Letters to the Editor
Settembrini
Published Letters: 155
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Re: The most disastrous war in American history?
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The most disastrous strategic blunder in American history.
All wars are disastrous to someone. It's nice to have an undisputed victor reap the "benefits" for themselves or some others. That won't happen here, ever. We can't leave Iraq now. No exit strategy. No exit. We are held hostage their by our own devices. Painted ourselves into a corner, we did.
Slaughter means well, but she is too ambitious. Beware of well-meaning, ambitious fools.
Slaughter has acknowledged her desire to hold an influential position in government. She has been accused of using her position at the Woodrow Wilson School as a "stepping stone" to a future position in Washington.
In late 2005 over 100 Princeton students and faculty signed an open letter to Slaughter and Princeton president Shirley Tilghman criticizing the University in general and the Woodrow Wilson School in particular of biasing selection of invited speakers in favor of those supportive of the Bush administration.[4] Slaughter responded to these claims by pointing to the dozens of public lectures by independent academics, journalists, and other analysts that the Wilson School hosts each academic year.[5]Others noted that, with Bush's Republican Party controlling the Presidency and both houses of Congress, many of the most influential people in the federal government, and in the international relations apparatus in particular, were necessarily administration supporters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne-Marie_Slaughter
"To set the ship on a better course, you have to be ready to sink it."
By Anne-Marie Slaughter - August 8, 2007, 6:13AM
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2007/08/08/to_set_the_ship_on_a_better_co/
Here she is on Colbert:
http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=88818
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Speak for yourself
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Asher, being young isn't a disqualification here or anywhere else.
-- William Timberman
You young upstart.
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My Horse!
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My horse to be young and stupid again!
And good looking! And thin. And some pimples on my face.
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Okay
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You win.
Just as many old fools as young ones.
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DHK220: "Anyone who consistently reads Friedman knows..."
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What?
We can make preliminary judgments at this juncture, but from a historical perspective, one cannot pronounce Iraq to be the most unpopular or disastrous war in American history until it is actually over and the final consequences are seen. Current projections could, however unlikely, not come to pass.
Honestly, I agree with you that this is a minor point to be arguing over.
Yet experts in the fields of geopolitics, defense and national security, military history, grand strategy and strategy, and other related sciences and disciplines have done precisely that, and I'm not talking about Arthur Silber. And you give us the Moustache of Understanding? You are the ultimate civil tounged fuckwit. In the words of your esteemed fellow fuckwit, "Suck on this!"
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@WT
[Read the article: War advocates like Anne-Marie Slaughter demand that you forget the past]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The problem is you can do these things:
Glenn Greenwald... Making matters worse, the overwhelming majority of war advocates have not, as I outlined yesterday, changed the way they think. Indeed, here is Slaughter, just like McCain, showing that she has learned absolutely nothing. She still thinks we can fix other countries by controlling and ruling over them, that we're going to spread human rights around the world like magic fairy dust by occupying and bombing them with our military, that wise and magnanimous American political leaders are both able and eager to navigate complex, foreign ethnic and religious conflicts and impose our will on other countries in order to bring Good to the world.
But just because you can do something is not a sufficient reason to actually do it. Iraq was a poor candidate for this kind of transformation. It wasn't post war Japan or Germany. Tribalism is one of the most intransigent obstacles to nation building. We ignored all the lessons from the past on how to pick a candidate likely for success and the critical processess and critical ingredients required. We picked a sow's ear to work with and the wrong, poorly trained and equipped alchemists to do the job. We could subdue Iraq and transform it like Saddam did by doing what Saddam did. You see the problem with that.
... The germs of war find a focus in the convenient belief that “the end justifies the means.” Each new generation repeats this argument—while succeeding generations have had reason to say that the end their predecessors thus pursued was never justified by the fulfillment conceived. If there is one lesson that should be clear from history it is that bad means deform the end, or deflect its course thither. I would suggest the corollary that, if we take care of the means, the end will take care of itself.
A fervent faith in one particular means may be justified by its actual value in relation to other means, yet err by obscuring the higher value of its disappearance as a contribution to the end.
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Only second to the futility of pursuing ends reckless of the means is that of attempting progress by compulsion. History shows how often it leads to reaction. It also shows that the surer way is to generate and diffuse the idea of progress—providing a light to guide men, not a whip to drive them. Influence on thought has been the most influential factor in history, though, being less obvious than the effects of action, it has received less attention—even from the writers of history. There is a general recognition that man's capacity for thought has been responsible for all human progress, but not yet an adequate appreciation of the historical effect of contributions to thought in comparison with that of spectacular action. Seen with a sense of proportion, the smallest permanent enlargement of men's thought is a greater achievement, and ambition, than the construction of something material that crumbles, the conquest of a kingdom that collapses, or the leadership of a movement that ends in a rebound...
Why Don't We Learn From History?
B.H. Liddell Hart
http://infohost.nmt.edu/~shipman/reading/liddell/index.html