Letters to the Editor
rtf100
Published Letters: 180 Editor's Choice: 8
-
Some Rambling thoughts on the value of the MBA
[Read the article: I have found hell on earth -- an "MBA program"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I have concluded after being in the business world for more than thirty years that there are about 10-15 universities in the US where the prestige of graduating will stay with you for the rest of your life. Your resume will always float to the top of the pile and the hiring manager will have to justify in his/her own mind why you are not being immediately called in for an interview. Furthermore, the alumni of these universities tend to take of each other. My list would include Harvard, Princeton, Army, Navy, Notre Dame, Yale, Stanford, Penn, Cornell, MIT, Columbia, Kellogg, Chicago. If you are from one of these places(not all have B-schools but most do), stay there and graduate and you will have doors open that are tightly shut to the rest of us.
The flip-side of this contract "with the devil" is that much more will be demanded from you for the rest of your business life because you will always be viewed in a different light than the rest of us. Spare time will be in short supply.
I have an MBA from a 2nd tier school on the East coast and I have worked in small to medium sized companies for most of my career. The MBA on my resume is a big "yawn" because most companies want a professional certification and could care less about an advanced degree. In other words, companies expect value. Only you can decide if your MBA program prepares you for the day when you will have to deliver that value.
-
Not the Way to Win
[Read the article: The Democrats' best slogan: "Bush lost the war"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dems have to be very careful with this rhetoric because O'Reilly has been running around scoring points at liberal's expense with questions like "do you or do you not want America to win the war in Iraq? yes or no" The typical response is stunned silence because the targeted liberal has not entirely thought through the implications of an American defeat. Wolf Blitzer responded quite unconvincingly that he "wanted the US to win" and was looking to crawl under the nearest table. David Letterman was stunned and did not know what to say. He finally mumbled something like "I am a thoughtful person". Not sure that squares with much at all. Maybe O'Reilly's question is unfair but not that unfair, nor is it a bad question under the current circumstances. In each case, the targeted liberal came across as somewhere between "evasive" at best, and "sinister" at worst. It is no small wonder that Karl Rove goes to Berkeley and Hollywood to find ammunition like this.
By all measures the Dems should "clean up" on Tuesday just like they should have done in 2000 and 2004. A principal reason that may not happen, again, is that those Americans who bother to vote have that nagging feeling that the Dems' shrill message does not resonate well with what most voters understand the global war on terror to be. The loudest voices coming from the Dems are always the anarchists on the far left who also, by the way, give most people the "chills" at the thought of them in charge. The lefties cannot agree on the use of a single word in the phrase: "global war on terror". To them, the GWOT is a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to screw the imperialists "once and for all". What Bill O'Reilly was really asking Letterman was "have the lefties hijacked the Democratic party on GWOT, and, if so, are we not all screwed?"
-
We are missing the point
[Read the article: Iraq: War of imagination]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This piece is a recap of other well-documented descriptions of the bothched war rationale and execution. The unanswered issue remains: where do we go from here? Certain writers are relating Iraq and the Green Zone to that of Saigon of 1975 where the US was finally kicked out of Vietnam after 15 years of futility. However, the circumstances in Iraq are more subtle in that we are merely in Act I of a long-term struggle which will ultimately define the future role of the US in the world. The debacle of Iraq is merely the first of many disappointments that the US will endure which will culminate in a multi-polar world where the US will dominate only in a regional sense militarily and then on the world's stage only proportionately to our economic clout. In other words, the US will concede its role as the world's policeman and ultimate arbiter of world affairs. The primary risk to the US in the future will be some rogue nation nuking a US city just "for the hell of it". I don't say this to be funny but randon acts of massive terror will be "common" and unavoidable and will be factored into the international calculus of world affairs. The rise of transnational groups and nation-proxies will blur the boundaries of existing nations and historical alliances.
This state of affairs is not the result of Iraq, rather it is the natural unwinding of the Cold War that George Kennan foretold so brilliantly. The long-pull of history is pulling the US into a direction that is inexorably toward a role that is limited militarily. This will not be the result of "anti-imperialists" types prevailing but the recognition that large military responses around the world will no longer be deemed effective at any level. All wars in the future will be political in nature and resolved politically. Nuclear weapons will be the only exception to this rule; howver, major military initiatives such as Iraq will be viewed as "total waste of time" because a well organized insurgency will nullify even the most dominant military force. Wars will be fought primarily in the media, in the blogosphere and in the court of world public opinion.
Writers who dwell on Iraq as some momentous turning point in world history will be disappointed to learn that the last major turning point ocurred in 1989 not 2006.