Going through the backlog of Common Sense (with Dan Carlin) episodes that I wanted blog on.
Entitled Fanatical Deradicalization the first half of the show is about options in the War on Terror. Personally, I’ll stick to the observation that there isn’t any way to win a war on a tactic, any more than there’s a way to win a war on a substance or a market.
However, I thought about what would happen if we began using the methods described (Fighting terrorism with terrorists) in the second piece, essentially breaking the thought processes (or lack of them) that the terrorists currently use to justify their actions; deprogramming them and sending them back to their people to change them as well. That was back during the Clinton years when the terrorist tried to bomb the World Trade Center the firsts time. If it works, I think we should do it.
The first piece (by Gary Anderson) proposes an interesting method for turning the populations of the Middle East towards our cause by painting the terrorists in the proper light by buying ad time on popular TV stations in the area. But I have to agree with Dan that the more interesting proposition is simply letting the people in the region experience the return to Islam that the radicals want to impose on the Middle East. The suggestion was that we use it as a threat, I suggest we just vacate the premises and let the chips fall where they may.
Be careful what you wish for, it may come true.
The second part of the show dealt with lying Presidents and what their punishment ought to be. I’m solidly behind the idea of impeaching presidents. I think we should have started with Woodrow Wilson (The Federal Reserve alone is worth impeaching him over) and every President afterwards to the present day. All of them were impeachable, and at least some of them should have been (Clinton should have been removed from office. But not for lying about sex; talk about a minor charge) Let’s start now. It’s not to late to teach the bureaucracy that there are consequences to their actions.
