“Military ‘brain trust’ created for Iraq,” United Press International, Feb. 5, 2007.

“Officers With PhDs Advising War Effort,” Washington Post, Feb. 5, 2007.

The US for now is unwilling to do any introspection on its foreign policy and the way business is done with the Arab world. When the war is explained as ‘good versus bad’ ‘freedom v. tyranny’, its a good way to get the support of the masses because the alternative is to talk about serious fundamental policy issues like raising taxes on gas which no one wants to hear.

Ironically, the same is happening in Islamic countries – ‘Great Satan’ vs ‘Islam’, ‘believers’ vs ‘infidels’. Both ‘civilisations’ are playing upon the fear of the masses, i.e. the fear of something different.

Personally I think Hamas winning the Palestinian election offers the West an excellent opportunity for the ‘struggle against Islamism’. The Mullahs have been profiteering from the rage within the Islamic community regarding Palestine, the symbol of muslim oppression for the past 50 years and so peace between Israel and Palestine via diplomatic talks with Hamas will remove the major grievance of the Islamic world. It is rather simplistic, but the potential is there.

Also, a thorough shake up of the House of Saud would be super. In the history of humankind has there ever been a more hypocritical, short-sighted, lily-livered and two-faced monarchy?

And last but not least, compulsory hormone treatment for those with jihadi tendancies – the inverse of this – high doses of estrogen for the macho male types oozing testosterone.

thanks for joining in. you’ve added an important perspective and one i think folks here should listen carefully to. please don’t go away.

brain trusts are a disaster unless proven otherwise. they are a bureaucratic solution, which is to say, not a solution at all. as it is the united states, for all of its “small-government” official rhetoric, has an extremely unwieldy and incovenient bureaucracy. that may be inevitable, in fact, for a country this large; that means that additional bureaucratic burdens are really a bad idea.

in addition, as people here have said, any brain trust is likely to reflect the prejudices of the people in power. bureaucratic brain trusts tell leaders what they want to hear. it’s built in. that’s why there are two other branches of government. it’s up to the legislature and the judiciary to act as countervailing powers to the executive. they should be the ones — within the constitutional scope of their responsibilities — generating ideas, proposals, precedents, interpretations for the executive to respond to.

the absence of in-depth and contextualized knowledge about arab, muslim, etc. societies here in the u.s. is clearly flagrant and wishing to deal with it is a good idea. but wouldn’t it make more sense to do so by, say, training american foreign service personnel, military, college students, high school students, etc., in arabic and urdu and indonesian bahasa and the other relevant languages, literatures and cultures, and sending them out to learn the world as it is, not through the opaque workings of some washington commission?

peace

kush is a regular here. we know him. he’s our friend. leave him alone.

thank you.

In the current geopolitical environment, I don’t think anyone is going to war with Iran. Iranians know this, Europeans do, Russians do, and so do the Americans. I’d take Bush over Ahmadinejad or Saddam anyday. Any rational person would.

Iran is one of Japan (and China’s I believe) major oil suppliers. Yea, war with them and you risk screwing over guys who have direct impact on the US economy from the consumer side, which keeps the ball afloat here. Your position is based upon the fact that Bush will go to war with Iran. He doesn’t have support for that ANYWHERE, nor is he looking to go there. I simply isn’t possible for the forseeable future. If the Russians and Europeans are peeved off, let them negotiate Iran down. The US will play bad cop, Russians and Europeans are playing good cop. One has to give Iran for being a tough and smart negotiator.

If their nuclear facilities do go up, I wouldn’t be suprised if Israel took things in its own hands. Again, why does Iran want nukes when its sitting on one of the worlds largest energy reserves? To push Israel AND Saudi around. The Saudis and others aren’t saying much, but they are far more afraid of Iran having nukes than Israel.

Look, the United States would negotiate with Iran if the Iranians were looking to mend fences. They aren’t and Al Quaida isn;t on their priority list.

Same way “Saddam gased his own people” ….. Yeah lets go to war with Iran.

If you thought GWB was bad at shooting his mouth off, Ahmadinejad takes the cake. Hell, he’s even turned the Europeans sour. “Wipe Israel off the face of the earth”. Under the previous guy, negotiations were moving along, and Iran still will negotiate a deal. They’re just trying to milk it for what its worth. There is a reason the Russians are still working it. It takes two to tango, and Ahmadinejad is a nut.

The pro argument of a supposed “Brain Trust” is that they can come up with the definition of the enemy, which is very important. If the US somehow does that, it will also give a clear exit strategy, as opposed to stupid nare-baji (hindi for slogan-eering) like “Nothing less than complete victory”. I think the US military would LOVE that.

The stupidest thing that the US at present is doing is this rhetorical war with Iran, which sounds so much like the pre-Iraq war rhetoric. For example Rice calling <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/09/rice.iran/index.html?section=cnn_latest">U.S. faces 'no greater challenge' than Iran </a>. Instead of being stupidly anti-Iran, the US should make a deal with Iran to combat Al Queda who hates both US and the Shiites. And how stupid it is to equate Hamas with Zaraqawi ??

What’s truly lame is comments like:

I agree. http://www.mylameassblog.com

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