Thursday, February 01, 2007
Empiricism
I've said these things before, but today they came together in a nice clear way, so I'll write it down before it disappears again in senile fog!
Americans are above all empirical. In industry and in daily life we are devoted to the basic notion of science: we don't accept anything on authority until we see whether it works or not. After we determine that a certain approach works, we keep doing it until somebody shows us an even better way.
Over the last century, American leaders have tried two styles of foreign policy. Each has received a good solid experimental run, and the results are clear. The data is in, and has been analyzed well and truly.
The Wilson style assumes that all humans want the same things, and thus aims to achieve certain moral goals for the world. It was tried in WW1 and the aftermath. It failed. Moral goals led immediately and directly to Hitler.
The Roosevelt style (Teddy & Franklin are the same in this context) makes no assumptions at all; it simply aims to serve the interests of the American people by defeating our enemies, regardless of morality, courtesy, the Golden Rule, or any other shit. It was tried in WWII, and later by Reagan. It worked both times.
Despite such a clear A/B pair of experiments, George W. Vichy is still taking the Wilson approach. Even today, after his OWN experiments have so clearly and predictably failed, he is still on the Wilson path. No mention of victory, just endless process and details and democracy and elections.
Osama loves it when we get bogged down in process, details, Rule of Law, and "long twilight struggles". Osama and his ilk are long-term thinkers. They will always beat us, by subversion and demographics, in a long chronic war. A gradual increase of troops, with the same rules of engagement, makes no difference at all to the enemy. It just gives them more targets, and gives our bureaucrats more chances to punish our soldiers for doing the job of a soldier. Result: more deaths, more discouragement, more wasted billions, more cynicism, more confusion about the goal, less will to win.
Someone needs to ask George the same question that Lynne Cheney asked to Wolf Blitzer:
"Do you really want us to win?" ¶ 4:33 PM
Americans are above all empirical. In industry and in daily life we are devoted to the basic notion of science: we don't accept anything on authority until we see whether it works or not. After we determine that a certain approach works, we keep doing it until somebody shows us an even better way.
Over the last century, American leaders have tried two styles of foreign policy. Each has received a good solid experimental run, and the results are clear. The data is in, and has been analyzed well and truly.
The Wilson style assumes that all humans want the same things, and thus aims to achieve certain moral goals for the world. It was tried in WW1 and the aftermath. It failed. Moral goals led immediately and directly to Hitler.
The Roosevelt style (Teddy & Franklin are the same in this context) makes no assumptions at all; it simply aims to serve the interests of the American people by defeating our enemies, regardless of morality, courtesy, the Golden Rule, or any other shit. It was tried in WWII, and later by Reagan. It worked both times.
Despite such a clear A/B pair of experiments, George W. Vichy is still taking the Wilson approach. Even today, after his OWN experiments have so clearly and predictably failed, he is still on the Wilson path. No mention of victory, just endless process and details and democracy and elections.
Osama loves it when we get bogged down in process, details, Rule of Law, and "long twilight struggles". Osama and his ilk are long-term thinkers. They will always beat us, by subversion and demographics, in a long chronic war. A gradual increase of troops, with the same rules of engagement, makes no difference at all to the enemy. It just gives them more targets, and gives our bureaucrats more chances to punish our soldiers for doing the job of a soldier. Result: more deaths, more discouragement, more wasted billions, more cynicism, more confusion about the goal, less will to win.
Someone needs to ask George the same question that Lynne Cheney asked to Wolf Blitzer:
"Do you really want us to win?" ¶ 4:33 PM
