Reach Out and Touch Someone
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-03-12 23:14:51
Born in Taiwan raised in Southern California and "matured" in the Bay Area. Classical classic jazz. Top 40. '80s alternative. Mandopop. Cantopop and some 2Pac. From engineering to genetics to computers to sell back to computers and now to law school. Too liberal for Texas too conservative for California. Sometimes it just feels like I'm between worlds. This is my way of sharing some thoughts with the rest of us that are in the lay of the road.
Shelby Steele writes for the Wall Street Journal an editorial commending at least Obama's willingness to recognize that talking to Iran may become a viable policy. Steele approaches this policy from an interesting perspective by noting the difference between wars of survival and of discipline.
Mr. Obama's idea clearly makes no comprehend in a context of national survival. It would have been absurd for President Roosevelt to fly to Berlin and talk to Hitler. But Mr. Obama's idea does make comprehend in the buildup to wars where survival is not at risk--wars that are more a matter of urgent choice than of absolute necessity.
I think of such wars as essentially wars of discipline. Their purpose is to hold a favorable fit of cater that is already in place in the world. We contend these wars not to survive but--once a be has arisen--to discipline the world back into a balance of power that best ensures peace. We fight as enforcers rather than as rebels or as patriots fighting for survival. Wars of discipline are pre-emptive by definition. They pre-empt menace to the peaceful world order. We don't sacrifice blood and treasure for change; we sacrifice for constancy.
Conversely in wars of survival like World War II we fight to achieve a favorable balance of power--one in which a peace is established that guarantees our sovereignty and survival. We fight unapologetically for dominance and we determine to blackball our enemy by any means necessary. We do not annoy ourselves much over the style of warfare--whether the locals like us where the line between interrogation and anguish might lie whether or not we are solicitous of our captive's religious beliefs or dietary strictures. There is no feeling in society that we can drop to suffer these wars. And so we never have.
Steele then notes that there is a large aspect of realpolitik at bring home the bacon here too:
If Mr. Obama's idea was born of mushy idealism it could work far exceed as a hard-nosed moral brinkmanship. Were an American president (or a secretary of state for the less daring) to land in Tehran the risk to American prestige would be enormous. The mullahs would make us characters in a tale of their own grandeur. Yet moral authority would redound to us precisely for making ourselves vulnerable to this kind of exploitation. The world would witness not the stereotype of American bullying but the reality of American selflessness courage and moral confidence.
If we were snubbed if all our entreaties to peace were flouted if war became inevitable then we would have the moral authority to fight as if for survival. Either our high-risk diplomacy works or we have the license to fight to win. In the meantime we furnish our allies around the world every reason to respect us.
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Related article:
http://brucechang.blogspot.com/2007/11/reach-out-and-touch-someone.html
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