NeMon'ess's Journal: How to win 'hearts and minds'

San Francisco Chronicle - Letters to the Editor
August 16th, 2006

Editor -- With the latest cease-fire in Lebanon, there seems to be little confidence in many quarters that it will be permanent. Already the antagonists are probably planning on how they can do better the next time.

In these times of asymmetrical warfare, both Iraq and Lebanon have demonstrated that overwhelming military superiority no longer assures victory, so perhaps a different approach might be worth trying. One of the main reasons it seems that organizations such as Hezbollah and Hamas enjoy such popular support is the extensive social-welfare programs they administer. So why don't we play them at their own game?

How about taking a chunk of the billions of our tax dollars we send Israel each year for military hardware and spend it in Lebanon on setting up a string of American medical clinics, schools and other social-welfare programs?

Imagine yourself as a young impressionable male in southern Lebanon and who would win your "heart and mind''? The country that supplied medicines for your sick family or the one that supplied the bombs falling on your grandmother?

The Bush administration's foreign policy is almost all stick and no carrot. Would excessive punishment (or threat thereof) make you behave any better or would it just make you angrier and more determined?

Let's try thinning the terrorist ranks by separating the good average Muslim from the extremists by offering them something more worthwhile than more violence and destruction.

JOHN NEAL

San Anselmo

disappointment

[subgeek]

i was expecting something to do with these guys [nitzer-ebb.de] due to the title [nitzer-ebb.de].

actually...

[eglamkowski]

Hitler's entire rule was based on the idea that the masses WANT to be bullied and terrorised. It did get him into power in the 1930s, and kept him in power through the 1940s. Stalin used the same notion. Many others have too. There are sadly far too many people who respect ONLY that style of leadership.

And it's not just a modern thing either. Machiavelli concluded that it is better to be feared than loved. And the idea was not new with him, Kings had been practicing such political theory for centuries

Re:

[red5]

So, your argument is that American foreign policy should mimic Hitler and Stalin?

Re:

[eglamkowski]

My argument is that there are a lot of people who will give their hearts and minds to whoever is most brutal, jack-booted and terroristic towards them. That the US is NOT that way is likely to be the ultimate cause of our failure in the middle east.

Re:

[NeMon'ess]

The USA, or Israel for that matter, doesn't have to rule Lebanon or Palestine. It only needs access to the people to improve infrastructure and distribute aid. Given the military power of America and Israel, both are possible.

Even if Hitler and Stalin used those tactics, we have other countries today that show those tactics aren't required.

Machiavelli was writing to an Italian prince in a time when modern-day Italy was a whole bunch of city-states. It's a different thing to take over Lebanon or several m

A hundred years too late

[Marxist Hacker 42]

We're too late. This latest conflict proves it, but we would have had to start those programs a hundred years ago to have made a difference. At this point, there are no moderates left to woo, no young people to attract to a different way- only suicide bombers waiting for their chance to get into heaven.