Originally posted by: Moonbeam
c: What you want (desirable) and what you need (vital) are often two separate things. What it desirable can often cloud judgment and may lead to jumping into something without fully understanding the consequences. What is vital tends to be more focused and and thought out.
M: Well I would say that what is vital is what you require to survive rather than something reacquiring more thought but anyway.....
The question becomes, it seems to me, how do you correct impulsive behavior with more intelligent and focused action if your actions are impulsive based. How does an impulsive know the difference between what is vital for him and what are just his immature needs. How do you know when your thinking is clouded. Who acts knowing his judgment is clouded. People with clouded judgment don't seem to like being told so.
Who says they are impulsive based? You? Who has impulsive based behaviors? Me? You? Everybody?
c: Ideological goals: Regime change, social and political advancement, creating a new and improved nation. Vital interests: Destroy/disrupt Al-Qaeda and punish Taliban.
M: The ideological goals look a lot like desire goals rather than vital goals unless you are referring to the last Presidential election. And on those vital goals you listed I would suggest more thought. The question is how to best effect those goals. We don't have to bomb somebody to destroy the threat they pose. We can change their minds, we can dry up the source of dissatisfaction that drives their membership. We could give people alternative healthy goals so they don't become fanatics, etc. In shout it is not the words that may be wrong but the assumptions that one knows what they mean in terms of actions.
Those seem like desirable (and idealistic) goals to me. But my point in the OP is these noble ideas can come with incredible costs and are incredibly difficult to achieve... perhaps impossible in some situations. Acting on our highest idealistic desires isn't always possible and in some cases can backfire badly. As I said in the OP our actions must be tempered with an adequate sense of realism, we have to tie our desires to what's realistically feasible.
Trying to change the minds of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, dry up the source of dissatisfaction that drives their membership, and giving them healthy goals in response to 9/11 isn't a solution to the immediate problem. A response need not be impulsive, it should be effective. What I outlined in the OP probably would have met our major security interests in a fraction of the time and cost.
c: I do believe some concepts and principles are superior than others and will serve the people of the US and world better. In this global landscape the US may have to use its power to promote and defend such ideals.
M: But do you see that everybody feels this way? Nobody believes what they do thinking, well what I think is a 4 and what the US thinks is a 10. Al-Quaeda is out to destroy us because their ideas are better than ours. They don't kill us saying, well our ideas aren't as good, but you have to die anyway. This is what I mean by being a fanatic. You are no different than the people you want to kill at all. What would make you different is if you said, I don't know which of us is right but I think I am. I will therefore work to demonstrate that my way leads to a better life than your way so how about I not kill you and you not kill me and we compete to see who can create the better life for people.
Because you cannot create a better life for people unless you have values, and you cannot have values unless you judge ideas, and you cannot judge ideas without the concepts of right and wrong (morality). Destroying the marketplace of ideas because ideas can have bad consequences isn't the answer. Throwing up your hands in frustration and adopting nihilism is not the answer. Giving up on morality just because it's hard to deal with, and often ugly to watch in practice, is not the answer.
Hey, don't argue with me. You're going to have to disprove the father of modern philosophy Descartes (who said the world is rational) and the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, including Sir Francis Bacon (who said man can understand the world)... Western Civilization is on my side.
c: Idealism is a belief in an ideal system, the focus being on how things should be rather than how they are. Moral clarity means understanding one's morals, how they are derived, and why they are important.
M: Fascism and Communism are ideal systems that have killed a lot of people getting to how things should be. This is the mark of the fanatic, the right to kill in the name of the should. The Germans were very clear on Aryan supremacy and why and how important is was for the Jews to die.
The problem is that morality can be bigotry. A bigot does not know why he is a bigot, he just knows he is right. The forces that drive him are unconscious and derived from childhood experiences that he can't access consciously.
Everybody thinks he is moral. People murder because it is right that the other person die.
So the answer is to say nobody is right... and then nobody will die? See above. Your form of idealism looks to me to be just as -if not more- dangerous than fascism or communism. Devolving humanity to animalistic creatures who cannot determine right or wrong, good or bad, and recasting civilization into a free for all isn't my idea of a good time. It would never truly succeed... man
will do what's in his nature- think, and he
will develop some sense of right and wrong (not matter how corrupt) because that's how we're wired- to survive. Your fantasy could never fully be realized, yet it would create an unthinkably nasty anarchy.
c: When we deem our interests in a particular situation to be important enough to override any possible lack of international support. (Regarding when to use unilateral action)
M: We did that in Iraq. It wasn't such a good idea according to many. Everybody thinks they have the judgment to make such decisions. The facts are they do not.
