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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: 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.