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

To: broadstbull who wrote (94523)	4/18/2003 1:47:13 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

> Surely you see the hypocritical flaw in our policy so far. SA is enemy #1 as far as I am concerned. Certainly I do. And Pakistan is just as bad if not worse. There are several reasons for our misguided foreign policies. The first is lack of belief in the ideals of Declaration of Independence. Some think that they should be fallowed as matter of law only within the USA, while others think their nuisances to find loop wholes around everywhere even inside the country. Such moves against these ideals are often justified with "realism", "pragmatism", "moral relativism", and so on. Much of the problems we face today have their roots in our policies during the cold war. NeoCons claim that they have learned from the history. But for the most parts what I see is the replacement of Communism with Islamism, but no fundamental change. Just as we supported corrupt regimes in the past under the guise of fighting communism. Today we support the regimes in Pakistan, Saudi, and Egypt under the guise of fighting Islamism. It was wrong then and it is wrong now. It may surprise you to know that we actually supported the rise of Wahaabism and the Taliban. The second problem is that we consider what is good for business to be good the people. This is absurd. There is an overlap between the two; a good economy is good for both the people and the business. But not everything that is good for business is good for the people. Big business often lobbies for various policies in foreign affairs. And since the effects of those decisions take a long time to effect us (the people) there is hardly anyone concerned with (or able to fight) their negative consequences. In short if our government was a fund manager, they'd be momentum traders. But what we need in charge is a value investor like Buffet. Buffet's success is due to his ideology that it is better to buy a great business at a fair price than to buy a fair business at a great price. In contrast our government policies have been the antithesis of that position. As a result they can always point the finger at previous administrations or measure success in very short term performance. But they leave the country over all in a weak position longer term. Sun Tzu