LEXBAIRD: How so? Something not 100% immune to attack is a failure? Say there is a computer program that includes subroutines to excise errors or foreign code input that is determined to be harmful to the program's function. The use of that subroutine is not a failure on the part of the program, but a built in function to help prevent failure. The lack of any mechanism to adequately cope with harmful forces is a true failure.

HUMINT: Think of a house, Lincoln did. He once said, "a house divided against itself cannot stand" paraphrasing the Bible, Matthew 12:25. Now think about what globalization is and what it's doing to the economics and demographics of nations. When considering all humanity a familial house, we are still divided and this house of ours cannot stand. My model establishes a definition of failure that does not fit the model you've chosen. When a building collapses, or analogously, society descends into chaos at the macro or the micro level, I'm calling those events structural failures. I have been saying all along that capital punishment and war are the result of failure. The social descent into chaos is the failure, and the effort made by civil society to correct it is a "clear reference" to a "specific failure". To both of our credit, both of our models are abstract analogies of how we perceive the capture, trial and execution of Saddam. Your interpretation of events (as I understand it) is that civil society took the appropriate corrective measures with a deposed Iraqi dictator. In that context, you are absolutely right, the execution was certainly not a lynching.

Given the geo-political complexities of Iraq and its neighborhood, it is blatantly clear that there are multiple contexts to the trial and execution. With each context, a series of unique perceptions and behaviors will emerge. In my opinion, your context is not likely to be the dominant one. But that's not what we're trying to determine here, are we? For the sake of this debate, your context is the only one that matters... Let's call it the "American Context". From our vantage point, there should be no pessimism at all. At the birth of 2007, new optimism was born precisely because the tree of Liberty had just been refreshed with the blood of a tyrant. But the story doesn't end there. In a way, that's were it starts. Now we have to transform your narrow context and my historical optimism into the will to win - to build a new city on a hill, without losing the one we live in today... But that's not what we're talking about either, are we?

posted by HUMINT  # 8:46 AM