|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Poemer
Joined: 20 Sep 2005
Location: Mullae
|
 Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 5:56 pm Post subject: Is Al Qaeda Sustainable? |
 |
|
Is it a sustainable political/radical movement? My opinion: no, as long as the US and other countries re-evaluate their foreign policies in the middle-east and stop giving people there someplace to point fingers.
This quote from a recent NY times editorial:
| Quote: |
| Kennan�s insight was that a long-term, complex struggle wasn�t best judged in terms of winning or losing. Communism wasn�t something we could immediately conquer. The same holds true for Al Qaeda, a movement that, like Soviet communism, offers its subjects oppression and poverty. Time is on our side � particularly if we act in a way that doesn�t inflame our enemies� pride and anger and win them new recruits. |
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/31/opinion/31thompson.html?th&emc=th |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 6:01 pm Post subject: |
|
|
I cannot open the link.
If "Kennan" refers to George F. Kennan, "X," or Containment's primary architect, then this is a bad analogy and analysis.
"Soviet expansionism" is not the same as "al Qaeda-sponsored terrorism."
And Kennan never advocted a long, protracted struggle against Soviet Russia. He envisioned something along the lines of a decade or so. And then it was supposed to have stabilized and/or ended -- as it did in fact do in Europe.
Finally, when you repeat bin Laden and Co.'s charge that al Qaeda only exists because our foreign policy creates them and we are only reaping what we sow, you show that you are not truly interested in getting into good, complex analysis but rather are satisfied with simplistic propagandizing -- and buying into the enemy's line at that.
Might feel good to proclaim things like this -- especially if you are a leftist, a Chalmers Johnson, Hugo Chavez, or bin Laden cheerleader, etc. But that is about all you might get out of it.
Last edited by Gopher on Fri Aug 03, 2007 6:10 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Poemer
Joined: 20 Sep 2005
Location: Mullae
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 6:10 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
A War Best Served Cold
Article Tools Sponsored By
By NICHOLAS THOMPSON
Published: July 31, 2007
SIXTY years ago this month, writing under the byline of X, George Kennan supposedly laid out America�s cold war foreign policy. Kennan�s essay is often said to be the most influential article in the history of this country�s foreign policy, but neither Harry Truman, nor any president after him, actually followed X�s recommendations. �Containment,� the word the essay introduced, was applied in a bellicose way that Kennan didn�t intend.
But while Truman dodged X�s advice, George W. Bush should follow it. Kennan was wrong about how we would win the cold war, but right about how to fight the war on terrorism.
In the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs, Kennan, who was then the State Department�s policy planning chief, gave American strategy a name, but not much else. He argued that we didn�t have to actively defeat the Soviet Union, only outlast it. Communism held inside itself �the seeds of its own decay.� The United States should refrain from provoking Moscow, whether through confrontation or histrionics. Patience would lead to success.
The article�s influence was grounded in a misunderstanding. Kennan didn�t make clear whether he intended containment to be primarily a political or military strategy. Despite the article�s ambiguity, everyone assumed the latter. The most important columnist of the time, Walter Lippmann, wrote a series of consecutive critical essays about the X article � later collected in a book that coined a phrase with its title, �The Cold War� � declaring that containment was a military doctrine and a bad one at that.
But in a letter to Lippmann that Kennan never mailed (most likely because his boss, Secretary of State George Marshall, had chastened him for causing a ruckus), Kennan explained that he didn�t mean containment with guns. He didn�t want American armed forces to intervene in countries where the Soviets were mucking around but hadn�t gained control, like Greece, Iran and Turkey.
The Soviets are making �first and foremost a political attack,� Kennan wrote. �Their spearheads are the local communists. And the counter-weapon that can beat them is the vigor and soundness of political life in the victim countries.�
American policy makers viewed containment in military terms. We soon built up our forces to defend Western Europe, created NATO and engaged in a huge arms race. Eventually containment would mean soldiers in Vietnam and thousands of nuclear weapons pointed at the Soviet Union.
