So were all the morons who created every mess we've ever been in because we did trhe wrong thing, and every mess we ever ended up in because we did nothing. You don't need to be an "expert" in geopolitics to have an informed opinion, all you need are the relevant facts, and hopefully some common sence and the ability to game out possible scenarios based on the best information you have. Isn't freuidman a writer of some sort? That he has an informed opinion does not make him any more of an expert that anyone else, and it wouldn't make him neccesarily right if he were.
Yeah... some "expert"
Friedman does not pander to his readers’ prejudice. The Next 100 Years dismisses the stuff of scare scenarios—Islam taking over Europe, China confronting the United States, a failed Mexican state dumping its surplus millions over the American border—and offers an idiosyncratic vision that will leave most readers confused. Forget Russia and China, Friedman insists: they will collapse of their own weight during the next generation. The great powers of the future are Japan, Turkey, Mexico, and Poland. The great crisis of the mid-21st century, he believes, will be a war between the United States and a fearsome Turkish-Japanese alliance.It’s old-fashioned geopolitics doped with some eyebrow-raising professorial assumptions. China, India, and Russia will fail as states, while the Muslim states will remain stable enough to crush radical Islam. And Poland will arise as Europe’s major power.“Poland hasn’t been a great power since the sixteenth century,” he wrote. “But once it was—and, I think, will be again.”
Some of that is likely true, for instance it is likely that Muslim states will stamp out radical Islam, but it won't be because they remain "stable" (what a joke--guess he fucked that one up), it will be because the Bush doctrine is correct. Liberty and democracy are the greatest moderating influences over radicalism known to man. So in the end he's "right" but thats only because he's wrong in the beginning.
BTW, as far as I can tell he's also not "CIA" (though I haven't read a lot yet)l, he's a ******* dumbassed acedemic who fancies himself an expert and created a "shadow CIA" made up of ex opperative malcontents, who were likely the same leftist idiots who leak information when they want to illegally effect policy.
Actually, it does make him more of an expert than anyone else. If you spend your career in intelligence and geopolitical analysis, your opinion is worth more than others. How very "relativist" of you to say otherwise. Usually, that type of relativist thinking comes from the left, not the right. That doesn't mean he is always correct, far from it. But it makes him far more equipped to proffer an informed opinion than you. Or me.
He hasn't spent any carreer in intelligence as far as I can tell, he's was a ******* college professor with a hobby in geopolitics he turned into a business catering to...
Corporate types with geopolitical exposure who are too busy or too ill-informed to use Google.
Friedman worked in the CIA. This is
Stratfor. Stratfor provides far more of the "relevant facts" needed to offer an informed opinion. If you don't have the relevant facts, your opinion isn't informed. It is well worth the money.
Not according to anything I've read. In fact the article makes a point of saying he's better equipped to make an informed choice because he's not a "cubicle bound" analyst with a cookie cutter.
What I dismissed as leftists idiocy was your claim that rescuing the American students in Granada was a response to the Iranian foreign legions attack in Beiruit... and that is leftist idiocy. What I dismissed as leftists idiocy was your assertion that Reagan's speech where he challenged Mr Gorbachev to "tear down this wall" was anything but the seminal moment it was. He positioned Gorbachev on the wrong side of the wall and his speech led directly not only to its tearing down but of lots of other less metaphorical walls seperating us being torn down.
I never said anything about Grenada, Reagan or Gorbachev.
You're right, that was Huggy. My bad.
Your use of the term "neo-con"
as some sort of derisive statement identifies you as one of the moronic "furster" crowd who claim to be "constitutionalists" but have no ability to logically reason what it actually says. Nonintervention will not isolate us from attack. Furster talking points do not make up any kind of foriegn policy and not having a foreign policy is not a foreign policy. And, the inane mommy logic of thinking if we leave them alone they'll leave us a lone is as inane geopolitically as it is for little Billy when the badassed kids are taking his lunch money.
When Washington was President we had no interests outside our own borders... we do now. Our country has grown up and our foriegn policy needs to reflect that by being grown up.
No, I use the term "neoconservative" because neoconservatives are far more likely to use American power abroad than conservatives, which is what you are arguing.
Completely false, the willingness to put some action behind our policy is what will keep us out of bigger wars. Am I willing to chance using US air assets and advisors to help the anti Khadaffy forces and at least make an attempt to influence the direction the country takes post Khadaffy away from Islamist extremism? Yeah, because doing nothing will almost ensure it goes that way after Khadaffy's gone.
http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/25811/mcstrategy/
forgot the link!
