I love Scott Addam's Dilbert [1] comic strip, for his pathologically flematic view of all things wrong with corporate America. It's for his morbid detachment from his subjects and his eye for detail that I found curious the following post.
From The Dilbert Blog: Another Run at the Nobel Peace Prize [2]:
The Crazy-Ass Backwards plan doesn't work if you hold the common and somewhat racist U.S. view, that the people "over there" only understand brute force. In that case, any flexibility on the part of the U.S. looks like weakness and an invitation to be kicked some more.
But from what I gather about pride, it's a substitute for power in the Middle East. If you give people pride, they don't feel so much need to kill you. Is that true? Beats me. I have no pride myself so I confess to not understanding it. But I know that brute force isn't working, at least at the puny level we are willing to apply it.
As many of you will gleefully point out, I'm no expert on the Middle East. This thought experiment is only intended to make you think different about a so-far unsolvable problem. Sometimes that's useful.
His follow-up post is here [3]. And read the gabillion comments on the threads.
Here's the thing : I think the man is on to something here; especially when he says,
Just to be clear, I’m not advocating nuking anyone. I’m just pointing out that if one assumes the Iranians will stop at nothing to build and use a nuke on Israel, the only sensible strategy is to nuke them first. Containment virtually guarantees that they’ll nuke Israel, since we know we aren’t going to stop their secret nuclear plot.
And if you believe that appeasement is never the right strategy, you need to put Pakistan and Saudi Arabia on your target list. Pakistan is allegedly not doing enough to catch Al Qaeda in its territory, and they’re the ones that spread nuclear technology to other countries. Saudi Arabia is allegedly still funding extremist religious teachings that are fueling terrorism.
The point of the crazy-ass backwards strategy is to move Iran into the same category as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, where we have big differences, but because they are considered allies in some sense, flexibility doesn’t seem like appeasement.
On another note : You know things are getting really, really bad when one of the funniest men in America has nothing funny to say about the US involvement in the Middle East.
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