|
|
humint
|
|
|
|
|
|
HUMINT: Be Less You?HUMINT: For a year or so, when I first got involved with the Middle East, I thought Americans need to be more Middle Eastern. When in Rome, do as the Romans, right? Why not, that's exactly what Middle Easterner's were suggesting! In other words, I thought to myself, if you look weak by talking, don't talk. If you endanger democratic dissidents by talking, don't talk. My sentiments particularly echoed U.S. policy toward Iran. I realized one day how wrong that approach is. I realized that Middle Eastern ideas of demanding the behavior and identity suppression of others is dysfunctional in the extreme. HUMINT: To illustrate my point, consider this analogy. HUMINT: Is it the fault of a beautiful woman that she is beautiful? Should she hide her beauty to modify the behavior of the men around her? No! The men around her are responsible for their own behavior in the presence of her beauty. The fact that she is beautiful should be clear to all that see her. The norm would be that everyone who sees her are obligated to control themselves, not the other way around. It is a travesty of nature that she should be obligated to hide her contours for the sake of those around her. Thus the responsibility for behavior would shift from the observer to the beautiful woman. HUMINT: If we buy into this thinking, individual liberty as well as individual responsibility are lost. HUMINT: These are the subtle obstacles to winning in the Middle East. In my opinion, to date, the American people have not confronted the stakes in this war on terror - or rather, war on Islamic radicalism AKA Islamism. I believe we, as a people, have not confronted Islamism as a culture because we are being told not to by our own tendencies to tolerate diversity. We have unintentionally disarmed ourselves through our own cultural kindness and faux cultural understanding. To deal with the threat, we need to either learn not to be so accepting of other cultures capable of destroying our own, or accept a third party to eliminate the intolerance of Islamism entirely. HUMINT: In other words our two options are: 1. Be less like us. 2. Find allies who respect us, who can help us, who we respect and who we can help. HUMINT: While these two options techniclly represent a choice, the first should be dismissed. The only real option to winning in the ME is to find trustworthy allies. Labels: beautiful, identity, iran, women |
