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xiphiasThey were talking about it. And I had to turn it off.
See, the manual says that you have to do things like "Not Piss People Off", "Not Kill Innocent People", and shit like that.
And that you have to be careful about this stuff, because it's paradoxical and non-intuitive.
The manual says everything that liberal bloggers have been saying about how this war should be fought. We have been right all along.
And it BAFFLES me that it's possible to NOT know these things. They're totally obvious. If you kill someone, then their family will be mad at you. That's not really THAT difficult a concept, is it? If people have jobs and a decent life and stuff, they'll be less likely to kill you. THIS is a paradoxical concept?
And I started to feel sick to my stomach as I began to really realize that this war has been fought by people who don't understand this.
And I began to feel guilty. For a number of reasons. One is that I'm an American, and I live in a representative democracy, and my representative democracy sent people who don't understand people to occupy a country. And that's my fault. Oh, maybe it's only 1/3,000,000th my fault, but if you figure that 100,000 people have died because of the war, as the Lancet figures, I'm still responsible for 1/30th of a death. Which is worth some guilt.
And another reason.
This shit is obvious to me. Apparently, I have a mindset that would have made this whole occupation less nasty and bloody and horrifying if people in charge of the occupation shared it.
And that means that I should be THERE.
I should have joined the military. I should have joined ROTC in college (although Brandeis didn't have one), and I should have become an officer, and I should have been in a position to help shape these policies so that we would have gone into the situation with this knowledge.
Or SOMETHING. I don't know. Maybe I was right not to join the military, maybe I wouldn't have been able to change things like that.
But. . . there has to be SOMETHING I could have done. How is it possible that ANYONE can't simply intuit almost all of the information that's in the new guide? I mean, the historical perspective is neat, and the classification of insurgency types is useful, but the "how to do it" section is all totally obvious.
See, the manual says that you have to do things like "Not Piss People Off", "Not Kill Innocent People", and shit like that.
And that you have to be careful about this stuff, because it's paradoxical and non-intuitive.
The manual says everything that liberal bloggers have been saying about how this war should be fought. We have been right all along.
And it BAFFLES me that it's possible to NOT know these things. They're totally obvious. If you kill someone, then their family will be mad at you. That's not really THAT difficult a concept, is it? If people have jobs and a decent life and stuff, they'll be less likely to kill you. THIS is a paradoxical concept?
And I started to feel sick to my stomach as I began to really realize that this war has been fought by people who don't understand this.
And I began to feel guilty. For a number of reasons. One is that I'm an American, and I live in a representative democracy, and my representative democracy sent people who don't understand people to occupy a country. And that's my fault. Oh, maybe it's only 1/3,000,000th my fault, but if you figure that 100,000 people have died because of the war, as the Lancet figures, I'm still responsible for 1/30th of a death. Which is worth some guilt.
And another reason.
This shit is obvious to me. Apparently, I have a mindset that would have made this whole occupation less nasty and bloody and horrifying if people in charge of the occupation shared it.
And that means that I should be THERE.
I should have joined the military. I should have joined ROTC in college (although Brandeis didn't have one), and I should have become an officer, and I should have been in a position to help shape these policies so that we would have gone into the situation with this knowledge.
Or SOMETHING. I don't know. Maybe I was right not to join the military, maybe I wouldn't have been able to change things like that.
But. . . there has to be SOMETHING I could have done. How is it possible that ANYONE can't simply intuit almost all of the information that's in the new guide? I mean, the historical perspective is neat, and the classification of insurgency types is useful, but the "how to do it" section is all totally obvious.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-15 10:28 pm (UTC)