“Why our prep-school diplomats fail against Putin and ISIS“:
We are led by men and women educated to believe in the irresistible authority of their own words. When they encounter others who use words solely to deflect and defraud, or, worse, when their opposite numbers ignore words completely and revel in ferocious violence, our best and brightest go into an intellectual stall and keep repeating the same empty phrases (in increasingly tortured tones):
“Violence never solves anything.” “There’s no military solution.” “War is never the answer.” “Only a negotiated solution can resolve this crisis.” “It isn’t about religion.”
Or the latest and lamest: “We need to have strategic patience,” and “Terrorists need jobs.”
Every one of those statements is, demonstrably, nonsense most — or all — of the time. But the end result of very expensive educations is a Manchurian Candidate effect that kicks in whenever the core convictions of the old regime are questioned. So we find ourselves with leaders who would rather defend platitudes than defend their country.
And negotiations become the opium of the chattering classes.
Once-great universities have turned into political indoctrination centers worthy of the high Stalinist Era or the age of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Their aims may be more benign, but their unwillingness to consider alternative worldviews is every bit as rigid. Students in the social sciences at Harvard or Yale today are cadets being groomed to serve a soft-Socialist form of government conceived not in the streets, but in the very same classrooms. It’s a self-licking ice-cream cone. And graduates leave campus brilliantly prepared for everything except reality.
There’s more at the link.
Word.
Peter
Well said, and I fear for America… Platitudes DON'T get it done…
The US has nothing whatever to fear from Putin. The Russian army isn't capable of reconstructing the Soviet Union and while Russia is possibly improving a bit it has neither the demographics nor the healthy population for an offensive war.
All this emphasis on Cold War 2 Electric Bugaloo is a distraction from the real issues of violent Islam and the porous Southern border/immigration polices that have turned the US from a pan European outpost to a Latin American one in matter of a few decades.
The elites being exactly as Peters describes them, want to tackle problems they understand that are comfortably far away.e
In fact every threat we face save Islam is Left Wing and domestic, no scratch that a ban on Middle Eastern immigration and long term visits and a few deportations would mostly alleviate the later as well.
As for overseas, neither Europe or Israel are our responsibility and if they are destroyed by ISIS a rag-tag group of terrorists pretending to be an army , its their own faults I strongly doubt Israel is any threat frankly anyway. They can handle themsleves quite well.
If somehow as a nation we make it through the next few generations without a civil war and with an intact infrastructure and economy, maybe we can help them out but I doubt it.
More than half of new Americans, Chan and Gutierrez and Abebeyo or whoever have no more affinity or responsibility to hose countries than I do to the of the Ibo.
Its better we get rid of these bums, primary them out and replace everyone in the Ivy Leagues with anyone else and maybe salvage the Republic than allow the elite to distract us with another war to line their pockets
What if they actually DO know what they're doing and the unpublished agreement is that Iran will be allowed to nuke Tel Aviv, just not on Obama's watch.
Billll the Israelis have nukes of their own and while the Mullah's are a bit nuts, most of the population of Iran isn't including its military.
Tel Aviv won't be nuked. If it somehow was, the Israeli response , the Sampson option as its called would be devastating, figure the low end estimate of 80 nukes means Iran ceases to exist as doe every major city in the Mideast.
If they have more, some estimates go as high as 200 or even 400 than its the end of Islam more or less.
if you think the Israelis won't push the button? Think again.
The reason we are all over that idea is our hegemonic ambitions get checked . Its the fear that we won't be able to jack to anyone who is armed with such weapons. For better or worse the US gets kettled.
"who won’t let their children play unattended but deny the murderous impulses haunting humanity"
Boy is this on target with the typical elite thinking.
Platitudes are for internal consumption. They are the 8 second sound bites for the press nothing more. IMHO, State department people should try and prevent conflict the same way the Defense department should prepare for it.
The bigger question is that the boarding school crowd are not prepared for the level of violence in the rest of the world. They truly believe no one wants war or conflict and that other believe all people want peace. That is just crap.
Russia is not the same nation is was in the old Soviet days but NATO is in a lot worse shape as well. The German would be hard pressed to mobilize a single combat ready division these days.
Russia can take what the want and POTUS will do nothing about it.
Gerry