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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (36181)	8/6/2002 8:58:02 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Not rational, Nadine, is not an analysis, it's a putdown. If you use rational/not rational categories, it's extremely easy to categorize both sides that way. But it gets you zero analytical mileage. It's simply a way to throw words at an opponent. Throwing your hands up in horror anytime someone uses the least bit of unpleasant language is also a method of putdown and analysis avoidance imo. I believe my language was extremely restrained for a polity that throws a street party every time Israeli civilians are blown up. More accurately, I would call the Palestinians crazed with rage and bloodlust, and perfectly willing to destroy all their immediate prospects in the hope of some future triumph. I certainly hope this doesn't mean all of them but it sure seems to apply to the ones who've been making their political decisions for the last two years. I would assert that this language accurately reflects certain unpleasant realities on the ground, and can be successfully used for predicting the actions of Hamas et. al. This to me is the test of getting analytic mileage -- can you understand their behavior better? can you predict their behavior more accurately? If you make a principle of never calling any behavior irrational, even when it clearly is irrational, you run the risk of blindsiding yourself to the other fellow's real motives. Oh, you think, at bottom I must believe he's rational (it's just a putdown to think otherwise; I don't work like that), so I will believe the rational things he says to me, not the terrible things he says to his own followers. That must be just for show. That's how Chamberlain was taken in at Munich. That's how Shimon Peres was taken in at Oslo.

To: JohnM who wrote (36181)	8/7/2002 3:11:43 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Not rational, Nadine, is not an analysis, it's a putdown. If you use rational/not rational categories, it's extremely easy to categorize both sides that way. But it gets you zero analytical mileage. It's simply a way to throw words at an opponent. Nonsense. Any analysis in decision theory requires valuation of rational and irrational judgements. Cost-benefit analysis, for one, ASSUMES rationality. It isn't a putdown to call Palestinian behavior irrational when said behavior is not only counter-productive to their desired ends, but is literally suicidal. Derek