Saturday, September 11, 2004

MSNBC - Frequently Unasked Questions

MSNBC - Frequently Unasked Questions



"Most professionals at the C.I.A., the State Department and the Pentagon who’ve devoted their lives to working in the Middle East have a fundamental rule for dealing with its very complicated problems: define them realistically and address them individually. Don’t try to tie everything together with a nice bow (or even a Gordian knot) and pretend they can be solved with a single idea like “liberty.” As much as possible, unravel the problems, or, in diplo-speak, disaggregate them.



If the Bush administration had followed that rule, we wouldn’t be up to our eyeballs in Iraq, we would be much safer, and the president would richly deserve a second term for his administration’s performance in the immediate aftermath of 9/11."