It angers me that I have to do what you laid out but do it I will. Hopefully, my children will be able to live their lives, follow their industries… but every day it is beginning to look like this generation will not get to do that.

God willing we’ll pull it off.

Remember Obama’s campaign slogan?

“Those who would transform a nation or the world cannot do so by breeding and captaining discontent or by demonstrating the reasonableness and desirability of the intended changes or by coercing people into a new way of life. They must know how to kindle and fan an extravagant hope. It matters not whether it be hope of a heavenly kingdom, of heaven on earth, of plunder and untold riches, of fabulous achievement or world dominion. If the Communists win Europe and a large part of the world, it will not be because they know how to stir up discontent or how to infect people with hatred, but because they know how to preach hope.”

And then there’s this:

“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.”

Stopping Obama and his army of true believers will require courage, fortitude and intelligence.

But we still have the world of ideas and the general culture to work within. BC is a great gift as a cauldron for the incubation of and the refinement of ideas. But as W said a few posts ago, if it is not taken beyond BC and eventually turned from words to actions, it will be of little avail.

Whether elections go against us in the next few cycles (2010, 2012, even 2014) we must still work on ideas and culture. Have you noticed how many of the films scheduled for release over the next few months have to do with subjects like the soul, destiny, even God? So I will not despair if politics take a while to change. The culture is in peril but not yet lost completely.

Re: I totally don’t get the idea of sending in the Marines to be friendly. Don’t we have other services for that specialty?

I recently watched Stephen Pressfield’s 5-part series on Tribalism and Afghanistan. (h/t Gordon @17 – thanks!) While I wouldn’t necessarily agree with everything he says, it is a very useful viewpoint from an interesting writer.

One point he made was that the Pashtun tribal leaders we’re dealing with are warriors, and respect strength: the strong horse, if you will. By sending a Marine or Special Ops guy in to make the deals, we get better results because the tribal leaders respect them automatically, since they all know we could vaporize them if we chose to. Negotiations, therefore, proceed from a position of strength.

I don’t know enough about Pashtun leaders to have an opinion (the only Pashtun I know was one of my students, who was Oxford educated, soft-spoken, very smart, and very thoughtful – a delightful chap). But I though I’d pass this along; and I’d highly recommend the videos – they’re thoughtful and engaging.

Cheers,
L3

If that is tried failure is certain.

The Taliban are not native troops. This is not an insurgency. We are looking at a foreign sponsored invasion that merely wears the trappings of an insurgency.

The accents and clothes of the Taliban make them really stand out.

Their policies are so anti-business that the cash economy implodes the minute they show up.

The opium crop has exploded up from levels seen under the Taliban: they suppressed cultivation.

Now their policy has been reversed. Opium plainly supports their campaign.

Your post was wonderful. You give me hope! Your butterfly image brought tears to my eyes.

Thank you.

For the last thousand years, civilization has not taken root, all efforts have been like sand castles at low tide.

I totally don’t get the idea of sending in the Marines to be friendly. Don’t we have other services for that specialty?