Kennan opposed every one of these actions. Long called the man who defined our cold war policies, Kennan was probably containment�s most consistent, and persistent, critic. He spent decades denying paternity of the doctrine everyone credited him with creating.
Today we face vastly different challenges from those the nation confronted right after World War II. Our enemy is dispersed; there�s a constant threat of suicide attacks; nuclear weapons can be hidden in suitcases instead of dropped from airplanes. Still, when it comes to overarching strategy, Kennan�s desired but never executed policy from 60 years ago offers profound wisdom for today.
Kennan�s insight was that a long-term, complex struggle wasn�t best judged in terms of winning or losing. Communism wasn�t something we could immediately conquer. The same holds true for Al Qaeda, a movement that, like Soviet communism, offers its subjects oppression and poverty. Time is on our side � particularly if we act in a way that doesn�t inflame our enemies� pride and anger and win them new recruits.
Kennan�s insistence on a political strategy, rather than a military one, makes more sense now than it did when he published his essay. Applied today, that advice would entail spending more time and money building up our Muslim allies. The Center for Strategic and International Studies reports that only about $900 million of the $10 billion we�ve given Pakistan since 2002 has gone to health, education and democracy promotion. Most of the rest has gone to the military. The Bush administration has recently taken steps to change this ratio. But Kennan, one of the authors of the Marshall Plan, would have wanted the numbers to be closer to the reverse.
A 21st-century rendering of X�s vision of containment would involve the closing of the Guant�namo Bay detention camp, an unambiguous renunciation of torture and an abandonment of the notion that our legal and moral norms don�t apply to the current struggle. Kennan believed we gave our opponents a propaganda victory each time we acted in a manner unfitting of our ideals.
�To avoid destruction,� Kennan concluded the X article, �the United States need only measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of preservation as a great nation.�
We can�t know for sure how his recommended, wholly political version of containment would have fared in the cold war. But we do know that a militant foreign policy didn�t lead to nuclear war and did, eventually, help bring about the collapse of Soviet communism. We also know that a strong offensive policy has yet to succeed against Al Qaeda.
Kennan died two years ago at the age of 101. One of his last public statements was a critique, in 2002, of the looming Iraq invasion. War, he said, was too unpredictable, and this one wasn�t worth it. As he wrote to Lippmann six decades ago, �Let us find health and vigor and hope, and the diseased portion of the earth will fall behind of its own doing. For that we need no aggressive strategic plans, no provocation of military hostilities, no showdowns.�
Nicholas Thompson, a senior editor at Wired magazine, is writing a book about George Kennan. |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 6:15 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| A 21st-century rendering of X�s vision of containment would involve the closing of the Guant�namo Bay detention camp, an unambiguous renunciation of torture and an abandonment of the notion that our legal and moral norms don�t apply to the current struggle. |
This has nothing at all to do with Kennan's article or intent in 1947.
Somebody is dropping famous names and words. No more no less. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 6:55 pm Post subject: ... |
|
|
| Quote: |
| Somebody is dropping famous names and words. No more no less. |
Did Saddam continue threatening the world with WMD until the US invasion in 2003? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Poemer
Joined: 20 Sep 2005
Location: Mullae
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:04 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Gopher wrote: |
| Quote: |
| A 21st-century rendering of X�s vision of containment would involve the closing of the Guant�namo Bay detention camp, an unambiguous renunciation of torture and an abandonment of the notion that our legal and moral norms don�t apply to the current struggle. |
This has nothing at all to do with Kennan's article or intent in 1947.
Somebody is dropping famous names and words. No more no less. |
So you believe that the unlawful detainments at Guantanamo and the torture practices in Iraq and elsewhere, in the words of Kennan, "measure up to our own best traditions"?
| Quote: |
| �To avoid destruction,� Kennan concluded the X article, �the United States need only measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of preservation as a great nation.� |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:06 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Poemer wrote: |
| So you believe that...? |
I believe that taking Kennan or anyone else for that matter this far out of context will not contribute to anything helpful or persuasive at all.
