> Dana wrote: > My personal opinion is that the US needs a more granular understanding > of other cultures before it attempts to manipulate them.
I still have no clue why this has anything to do with Iraq. Culture is the LAST thing we're trying to manipulate. The UN needs to understand culture. The State Dept needs to understand culture. If we had a nation building service, they'd have to understand culture. In Iraq, we've got military there and their job is to kill the enemy. Of course that mission depends on defining the enemy and in Iraq that's NEVER been clear and thus we're doomed to be forever followers there, not leaders. The "war" will be over when Iraqis decided it is and there's NOTHING Americans, or our military, can do to change that. As for "victory" in Iraq we've already had it; Hussein is defeated and dead and we control the gov't. We can go 2 ways now: 1.) Colonize Iraq, or 2.) Let the people there do what they will. As for Bin Laden, well, we still don't have a victory there: Bin laden is not defeated nor dead, and his operations arm is running just fine. So, for Al Quaeda, we can go 2 ways as well: 1.) Fight and win, or 2.) continue to scrap by with the bare minimum as we are today. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Enterprise web applications, build robust, secure scalable apps today - Try it now ColdFusion Today ColdFusion 8 beta - Build next generation apps Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:243726 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