Nothing is perfect and mistakes are made. Is that the reason we should stop trying? My idea is that we mitigate the potential mistakes and use lessons learned... not give up on thinking.
c: Those are desirable, and not necessarily vital.
M: What are?
Yes
c: Maybe? (regarding why Bush went to war) Maybe he was too idealistic in his approach. Maybe it's not simply about one man. In any case you can perform psychological guesswork as much as you want, I'm more interested in specifically how we could have done things better in this thread.
M: My interest is in destroying the sense of certainty that drives fanaticism or as you might call it, not separating the desirable from the vital.
Perhaps you should lesson your own sense of certainty.
c: Our interests were destroying Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden, and punishing the Taliban.
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M: Maybe we should have engaged them in a war of ideas. Personally I don't think insanity has much of a chance against reasonableness.
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c: On a large scale over a long time I agree with you... better, more reasonable ideas will almost always win out over insanity most of the time. That is my ideological/idealist side speaking. My realist side also knows that in day to day interactions I may have to use other means to deal with people... or nations.
M: Isn't that all spelled out in the Just War scenario, when you are in danger of imminent attack. Of course there is still the problem of being sure the imminent part is real, no, and certainty would be also dangerous there.
The idea is to us reason, logic, and best possible evidence to reach conclusions (however certain or uncertain). The alternative is to use no reason, no logic, and no evidence, OR, not make conclusions at all.
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c: Instead of going all out we could have conducted punitive raids using air and some ground power, along with with satellite/ UAV coverage and human intelligence sources to locate bin Laden, al-Qaeda senior leaders and their training camps, (and Taliban leadership) attack to destroy them - and then withdraw. Followed up by promises that as long as the Taliban harbored terrorists or permitted them to operate from their territory we would continue to launch attacks on them.
M: Hind sight is 20-20 no?
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c: Well, that's the idea... learn from history, learn from our mistakes.
M: But we do not learn from history, or not enough of us anyway. We react over and over is a predictable way. We are asleep to the emotions that drive us. You caution using reason but I say reason is blinded by unconscious emotional feeling. You want to study history, I think we need psychoanalysis. If we do not know the feeling that unconsciously propel our so called morality we will never leave the wheel of karma and make the same mistakes over and over again. What we need is not more history but more emotional intelligence in my opinion.
I agree humanity needs more emotional intelligence, but I don't think mass psychoanalysis is the answer to that.
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c: American strategic security could have been safeguarded and most of our operations in Afghanistan completed in 2002. What did we end up with? 8 + who knows how many more years, spending $100s billions, and costing the US thousands of killed or wounded Soldiers. If we knew this cost beforehand, would we have followed this route? The costs seem to be out of proportion to what we've gained and the strategic benefit will likely be unfufilled for many years to come.
M: The Supreme Coup voted for Bush and the rest is history
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c: :roll:
M: Yes but did you learn?
I learn things every day... do you still learn things about yourself and the world, or have you already found "The Answer?"
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c: This is by no means some accusatory tirade against our actions, not by a long shot. But we should always be willing to engage in simple, honest analysis.
M: How? How could we have been other than what we were. Remember you wanted to talk about reality. What was is the reality.
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c: Different choices and decisions could have led to different outcomes.
M: Of course, but we did exactly as we had to given who we are and what we know.
I'm not a big believer in determination. We reap what we sow and what we sow is entirely up to us.
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c: In future cases we should be careful about elevating what's desirable over what's vital.
M: Aside from knowing what those are how exactly will we learn that lesson?
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c: By talking with each other and determining if something worked well (or better than something else)
M: So we are talking, no?
Yep, feels great eh?
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c: There still needs to be that Realist, pragmatic, (almost ammoral) aspect, an emotionless detachment that can help determine purpose, method and end state within a proper cost/benefit framework.
M: How do you know? And what are all those things? Maybe there just needs to be a law that if you start a war that's a fuck-up you will pay with your life.
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c: 😕
M: It would perhaps increase the focus and thought that separates the desirable from the vital as you originally suggested. You know, a bit of personal involvement and responsibility added to any actions we propose others will be dying to achieve.
Probably not.
