Scripting News Annex

15 Dec

Posted December 15, 2006 by Dave Winer in Scripting News. 7 Comments

The Counselor: “They don’t believe in coincidences. They’ve heard of them. They’ve just never seen one.”#

7 responses to this post.

Posted by db on December 15, 2006 at 3:46 pm

Dave, I couldn’t agree with you more about *most* of the mainstream coverage of the entire Iraq calamity. But as to your question of the day, the president obligingly provided an answer 13 months ago:

Victory in Iraq is Defined in Stages
* Short term, Iraq is making steady progress in fighting terrorists, meeting political milestones, building democratic institutions, and standing up security forces.
* Medium term, Iraq is in the lead defeating terrorists and providing its own security, with a fully constitutional government in place, and on its way to achieving its economic potential.
* Longer term, Iraq is peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism.

You can read more at that link above.

I guess my question is whether this kind of definition really was a help then, let alone now. Bush’s “National Strategy for Victory” was based on the same sort of fantastic thinking the initial invasion was built upon. One of the lessons of the last four years is that, beyond being far less competent than even the most damning of their critics would have guessed, Bush and the people around him have been utterly unwilling and unable to address the reality they’re dealing with (remember when the insurgency was just a few thousand dead-enders and foreign jihadis?). You’re right that the MSM has been behind on getting to the truth of the situation. I’d say they’re finally getting the message across about the realities of Iraq–I mean, the opinions expressed in these polls ain’t coming from thin air; the reality they have to catch up to now is the incapacity of the people who have our nation in their hands, the people who still think there’s a victory to be won in Iraq.

End of rant.

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Posted by Sam on December 15, 2006 at 4:07 pm

Interesting you mention the Cold War, since to me that’s the closest analogy from recent history to all the messes we (the U.S. for purposes of this comment) are in around the world currently. You just have to substitute Islamic fundamentalism for communism. Did anyone really have a strategy for victory in the Cold War? Admittedly I mostly only lived through the latter part of it, but I don’t really ever remember hearing about one. Somehow, after the fact, we noticed that we “won” it, but I think it would have been pretty hard even 5 years before that date (whichever one you want to pick) to say with any certainty when we were going to win.

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Posted by Jason Lefkowitz on December 15, 2006 at 5:17 pm

Did anyone really have a strategy for victory in the Cold War?

Yes. George F. Kennan did. He is the diplomat who created the strategy of “containment” that guided US foreign policy for forty years.

“The Sources of Soviet Conduct” is an article Kennan published anonymously in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1947 to put forward the containment strategy. The article describes the aim of containment as

to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power.

Before he took the strategy public with that article, he laid it out internally in what has become known as “the Long Telegram“. This was an 8000-word cable sent by Kennan to the State Department upon the conclusion of his term as the head of the American embassy in Moscow.

Kennan’s ideas were picked up by George Marshall (then Secretary of State) and President Harry Truman, and formed the nucleus of the so-called “Truman Doctrine“, which put containment into action by offering aid to Greece and Turkey, both of which were threatening to fall to Communist insurgencies.

The State Department has a good overview of Kennan and his role in formulating postwar American strategy on their Web site.

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Posted by John Furrier on December 15, 2006 at 6:29 pm

Dave: your idea is very strong and I still believe it is relevant. It is the bloghaus that we are doing at CES except no one is pitching anything. It’s a press room for bloggers, podcasters, and videobloggers. This is inspired by some of your ideas.

Btw: $25k per day is about the number.

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Posted by Dave Winer on December 15, 2006 at 6:44 pm

John I should probably go to CES and hang out at your Bloghaus. Got an extra room at the Belagio?? 🙂

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Posted by Nicholas Paredes on December 16, 2006 at 9:09 am

Coldwar,

Winning the coldwar was really about economic attrition, something not lost on out terrorist foes. Fundamentalism cuts both ways, and W personally represents a fundamentalism as insidious as those he strives to eliminate. Perhaps the republic will survive intact, and we can thank our terrorist forefathers for their political insight.

n

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Posted by John Furrier on December 18, 2006 at 10:00 am

Dave: we might have an extra room. You should be there… If I have an extra room do you want it?

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