To paraphrase a infamous criminal, make them [those who don't want a win-win situation] an offer they can't refuse.
Mugabbe, Arafat, any number of tyrants, aren't going to go for early retirement and golden years on the Riviera. What then?
But that doesn't say that one can solve political problems by only looking at one's own "political axioms". Which is the thrust of the neoconservative movement.
The only "axiom" conservatives - "neo" or otherwise - have, if they are really conservatives, and not phonies like Pat Buchanan, is that the world is contingent and that the further you get from the present, the less defined is our knowlege and certainty.
That is, useful description progressively diminishes in detail and possible unintended consequences of given acts may multiply. This is why 18th Century British and American liberals, who are called conservatives today, went with this basic view to put checks and balances in political/religious arrangements and mostly confined their speculation about humans to observable tendencies - note I say tendencies, not qualities.
Thus, also, the often misunderstood conservative fondness for custom.
You seem to think the conservatives in Washington are confident of the outcome in Iraq. They are not. Rumsfeld, for instance, will tell you at every opportunity he is not certain of the outcome of the Iraq venture.
He has goals which he will do his utmost to achieve, but that's pragmatics and should not be confused with unwitting certainty.
The preferred conservative foreign policy is 'passive' - they don't want to make waves: who knows what those might do when they wash up on foreign shores? But this fall back stance was shown untenable in these times by 9/11 events. Their present ME policy frightens almost every Washington conservative, including Bush. They only undertook it because they saw less radical alternatives as unworkable.
You may not agree with their policies and actions but you aren't going to get very far in your criticism if you misunderstand their philosophical position - which is far more flexible than many imagine. |
