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'Now, when people pursue a policy that has not
achieved the goals it was supposed to, there are three
possible reasons. One, the people are stupid. I think we
can eliminate that. Nobody in the White House is stupid.
A second reason is that they are afraid to change the
policy because of domestic political pressure. A third
reason could be that their goals are not the ones they
publicly espouse.'
I'm not sure 'stupid' can be entirely eliminated, at least in the sense that the State department has pursued a certain line of analysis on this situation through many different Administrations for a period of more than fifty years, without a serious challenge from Congress. Thus, their 'line', their explaination, their justification, the very narrative of events with which they describe the situation to themselves has become narrow, ossified, out of sinc with the development of 'real world affairs'. This is dumb, this is stupid. This is what free speech, liberty, democracy, government for, by and of the people is supposed to prevent. But the mere structure of government, constitutional guarentees, electoral processes cannot, by themselves, prevent the very situation they were designed to prevent.The people have to be thoughtful enough to make full use of them. If they were the same thing as a Hamburgher, soda, bag a chips and military-style SUV-something to be consumed directly- we probably wouldn't have this problem because Americans are the world's experts at consumption. But they are not, generally speaking, experts in thoughtful reflection on human nature and the course of history. They are very stupid in that regard.
The second point: yes. It's a matter of considerable 'honor' that Presidents never have to admit they've made a mistake, or ever change their policy in mid-stream, as it were. It's almost a legacy from the pre-Revolutionary period of our history: the Royal Presidency, America as a well-behaved colony of a political elite whose 'aristocratic blood' is the same narrow, ossified, inbred policy mentioned above.
Third, I think the Administration issincerely 'pursuing peace', on their own terms, consistent with a notion of honor characteristic of poorly educated, aristocratic types with too much time and money on their hands. Actually, this is a substantial social and cultural tradition in America going back to before the civil war, the code of honor held by both backwoods crackers and southern gentlemen ( now transformed and updated to 'new' global realities'). It's production in American society is reflexive.That is, it happens in lieu of any effort to see that it doesn't. It happens because nothing else is done or even attempted to be done, because Americans, in such matters, are both lazy, stupid and self-regardingly hot-tempered.
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