Posted on 11/20/2006 8:39:07 AM PST by kellynla
The Baker/Hamilton Commission has a chance to dramatically reshape our thinking about American foreign policy, if only it will ask the right question. They should follow the guidance of one of the last century's most brilliant thinkers, Ludwig Wittgenstein. In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein asks an apparently straightforward question: what do all games have in common? He ties himself in mental knots trying to get the answer, but nothing works. Finally he realizes that the question was posed wrongly. It should have been: Is there anything all games have in common? That's the real question (and the real answer is "not much"), but the language of the first question tricked him into searching for an answer that does not exist.
Our strategists are constantly asked, how can we win the war in Iraq? But it is the wrong question, and therefore has no correct answer. Read Reuel Gerecht in Friday's Wall Street Journal: "(The Baker/Hamilton Commission) cannot escape from an unavoidable reality: We either declare defeat and withdraw completely tout de suite, or we surge troops into Baghdad and fight. The ISG will surely try to find some middle ground between these positions, which, of course, doesn't exist."
Instead of trapping themselves in an imaginary quagmire, the commissioners can help us face the real war. What's going on in Iraq is not "the war," which is raging over the entire world. The real question — the life and death question — is: How can we win the war in the Middle East, which now extends from Afghanistan to Lebanon, Iraq, Israel, and Somalia?
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
Will the Baker/Hamilton Commission get this war right?
I hope so...but I've got a bad feeling.
I have the same bad feeling and I am getting tired of people from Bush #41 showing up to give advice or be on commissions.
I'm not too impressed either. I'm also concerned that we are in a conflict in which the people who running it can't figure out how to win without the CYA charade of hiring a commission to tell them what to do.
What chance have we against the overall WOT if this insurgency boggles us?
How 'bout we just wait for the report before getting negative?
Why isn't the commission a military one, with some outside expert opinion brought in, instead of the other way around?
It's a war, we need the best military minds.
how 'bout you address your posts to whom they should be...Clareece. LOL
There are winners and there are losers.
If you wish to be the winner, play like it.
There are winners and there are losers.
If you wish to be the winner, play like it.
Oops.
I can't wait to hear what Sandra Day O'connor thinks. Talk about activist judges! sarc/
No, they will not get it right.
Also, I get tired of the foment a revolution in Iran idea. Do you know what the aftermath of revolution often looks like? It looks like Iraq today.
And they'll deny it's terrorism when some mook goes shaheed in the Bangor Mall.
Keep your powder dry, folks.
I wish I could suppose this was true, but it seems far more likely that any government with wide popular support in Iran would be "Islamic", as a oil exporter fundamentally opposed to our long-term economic interests, and fundamentally opposed to current or likely foreseeable US policy on the Israeli - Palestinian confrontation.
So IMO unless we have both the means and the will to indefinitely occupy Iran and impose a regime more to our liking, Ladeen's vision - as it was in Iraq - is a pipe dream, and we would do better to start thinking about a realistic long-term policy for containment.
I favor the Attila the Hun school of diplomacy...
Let's just be thankful that Dick Darman wasn't brought in to advise Dubya on economic policy.
No kidding! Although we still have two years!
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