(A) Among the subscribers of LBO-talk who posted on the subject of resistance fighters in Iraq, those who must have prompted Dwayne Monroe to conclude that "Others (most, it seems) have decided that all violent resisters are Ba'athist or Jihadist criminals; I believe Rumsfeld used the term 'dead enders'; many on the left apparently agree" are Seth Ackerman, Doug Henwood, John Lacny...
....
John Lacny replied:
Um, no. If Yoshie had read Dwayne's entire post, she would know that his point was to get past both of Yoshie's options, "(A) and (B)," and that he placed me in the middle category. I happen to agree with him. My position is that, gee whiz, things are complicated in Iraq, and that adults should recognize this.
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Yup, that's exactly right.
It's truly a wonder to watch threads travel wildly down a million paths and sub-paths, like the alternate possible realities postulated by m theory -
http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/qg_ss.html
But it's possible to toss out the false complexity (masking the real depth of the situation) and return to the heart of the thing - we don't know, fully, what's really happening. We need to learn more. How do you learn? You learn by talking to the people who are experiencing what's happening. You learn by listening to Iraqis, in Iraq, who've devoted serious, mature thought to their country's plight.
I'm confident that right now in Iraq there are people who know their country well, who have thought about its situation thoroughly and who have ideas of how to proceed. Some of these folks hold political views we're attracted to, others surely don't.
Regardless, we need to speak with these people to understand the shape of things, to speak and act intelligently and subtly. Communists, trade unionists, Sadr's people, Sistani's people, other groups I haven't heard of - we need conversations with all of them to sort out the terrain.
I'm sure that in principle almost no one disagrees. Beyond tacit agreement however, we must really understand our need for facts. If we understood this, I think our debates would show more humility.
I tried to use a different word but I think 'humility' best describes what I'm suggesting. In the face of such a byzantine problem, with so much at stake (much more than we seem to think), we should remember how little we really know and speak and act accordingly.
DRM
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