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Susan Page writes at USA Today that Leon Panetta, former head of the CIA and Secretary of the Department of Defense, says Americans should be braced for a long battle against the brutal terrorist group Islamic State that will test U.S. resolve. "I think we're looking at kind of a 30-year war," says Panetta, one that will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere. Panetta also says that decisions made by President Obama over the past three years have made that battle more difficult — an explosive assessment by a respected policymaker of the president he served. Not pushing the Iraqi government harder to allow a residual US force to remain when troops withdrew in 2011, a deal he says could have been negotiated with more effort "created a vacuum in terms of the ability of that country to better protect itself, and it's out of that vacuum that ISIS began to breed." It is no surprise to Panetta that the assessment in his new book "Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace" is drawing White House ire. "Look, I've been a guy who's always been honest," Panetta says. "I've been honest in politics, honest with the people that I deal with. I've been a straight talker. Some people like it; some people don't like it. But I wasn't going to write a book that kind of didn't express what I thought was the case."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday October 07 2014, @12:19AM
The good times for smart people wound down at the end of the Cold War. The best times were the 1960's push to reach the Moon. When an American won the World Chess Championship in 1972, it was front page news. Mao and Pol Pot showed what happens if you ignore or turn against your smartest people. We also had the then recent example of our own of what happens when stupidity is allowed free reign, in the House Un-American Activities Committee. Now, the people in charge today suffer from too many moments of anti-intellectualism.
I thought I could focus on purely technical matters and ignore and avoid politics, especially of the office variety. If a project goes well, you can get away with that attitude. It doesn't work when a project isn't going well. You will find yourself the easiest target to make into the scapegoat, because of your greater knowledge and intelligence which means you of all people should have known better, and because of your silence because you tried to stay out of politics. Because of your intelligence, you're also seen as the most dangerous competitor if it comes to downsizing. It doesn't matter how ridiculous or counterproductive it is to blame you because you had no authority and no choice but to follow orders, or that making you the fall guy will buy the rest of them only a little more time, they will do it. One way out is to find another job. Not an option when the problem is world wide. So although this is not a story about technical matters, I think we should pay some attention to it.
Leon Panetta's assertions are dangerous. He thinks as military careerists are wont to do. I bet the military industrial complex loves his book. The problem with his thinking is that military solutions are seldom appropriate. Climate Change is a much bigger threat than ISIS, and could be the reason Syria destabilized and ISIS emerged. They've been suffering from a terrible drought since 2008. The Assad government was stupid, first selling off surplus food as the drought was starting, then blaming the problems on the farmers, accusing them of treason for failing to grow enough food, as if they had purposely idled their farms.
The way our bought and sold media reports this, you would think that Muslims are fanatics seeking any excuse to attack the US because we're mostly Christian, or rich and powerful and they're just jealous, and that ISIS sprang straight out of their hatred for us. The Arab Spring didn't happen because the Arabs suddenly tired of their authoritarian regimes and just one day decided to revolt, no. Lack of food is what set them off. And that happened because of drought, which brings us back to Climate Change. As for their attitudes towards us, if you don't dig deeper, it seems totally unreasonable, like they're just making up reasons to hate us, as if merely being Christian isn't enough of a reason. Knowledge of recent history puts their attitudes in a much more rational light. We're there, for the oil. We have not been scrupulous in making sure we have oil, too readily casting aside our much vaunted principles. For oil, the West overthrew Iran's democratically elected government and inflicted the Shah on them. Because of oil, we're friendly to Saudi Arabia, despite all kinds of problems, like that most of the 9/11 attackers were their citizens.
We need some careful thinking brought to bear on our actual problems. The War of Choice was the product of, at best, very sloppy thinking. Our leaders were idiots. Just cunning enough to win office and stampede us into war. They got the problems and the solutions wrong, killed a lot of people, wasted trillions of dollars, and accomplished basically nothing good. Made us look very bad. Today, Iraq is not a stable democracy, nor is it likely to become one any time soon.
If we don't step up efforts to deal with the climate, we'll be fighting more wars. But we can't address the climate as long as scientific illiterates and fools control our wealth and power, and would rather bury their heads in the sand than face that problem. One of the most disappointing things about the Presidential debates last election between Obama and Romney was that the subject of Climate Change was never even brought up! What to do? Improve our education? Reduce inequality, on the idea that because most people are too busy scrapping and scrounging a living to look beyond the immediate, a bit more wealth would result in leisure to think more long term, more opportunity to educate ourselves?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @02:11AM
I had a helluva time on that last election. I had absolutely no respect for either. I saw one as someone completely ignorant of resource management, trying his best ( and succeeding ) in winning the election by buying welfare votes... I saw the other as an extremely greedy 1%-er all out for using power of government to wrangle the last drop of blood out of the workingman - and by workingman, I do not mean "work" to be crafty ways of indebting people into servitude by penmanship, knowing who to shake hands with that can grant one the power to issue money he doesn't have - then collecting usury on it.
As far as I was concerned, it was an election of having the three stooges or having a hungry and clever lion on the loose to be our leader. I chose the former as it least it would not be quite as destructive, but it was definitely a lose-lose situation for me...
I felt like I was given the choice between being gutpunched or losing a finger.
But as long as the whole world whores after the US Dollar, which we print at will, we can afford the military might to enforce the pens of the bankers. If there is one thing that last financial shock demonstrated... the bankers own us. They can print money, collecting usury on that which never was, and we can't... by order of our own government.
Its the same damned thing that enslaved the French 200 years ago.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Tuesday October 07 2014, @02:40AM
There is no need to rig the actual polls, you see. It's so much cleaner to rig it earlier.
Just make sure that the two idiots on the ballot are BOTH your men, then you can relax and it doesnt matter which one the cattle vote into office. That's how it's actually done. That's how the Chinese Communist Party intends to control the elections in Hong Kong, and the natives there are rioting in the streets over it, but here in the land of the free and the home of the brave we are too busy watching football to notice, let alone care.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by Kell on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:23AM
So why not vote for someone else? "You're throwing your vote away on a third party candidate" is only true if people believe it. If enough people stop accepting and start exerting their voting power, they might see change.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 07 2014, @05:47AM
> I felt like I was given the choice between being gutpunched or losing a finger.
So you wasted your vote by choosing the status quo.
Vote your conscience even if they have no chance of winning because what matters is the long game. The more votes the big 2 lose to 3rd parties the more motivation they have to incorporate policies of those 3rd parties into their platforms the next time.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday October 07 2014, @03:38AM
> Leon Panetta's assertions are dangerous.
He said an honest man, himself, ran a secret service. That is, in the best case scenario, a secret service ran him.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 07 2014, @02:16PM
This is an excellent point and cuts to the heart of the matter for those of us who love technology. We all long, dream of being able to "just work the problem," because it's what we're good at and we hate the ambiguity and touchy-feely crap that comes with politics, writ large or small. Some people have begun to fantasize about the Singularity, because it's that same moment of liberation that drove the Marxists and democrats and Enlightenment thinkers.
But the rub is stupid people. Stupid people don't understand math or science or creativity. They understand very little. What they are good at is getting other stupid people to think and do as they do. Thus politicians are born, and smart people, overwhelmingly outnumbered by stupid people, are subjugated. The tragic irony is that smart people hold all the operative cards. Hell, if all the world's IT people got together and decided to switch off the microphones to the stupid politicians inciting the stupid people, that would well be the end of it. But they don't.
So until and unless they do work together, it will be impossible for us geeks to *not* have to deal with politics. As such, we live in a world run by stupid people doing stupid politics and it will always, always color every technical subject. Like it or not, it is.
Washington DC delenda est.