Unrealistic Foreign Policy "Realists"

[jordan179]

From Caroline Glick, "The 'realist" fantasy," in the Jerusalem Post (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1230111707087&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)

First the delicious news that Hamas has brought back

Comments

[jordan179]

Yes, I read these. The key point is that the believer in a "transformative" ideology will behave irrationally from the POV of both objectivity and anyone who doesn't share his faith, because the True Believer is operating on motives entirely outside the rational considerations of one who does not share his faith. Hence an attempt to anticipate the True Believer's actions on the basis of what he should logically do, which does not take into account his ideology, will almost always fail.

This is we we aren't understanding the Islamists very well: George W. Bush's most consistent error in dealing with them has not been over-agressiveness but rather over-moderation, as he has often forgotten his own original insight into an "Axis of Evil" and tried to deal with Islamists as if they were ordinary combatants to be dissuaded and managed by ordinary measures.

The Left has it worse, because their perception of the Islamists is further clouded by the remnants of their own "tranformative" ideology, social-democratic internationalism.

[jordan179]

Those articles were extremely good -- thank you for pointing me there.

[mosinging1986]

When they don't like a Palestinian, they string him up on a lamppost and slit open his belly so that his entrails dangle to the street.

Ugh. Such lovely people, aren't they?
***
as if any amount of arguing and censoring could change the reality of what is within the Islamists' minds!

We see this day in and day out, and from all sides.
***
When you "respect" someone, you take what he says seriously -- including when he says that he hates you.

Exactly. This is so simple and straightforward that I cannot comprehend why NO ONE seems to get it. (Especially when those in question are not just talking, but proving by their continued actions that they mean EXACTLY what they say!)

I can somewhat understand it from the regular person on the street. When you are not directly affected it's easy to make up comforting fantasies about what you wish, rather than what is.

But politicians and world leaders do it to. And they know and see what is happening, sometimes firsthand. That's the part that makes me want to scream.

doublepluswarmfeelies all around

[mosinging1986]

Have Faith Faith Faith in The One and sing along with The Children, The Children, The Children:

"OBAMA Loves Us,
OBAMA Will Save Us..."

Re: doublepluswarmfeelies all around

[mosinging1986]

:::runs screaming into the night:::

Expectations of "Following the Script"

[jordan179]

When they don't like a Palestinian, they string him up on a lamppost and slit open his belly so that his entrails dangle to the street.

Ugh. Such lovely people, aren't they?

Indeed. And this behavior originated AFAIK with Fatah, the least extreme of the Palestinian factions, back in the 1990's. This should tell you just how foolish are the hopes of people who expect the Palestinians to become reasonable based on humanitarian arguments.

When you "respect" someone, you take what he says seriously -- including when he says that he hates you.

Exactly. This is so simple and straightforward that I cannot comprehend why NO ONE seems to get it.

The conclusion I've come to is that the Left really doesn't respect the Palestinians, or Muslims, or Third Worlders in general. Insead, a show of "respect," accompanied by the most perfect lack of respect, is engaged in by the Western Left.

What's going on is that the Third World has been drafted, in the minds of the Left, to play a particular role in their "script" of reality (*). That role

[zornhau]

It's like the run up to WWII, when none of the politicians had read Mein Kampf.

I'm all for taking people at their word, and raining down destruction accordingly.

So, we end the year in accord. (I'm still right about Palin, though.)

[zornhau]

"There once was a generation who held their grandparents in contempt:
'Why didn't they stop Hitler when they had the chance?'

They never thought their grandchildren -- the ones that survived -- would hold them in even greater contempt:
'Why didn't they stop the Mullahs before they got The Bomb?'"

-- common proverb after the Islamic Wars

Along with "Phobos Kedros Doxa" -- Fear Breeds Respect

[jordan179]

I'm all for taking people at their word, and raining down destruction accordingly.

Especially because, if you don't, you create a powerful incentive for leaders to win political points for "courage" by rousing their peoples against one's own. Even if those leaders don't act on it, they are shifting their own countries' political opinion against yours: eventually, they or their successors may have to act against you because it is so generally expected.

[marmoe]

Regarding Sharia: Tap dancing, Hamas style