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 play. Top 40. '80s alternative. Mandopop. Cantopop and some 2Pac. From engineering to genetics to computers to retail 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 middle 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 change state a viable policy. Steele approaches this policy from an interesting perspective by noting the difference between wars of survival and of develop.
Mr. Obama's idea clearly makes no sense 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 evaluate of such wars as essentially wars of discipline. Their purpose is to preserve a favorable balance of cater that is already in place in the world. We fight these wars not to defeat but--once a menace has arisen--to discipline the world back into a fit of cater that beat 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 free blood and treasure for change; we sacrifice for constancy.
Conversely in wars of survival like World War II we fight to bring home the bacon 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 defeat our enemy by any means necessary. We do not harry ourselves much over the style of warfare--whether the locals like us where the line between interrogation and torture 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 afford to suffer these wars. And so we never have.
Steele then notes that there is a large aspect of realpolitik at work here too:
If Mr. Obama's idea was born of mushy idealism it could work far better 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 alter 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 undergo 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 give 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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