Apparently it makes you feel as though you have scored a propaganda point or two, however. By all means, then, carry on. I have articulated my objections to this nonsense.
Last edited by Gopher on Fri Aug 03, 2007 8:00 pm; edited 1 time in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Poemer
Joined: 20 Sep 2005
Location: Mullae
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:22 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Perhaps you could articulate what, exactly, the intent of Kennan's original article was, as you see it, and why Thompson's discussion of Kennan's ideas in relation to present day concerns is so fruitless?
You also side-stepped my question concerning torture and Guantanamo, which doesn't need to be connected to Kennan's ideas at all, if the connection bothers you. Do we not diminish ourselves as a nation by the commission of such acts? Do we not call into question the position of our government as a just one? Do we not make the tasks at hand harder to manage, rather than easier? Do we not clear the path for others to justify their unjust actions against us by providing clear evidence of our own lax application of the morals we profess to represent and defend?
We don't create them, and I never said we did. We enable the continuation of their popularity by giving evidence that can be used to rally weak-minded supporters against us. We give them the ability to point fingers outward, rather than inward. We set ourselves up to be, in part, scapegoats. We give them kernels of truth out of which to concoct larger lies. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:32 pm Post subject: ... |
|
|
| Quote: |
| Apparently it make you feel as though you have scored a propaganda point or two, however. By all means, then, carry on. I have articulated my objections to this nonsense. |
And what kind of point did you just score? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:41 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Discarding Kennan, because the OP's question is a really good one, I would say that Al Qaeda needs continual successes to retain the credibility it needs to recruit members to its 'brand.'
The key, IMO, would be to assure that Al Qaeda has the fewest successes while also creating as few fresh outrages from which Al Qaeda might be able to gain recruits. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:43 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Poemer wrote: |
| Perhaps you could articulate what, exactly, the intent of Kennan's original article was...? |
I do not believe you have read Kennan's "X." It is available online, is it not?
The enemy was different, the enemy's perceived intent was different, Kennan's recommended response was different from the War on Terror, and there are other differences as well.
You have seized on the part of it that brings out the purist in you and suits your purposes vis-a-vis Guantanamo Bay: it does not conform to our ideals! Whatever.
I do not support what is going on at Guantanamo Bay. But I do not need to pull George F. Kennan into the fray -- brutally forcing a square peg into a round hole, come what may -- to support such a position as this. High-ranking contemporary policymakers have already voiced objections to it.
Last edited by Gopher on Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:45 pm; edited 4 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:43 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Quote: |
| The key, IMO, would be to assure that Al Qaeda has the fewest successes while also creating as few fresh outrages from which Al Qaeda might be able to gain recruits. |
And in Iraq, this means what? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:46 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Nowhere Man wrote: |
| Quote: |
| The key, IMO, would be to assure that Al Qaeda has the fewest successes while also creating as few fresh outrages from which Al Qaeda might be able to gain recruits. |
And in Iraq, this means what? |
That's the million dollar question. I would argue that pulling out now benefits Al Qaeda's position in the short-term but harms it in the long-term. It is not clear that remaining there would be beneficial to Al Qaeda in the long-term as some might suggest, but I think that it is clear that the American presence in Iraq cannot be beneficial for Iraq in the long-term for other reasons. The most important among those reasons is that currently the Americans are impotent to stop the ethnic violence. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Nowhere Man
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:54 pm Post subject: ... |
|
|
Would you characterize what's happening at Gitmo as "not conforming to our ideals"? Is this Americentric statement too strong or soft?
Do you think it strengthens or weakens Al Qaeda? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
|
| Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2007 7:55 pm Post subject: Re: ... |
|
|
| Nowhere Man wrote: |
Would you characterize what's happening at Gitmo as "not conforming to our ideals"? Is this Americentric statement too strong or soft?
Do you think it strengthens or weakens Al Qaeda? |
What is happening at Gitmo cannot be weakening Al Qaeda. It certainly is a betrayal of our values, and that is why high-ranking officials like Colin Powell and Condeleeza Rice have called for its closure. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
