At 07:03 PM Tuesday 11/21/2006, Dan Minette wrote:
> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Richard Baker > Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 4:13 PM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Re: "Someone Must Tell Them" > It is rather strange to see a country that not so long ago faced with > an iron will ten thousand nuclear warheads ready to vaporise its > cities and dozens of armoured divisions ready to pour across the > borders of its allies, that controls the seas with its carrier battle > groups and the skies with its thousands of combat aircraft suddenly > driven almost insane with terror by a few hijacked airliners. > > Why are so many Americans so afraid? I don't think that's actually what's going on. One of the things that I see is that there are vastly different sets of presuppositions that underlie people's viewpoints, including yours and mine of course. One way I've seen success in breaking through the cycle of these presuppositions is to try different frameworks for attacking the problem...with the assumptions clearly laid out. I know that's a habit of mine to do so, but I'll be happy to see other ways of breaking that pattern tried. Anyways, looking back to the 20th century, the US can be seen to have fought in 3 world wars. The first two were fairly conventional: WWI and WWII. The third was the Cold War. It was an unconventional war. Mostly, this was the result of the ultimate weapon of this war: the H-bomb. For a span of time, from say '48 to '57, the US could have attacked the USSR; destroyed it as an effective military machine, while suffering relatively modest casualties itself (modest in relation to the WWII casualties). After this, the Soviet Union acquired delivery systems that allowed it to achieve MAD. The world came close to a shooting nuclear war in October, '62. After that, it appeared clear that neither the US nor the USSR was interested in such a war. The US was fortunate that its opponent was a bureaucracy, not a single strong man. I think Uncle Joe wouldn't have blinked over Cuba the way the USSR did in '62. So, the Cold War continued to be fought as a proxy war. In hindsight, the strategy of containment worked. The West lost a good deal of ground between '45 and '90, but in the end the USSR collapsed because with its economy experiencing more than a decade of backwards movement, it could no longer keep it's military machine well oiled. In the '90s, in an article and book, Huntington put forth a viewpoint of 21st century conflict between civilizations. One of the two potential conflicts he saw for the first quarter of this century was between Islamic and Western forces. Given the events of the start of the 21st century, it's hard not to consider his ideas prophetic. Even giving modest plausibility to this viewpoint, we can have a framework for seeing what's happening. One piece that I think needs to be added is the losses of the two superpowers when they fought asymmetric wars in 'Nam and Afghanistan. The combined time the US took to insure victory for its allies in WWI and WWII was less than the time it took to lose 'Nam. These types of wars could only be won by successful counter-insurgency fighting (COIN). We didn't do well in 'Nam. Fortunately, the US was strong enough to take the loss and keep going. Also fortunately, the USSR wasn't. But, with these two actions as a background, there is a framework within which to consider the events of the last 5 years. The dominant countries (say, the EU, the USA, Canada, Japan, and Australia...and probably one or two more I'm missing) are facing a world wide insurgency. In some cases, governments are part of the insurgency. In many cases, its small groups of people. Further, the dominant countries are sending a great deal of money to the areas where the insurgencies are based....with some of it ending up funding the insurgencies. At the same time, historical tendencies have now favored asymmetric attacks. Lets look back 100 years, how big of a chance was there that even as big a country as China could do significant damage to any European, American, or even Japanese city. Compare this to the present situation, where small countries are close to the point where they can devastate major cities in much more powerful countries. I cannot think of another example where fighters with modest means were able to inflict as much damage to a large, distant country as on 9-11...and even then the US was rather lucky things weren't much worse. Given that, one can see the desire to not just fight defensively. The fact that GWB is so unbelievable incompetent that he could probably coach the New England Patriots into a loss vs. the Little Sisters of the Poor has clouded the question somewhat....making the next step of the US to be more towards isolationism (one of the natural US tendencies). The incompetence of Bush does not mean that treating attacks of this nature as simply a matter for the police is a good strategy. I have a very non-sanguine prediction for the future, but I'll leave that for the next post. Dan M.
Waiting with bated breath. -- Ronn! :) _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
