To: JohnM who wrote (48248 ) 10/1/2002 6:36:27 AM From: spiral3 Respond to I'm not at all certain just how to reply. But let me try just the portion on rationality and mirror imaging, which, incidentally, doesn't seem to me to be very important. Just an interesting wrinkle on thinking about foreign policy issues. If it doesn't help you, just don't use it. Ditto for Derek, if he reads this. ....why the dismissive tone, exactly how I am to decide whether to use it or not, if I don’t take a look at it to see if it helps. By contrast, Pollack's op ed piece offers a nice tease that he plans, among other things, to make an argument with evidence that "mirror imaging" doesn't work. I look forward to seeing if I agree. Message 18043683 And I only meant that one doesn't have to make judgments about one's own rationality or the rationality of the leader of some other state ....thanks for clarifying your position, but in all the posts up to the time of my response to you, you never stated this so quite so clearly, so it was hard to tell. At no point was I trying to argue with what I’d read you’d said. My name is David not Derek.It doesn't do motives or intentions, assuming one could make an argument that there are serious differences between the two. It's much lower down the abstraction scale. ....in the interests of collective sanity thank you for not getting started on this -g-It also leaves the analyst free to look into the reasons for the surprising behavior of the opposing foreign leader without jumping the evidence barrier to terms like "irrational" or "madman." ....in real life, mine not Pollacks, I don’t need any fancy theories that free me up to look at things from a valid perspective, some call this common sense, which as a loosely defined concept causes enormous theoretical problems but we use it anyway. If Pollacks approach floats his boat, fine, we all have our own journeys to make, still wondering if he realizes that he is the primary structural factor, surely he must do. I take it you did not particularly enjoy scanning the evidence of my ‘leap of faith’ -g-As for using the term "madman" to describe Saddam, I don't think there's any doubt he deserves it on his human rights record alone. ....something we can definitely agree on.But that's not about trying to decide what is the best course of action to pursue. ....exactamundo, but then again I made it quite explicit that I was not discussing the rest of the book. Hope this addressed some of your concerns.
