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Thanks Glenn for once again giving us the broader, strategic view of American government and M$M hypocrisy, to encourage a very needed self-examination of America’s culpability and the tragic results it brings.
While I don’t support a Truth Commission instead of criminal charges for the sake of the rule of law and making a stronger case for future government officials to follow the law, if there is a commission, then it should be expanded to how America has conducted foreign policy and shamed our ideals since WWII. While earlier history is also a major contributor, there has to be some limits to the scope of the commission.
The word foreign policy has always disturbed me because it immediately frames an “us against them – good guys against bad guys” mentality and how it is OK for us to use any means to further our aims. The frame should be partner policy where the goal would be a unified policy with neighbors for all to profit.
Envision our world today if the Marshall Plan could have been followed by a Partner Plan that could have used our wasted war money to lift people out of poverty and daily struggles to survive, to eliminate the need for insurgents and terrorism.
As Glenn has to constantly point out, most Americans have fallen for the idea that only highly educated foreign policy experts are capable of formulating foreign policy and telling us how to provide national security. And we fall for the same nonsense when we have to have highly informed media and "experts" with secret sources to tell us the inside story on the "truth" of what is happening.
Today these media because of the 24 hour news cycle, immediately wildly speculate on who the Mumbai terrorists are and who is behind the attacks. I just heard one of these idiots on MSNBC tell us that the head of the Pakistan intelligence service must have nefarious reasons for going to India to assist the Indian government and thus trying to stir up the conflict between India and Pakistan because wars are a lot more fun to talk about and cover. He makes no reference to the goals of the current Pakistani and Indian governments to ease relations between the two nations and that the visit is intended to keep relations from turning backwards. He’s an intelligence chief and intelligence guys are manipulators so how could he have good intentions.
So we have the circular, simplistic framing of good guys against the bad guys that started when Europeans invaded the Americas and took lands from the natives. It seems incredible that our nation still has that kind of a frame when developing partner relations with neighbors. Hard to believe when you take the logical, broad view that Glenn wants our government to take.
We have to get the logical, strategic thinking Barack Obama to not fall for our Serious foreign policy idiots and the mess they have made of the world in the last half of the 20th century and first decade of the 21st. We have to encourage him to form a partner policy team even though the team he will nominate is infected with foreign thinking.