventive stuff, venues, deals, concepts.
I gotta get Dobbs and Esquire on his case--you know, slow him down a bit with celebrity!
Reader Comments (5)
This recent focus on making straight lines into squiggly ones has been a very major and consistent theme with Ralph Peters. He has contended that the Europeans fouled up the world in a lot of ways, and their post-colonial borders are among the worst. This article by Peters is a recent example of this recurring theme.
I'm not sure how much peace you buy doing this. Ethnic "rationalization" only really started to work in Europe after World War II had up-ended everybody and destroyed the ethnic mixing that existed pre-war -- and destroyed the race that had no country of its own.
Maybe some of the squiggly lines could be around the food and watershed, catchment areas. With some of the flyby about engineering and ecologies, let us hold our feet to the fire about carrying capacity and best practices letting quality and quantity be considered head to head, in long term scenarios. Just a dumbling idea, I know, too literal, too down and dirty. Just trying to find place again underneath all the ideologies, ethnicities, gender and religious prefs parching our surrounds,
Lou Dobbs thinks American's are stupid.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/18/dobbs.july19/index.html
That's OK. A lot of us think the same of Lou Dobbs. His near-perfect misunderstanding of global economics puts him in the 'interesting, but not serious' category of pundits.
Lou headbutted a diplomat from the Arab League yesterday. I can actually tolerate Lou; this is his 'Network' moment.