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The forgotten WarAfghanistan. Iraq has been hogging all the limelight with an election every six weeks, with spectacular suicide bombings in Baghdad and with murder and arson the norm. But further to the East, the US-led occupation of Afghanistan is proving to be a greater disaster than even Iraq. The US-led coalition has lost more soldiers in proportion of the total deployment in Afghanistan than in Iraq. And, the Teleban is back - rearmed and fully reorganised. Michael Scheuer predicted all this way back in 2004. And he was dismissed casually as a disgruntled intelligence officer trying to settle scores. There appear to be no rewards in the modern world for being right, it would seem. If you are Paul Wolfowitz, you can predict Iraqis with flowers greeting the “liberators”, get it spectacularly wrong and then be rewarded with the presidency of the World Bank. If you are Donald Rumsfeld, you make serious tactical mistakes which turn the occupation of Iraq into a bigger disaster than it might have been (even Neo-conservative ideologues like William Kristol bitterly criticised him), you remain the Secretary of Defence. And if you are Dick Cheney, you can make outrageously false claims about Saddam’s “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, his “harbouring” of Al Qaeda, keep hinting at Saddam’s “involvement” in 9-11 and remain Vice President. And if you are George Bush….... So the lesson here is: being right (by speaking the truth) and being successful are two entirely different things. It all depends on what you value more. Posted by Phil Peterson on Thursday, December 29, 2005 at 07:53 PM in War on Terror Comments:2
Posted by Phil on December 29, 2005, 09:46 PM | # James, Did you read that Times article on Afghanistan? Everything Scheuer predicted about Afghanistan more than a year and a half ago now appears to be materialising. Absolutely amazing. As for why people who get it wrong dominate the power structure, I think democratic politics is corrupt by its very nature and the more remote a government becomes (more centralized), the less accountable it is to individual citizens. It then becomes more vulnerable to manipulation by powerful and well organised factions. In America (and in Britain too), the majority is basically disenfranchised. All the minorities have a say - Religious minorities, racial minorities, Homosexuals, organised business interests, organised labour etc. Next entry: North American Carrying Capacity and the Northern European Agricultural Tradition Previous entry: Making Britain history |
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Posted by James Bowery on December 29, 2005, 09:34 PM | #
So the lesson here is: being right (by speaking the truth) and being successful are two entirely different things.
If that were the case then there should be no correlation between the two.
There is a correlation however. Its just that the correlation is negative.
Now the question is why would the current power structure require people whose public pronouncements are exceptionally wrong about the most important decisions?