I had precisely this argument with someone recently. Generally, I like to fully engage people like this who aren't committed, just parroting some feel-tough lines from the Neocons, because they can be flipped/saved. I was starting to lose patience though, also consciousness, so I short-circuited the argument by saying:

"Commanders on the ground are responsible for establishing force protection measures to ensure the safety of the troops. Are you suggesting the commanders are incompetent? That they can't protect their troops? That they need some civilian in Washington, DC to tell them how to fight?"

Yeah, it worked. Nah, I don't feel that bad about it. I'll try to save two more to make up for that one.

A man stands on a bridge.

He sees another man sitting on the deck of a yacht cruising on an unplesantly hot river below.

There is a machine gun mounted on the bow of the yacht, and a helicopter parked on the stern.

The man on the yacht keeps threatening to jump in the water. Does the first man bear any responsibility by failing to act?

Tigerr, Bungo boy --

Agree, that's a great doc. A friend who is also a doc-maker turned me on to it.

I admit to some head scratching, though, about the ways both Leo Strauss and Sayid Qutb have been caricatured both by those who claim to be their followers and their enemies looking for the 'Rosetta Stone'.

Leo Strauss, by my reading in grad school, basically believed that there were enduring political insights contained in a 'canon' of political thought extending from the Greeks to now (including Muslim thinkers also, like Averroes and Avicenna, Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sina respectively), and that it was worthile to collect these, read them again and again, and pay close attention to what they were saying. That has mutated into a public image as the father of the neocons (since so many of their leaders were students of his at Chicago) who believed in secret messages from great men that could be used to conquer the world. The adjective 'Straussian', fashionable though it is, is confusing to me.

Sayid Qutb's image is understandably distorted, since fewer people have read him and he had a hand in creating the Egyptian Ikhwan al-Muslimin, which we can always gather from their English name ... the Muslim Brotherhood ... are part of a global plot to enslave mankind and impose Sharia. Assassins of Sadat, and so forth. Who would want to read someone like that?

Yet if you do read 'Signposts on the Road', what he says is quite different. He uses some examples from his own experience that includes Americans, but this isn't the point. The tract, forceful as it is, is in response to the encroachment of modernity in the enfeebled Islamic world, and recommends that Muslims turn away from this, embrace their own traditions, and avoid the inherent corruptions of modernity. He sounds a lot like our own Western anti-modernists, but the cultural-authenticity argument he makes is part of a specifically Cairene tradition, which he knows will appeal broadly in the Arabic-speaking Muslim world.

It's very much a personal-responsibility moral argument, versus a manifesto for overturning the West; where he speaks of the West it is as a colonial entity that has to be driven out, not invaded or confronted on its own territory.

Maybe these are just parables about what happens when the thoughts of ordinary, thoughtful and articulate men become useful to those who seek power over others. To me, it's just a reminder not to confuse one with the other.

Peace,

I've got this horrible image of these political 'tards in their unitards....GACK!

Visceral, wasn't it? :>

Basically we have a "unitard" too, with the Democrats occupying the area around the ass-flap.

Fair point. And great extension of the metaphor, which will further terrorize Pedinska! :>

I did conflate in 'we' both the people and the media, but here's what I had in mind. Consider the endless primary season: If you were a visiting Nepalese Gurka on a fellowship, you would get an indepth treatment of the voting districts, their racial composition, the health of industries located there, a summary of their main issues, a characterization (probably wrong, but present) of their political culture, and endless conversations with 'the little guy'.

It's true that (a) it's our country and it's natural for us to have an interest in such details that others might not, and (b) we have a rich and powerful (if brainless) media, with the resources to cover these things in ways others cannot. But given that we ... the people and the media... are exposed to those things in our country and about our country, isn't it natural to be EITHER a little curious about comparable details in other countries ... before we bomb them ... OR to be skeptical and have our suspicions aroused when those details are absent or presented as non-existent?

(Pre-empting an answer: There's some truth to the idea, as Aycharaych might say, that we regard people in other countries as subhuman and don't believe they are as capable of such things, being primitive and all, or that they are oppressed by dictators and unable to have proper politics, which is why we need to bomb/liberate them. That's something we could probably discuss further, if there's any interest ... )

an image Hillary wearing a one piece in some shade of purple.

Aacgk! You're just trying to avenge Pedinska, aren't you? Where's that lye ... must ... cleanse ... eyes ...

I admit that I did not learn any of that stuff in high school, and I was bored sh*tless in history (unlike later). Educators must hate the subject of history, since they always seem to give it to Coach to teach. (my school, anyway)

But it's funny, people will show great interest in the details of 'their' history as well as 'ours', eat them up if they're presented well, with humanity, personal relevance, and good storytelling. Adults, anyway.

So what's our problem?