Sometimes an image can bring a number to life.
"The fact is that, in essence, fewer soldiers than it would take to fill
up Washington, D.C.’s RFK Stadium have been asked to secure and patrol
a nation the size of California..."
It puts into perspective what we are trying to do and how we are trying to go about doing it. Supplying government to a society that has never known anything between blood relative local leaders and blood thirsty marauders is a labor intensive enterprise. Doing it requires not just, as big army leaders remind us, boots on the ground but that they be on the ground outside the nice safe air-conditioned base.
The title of the General's piece implies that Americans need to understand that the situation is 'fragile and complex' and, therefore, will require more time. The problem is that Americans do understand it is fragile and complex and that is why they don't want to give it more time.
At bottom Americans think the world is simple, at least if you are on the right side. If you are on the right side you get flowers and kisses from pretty girls and go home. That is how it worked (or seems to have worked from this many years forward) in the WWII with Germany and Japan. If it is not working out that way then, if "it" is insisting on being fragile and complex, then it is a sign that we are on the wrong side or, at best that there is no right side to be on.
This is a dangerous error. The great danger to us is not posed by our peers, by functioning societies, but by backward societies. In the world of WWII backward societies posed no threat other than temptation to great power rivalry. Today, with out new found respect for self-determination, societies that cannot even feed themselves are called nation states with all the rights and privliges thereof. The petty thugs that climb to the top of these medieval political cultures have the resources and technology at their disposal to maintain power indefinitely and threaten us with middle-age fanaticism and nuclear age arms.
The reason these societies are fragile and complex is that they are not really societies. They are hostages to our fantasy of third world "authenticism," the idea that whatever thug comes to power in a third-world country, no matter how unrepresentative or hated he is, is somehow more legitimate than an outside power. These societies are the victims of the premature ending of imperialism. Backward societies thrust into the clutches of dictators legitimized by our own guilt.
Bringing these people into the 21st century--the good parts of the 21st century, not the nightmare part of the 20th that we have consigned them to--is a complex and fragile task. That it is difficult makes it no less necessary.
"The fact is that, in essence, fewer soldiers than it would take to fill
up Washington, D.C.’s RFK Stadium have been asked to secure and patrol
a nation the size of California..."
It puts into perspective what we are trying to do and how we are trying to go about doing it. Supplying government to a society that has never known anything between blood relative local leaders and blood thirsty marauders is a labor intensive enterprise. Doing it requires not just, as big army leaders remind us, boots on the ground but that they be on the ground outside the nice safe air-conditioned base.
The title of the General's piece implies that Americans need to understand that the situation is 'fragile and complex' and, therefore, will require more time. The problem is that Americans do understand it is fragile and complex and that is why they don't want to give it more time.
At bottom Americans think the world is simple, at least if you are on the right side. If you are on the right side you get flowers and kisses from pretty girls and go home. That is how it worked (or seems to have worked from this many years forward) in the WWII with Germany and Japan. If it is not working out that way then, if "it" is insisting on being fragile and complex, then it is a sign that we are on the wrong side or, at best that there is no right side to be on.
This is a dangerous error. The great danger to us is not posed by our peers, by functioning societies, but by backward societies. In the world of WWII backward societies posed no threat other than temptation to great power rivalry. Today, with out new found respect for self-determination, societies that cannot even feed themselves are called nation states with all the rights and privliges thereof. The petty thugs that climb to the top of these medieval political cultures have the resources and technology at their disposal to maintain power indefinitely and threaten us with middle-age fanaticism and nuclear age arms.
The reason these societies are fragile and complex is that they are not really societies. They are hostages to our fantasy of third world "authenticism," the idea that whatever thug comes to power in a third-world country, no matter how unrepresentative or hated he is, is somehow more legitimate than an outside power. These societies are the victims of the premature ending of imperialism. Backward societies thrust into the clutches of dictators legitimized by our own guilt.
Bringing these people into the 21st century--the good parts of the 21st century, not the nightmare part of the 20th that we have consigned them to--is a complex and fragile task. That it is difficult makes it no less necessary.
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