<Would you mind sharing your blueprint for victory?>
1. 10% Force; 90% persuasion, economic leverage, HeartsAndMinds campaign.
2. multilateralism.
3. Strict Reciprocity when dealing with hostile nations/organizations. No preventive wars. Recognize that Containment/Deterrance worked with Stalin and Mao, and will probably work with Iran and N. Korea also.
4. using our leverage to engage in the Israeli-Arab conflict; becoming a true "honest broker" for peace, rather than 100% backing Sharon. Make U.S. aid dependant on dismantling illegal/small/isolated/new Israeli settlements.
5. Manhattan Project for Energy Independence, to end reliance on energy supplied by unstable regions (Middle East, Venezuela, Nigeria). This will end the need to garrison the ME oil fields. And kick the legs out from under 20 dictators.
6. fund, through proxies, a system of madrassahs throughout the world, that preach non-violent Islamic education. Shut down, everywhere we can reach, madrassahs that preach violent Jihad.
7. take the money we are spending on preventive war (75B$ just for Iraq, just this year, and the total cost will probably be higher), and spend it on things that separate the guerrillas (Al Queda, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.) from their civilian base of support. All those run social service organizations, that provide schools, hospitals, food, to Muslims. Then they use those organizations, as a cover for propaganda and recruitment and financing. We need to shut them down, by providing an alternative. Shutting them down, without providing an alternative, will just create more despair and anger against us.
8. address the reasons we are hated in so much of the world, rather than just angrily dismissing their complaints.
9. "let a thousand flowers bloom". Try everything we can think of (that doesn't involve killing people). Fund them, then evaluate them after a year or two, weed out the ones that don't work, expand the ones that do.
10. Start following the Geneva Convention. Let U.S. soldiers abroad be judged by local law, and by international courts.
11. stop agricultural trade restraints, and subsidies to wealthy corporate American farmers, which is the #1 thing we do that causes poverty in the developing world.
12. sign the Kyoto treaty. Even if you are not an environmentalist, this makes sense, as it really pissed off the whole world when we didn't sign it.
13. reform the UN, rather than dissing it.
14. Sunshine; follow the lead of S. Korea re the North.
That ought to be enough to start with........ |
