Thankfully, the endorsement of the defeated and disreputable Party of Hoover is unlikely to have the effect that a President or even a Democrat would.

Let’s hope that our party leaders have the sense to keep their mouths shut or to at most stick to vague hopes that Iran will resolve the situation in keeping with its laws and democratic institutions. Lately it seems like the Democrats can’t hear a Republican talking point without jumping up and down and crying “Me too!”

Question 2: In radicalizing your sympathizers, who is your best ally?

No points awarded for “the media” or “sympathetic foreign governments”. In radicalizing your apathetic sympathizers, you have no better ally than the violent extremists on the other side . Only they can convince your people that compromise is impossible. Only they can raise your countrymen’s level of fear and despair to the point that large numbers are willing to take up arms and follow your lead. A few blown up apartment buildings and dead schoolchildren will get you more recruits than the best revolutionary tracts ever written.

Perversely, this means that you are the best ally of the extremists on the other side. That doesn’t mean you love or even talk to each other — they are, after all, vile and despicable demons. But at this stage in the process your interests align. Both of you want to invert the bell curve, to flatten out that big hump in the middle and drive people to the edges. That’s why extremists come in pairs: Caesar and Pompey, the Nazis and the Communists, Sharon and Arafat, Bush and Bin Laden. Each side needs a demonic opposite in order to galvanize its supporters.

Naive observers frequently decry the apparent counter-productivity of extremist attacks. Don’t the leaders of Hamas understand that every suicide bombing makes the Israelis that much more determined not to give the Palestinians a state? Don’t they realize that the Israeli government will strike back even harder, and inflict even more suffering on the Palestinian people? Of course they do; they’re not idiots. The Israeli response is exactly what they’re counting on. More airstrikes, more repression, more poverty — fewer opportunities for normal life to get in the way of the Great Struggle.

The cycle of violence may be vicious, but it is not pointless. Each round of strike-and-counterstrike makes the political center less tenable. The surviving radical leaders on each side energize their respective bases and cement their respective holds on power. The first round of the playoffs is always the two extremes against the center. Only after the center is vanquished will you meet your radical counterparts in the championship round.

[…]

We need to realize that we play to the same audience as Bin Laden: those Muslims trying to choose between the twin dreams of the Caliphate and of finding their own place in the world economy. Anything that persuades them that the world is open to them works in our favor. Anything that closes the door on them works for Bin Laden.

Most of all, we Americans need to keep a leash on our own radicals. They are not working in our interests any more than Bin Laden is working in the interests of ordinary Muslims. The extremists on both sides serve each other, not the people they claim to represent. The cycle of attack-and-reprisal strengthens radicals on both both sides at the expense of those in the middle who just want to live their lives.

In the face of the next attack, be slow to embrace radical, violent, or angry solutions. The center must hold.

i think our six years in iraq and afghanistan on the ground has pretty well dispelled the notion we’re a nation too cowardly to fight ..

and it’s not like the entire world didn’t know about our dirty dealings concerning mossadeq ..and the change in tenor has sparked some ongoing changes ..positive ones ..

all the old foreign policy heads ..kissinger .. brezenski .. even armitage ..lugar .. agree on that .. you’re just chopped liver in comparison ..

and any health care package we get will be brought forth and voted on by our representatives in congress assembled .. and enacted into law under our system of governance .. not imposed on us by teh POTUS [barak obama] .. but imo .. you can relax on health care .. the health care insurers have already bought the US gov’t .. and we won’t see any meaningful health care reform anyway ..

got any more demons we can help excise ??

Luckily it is appearing Obama’s attempt at ramming his version of health care down our throats is slowly loosing traction. Guess the 270 million people with health care is starting to realize what government run health care will do for them.