Should civilized nations use "Enhanced Interrogation" techni

[--Pete]

Hi,

. . . The baseline struggle against America by various disaffected third world malcontent/scum is not something Shrub invented. . . .

Nope. And 9/11 might have occurred under anyone's watch. Though there has been a fair bit of evidence that terrorism might not have been as high a priority to the Shrub administration as it had been previously and as it should have been. But that kind of analysis, to be fair, needs a longer cool down period than we've had. Hell, John is still vilified and Richard praised, both beyond their worth.

Yeah, Shrub didn't start that particular fire, but he poured a fair bit of gas on it.

As I read it, it's a hangover from Woodrow Wilson's bloody progressivism ...

Maybe. Maybe not. The hot spin cycle of the Spanish-American war started a shrinkage of the world that's still going strong. When we had no effect on the world, the world had little cause to dislike us (or like us, for that matter). As far as the mess in the Middle East is concerned, that can be attributed, in large part, to a bunch of diplomats and their arbitrary drawing of boundaries. But the larger picture is simply a result of proximity. When the ocean became a pond, we got neighbors. Not all of them nice.

My experience in the dealing with terrorists of the Islamic sort goes back to Beirut gun line, early 1980's. It's an old problem too long overlooked by both our Army and the Congress who "organizes and fund" our armed services. ALso, one's enemy gets a vote.

Partially a consequence of the cold war. When we were still 'fighting' it, terrorism was small potatoes. After we 'won' it, peace had burst out all over (didn't you get that memo?) Took a while for the hill trogs to realize that there was more than one threat in this universe.

To call out "barbarism" as the enemy is, to me, as impractical as the strategic statement General Joulwan made in late 1990's when he was commander of NATO: "The threat is instability." In short, it doesn't do anything for policy or problem solution.

True. I should have said 'barbarians', as you do below.

The fight, the struggle between varying camps and ideologies, is standard human practice. The pretense that we, as in we the human race, are somehow beyond war needs to be dispelled if any fool out there still holds it, particularly if that fool is a decision maker.

And, yet, there are ways to resolve issues short of open warfare. We, the USA, are about as big as Europe. We are about as diverse (since we pretty well come from all parts of Europe). We've managed to get through two and a quarter centuries with one major war and a small number of squabbles in our corner of the globe. I can't even keep track of the number of European wars occurred in the same time frame (a few of which sucked us in, too).

We may not be beyond war, but perhaps we can learn to relegate it to the last, rather than the first, resort.

Bush, as a policy maker, violated nearly all of Clausewitz' and Sun Tzu's advice on how to match aims and means, as well as Bismarck's, so he was bound to screw up quite of bit of what he tried in the war field.

I doubt that Shrub has a clue. If he's even read, much less studied, Sun Tzu I'd be surprised. As to Clausewitz, I suspect he's never even heard of the man. The problem, to some extent, is to have a commander in chief who's not a trained military man. Especially if the CiC is a fool and his advisers are equally ignorant (Robert McNamara comes to mind).

Obama isn't showing me much better form. My hope is that he learns on the job. No confidence in that, however. We shall see.

Indeed we shall.

I won't recommend targetting barbarism. I recommend targetting barbarians, like the Mexican drug cartels. It's not like they haven't been at this for a couple of generations .... and their war is a political and economic power grab.

Perhaps a little of both. Target the barbarians to solve the immediate problem and barbarism to solve the long term one.

--Pete