Obama aide: Winnie the Pooh should shape foreign policy
This article has 5 separate angles worth discussing. Any one of them could prompt a separate thread. But I will get to that after posting the most obvious angle.
Quote:
Barack Obama aide: Why Winnie the Pooh should shape US foreign policy
By Tim Shipman in Washington
Last updated: 8:06 PM BST 16/06/2008
Winnie the Pooh, Luke Skywalker and British football hooligans could shape the foreign policy of Barack Obama if he becomes US President, according to a key adviser.
Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain, try something else.
Mr Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: “Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.”
He spelt out how American troops, spies and anti-terrorist officials could learn key lessons by understanding the desire of terrorists to emulate superheroes like Luke Skywalker, and the lust for violence of violent football fans.
Mr Obama’s candidacy was given an early boost by his opposition to the Iraq war and he has repeatedly said the US needs to rethink its approach to the Middle East.
Mr Danzig spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the children’s classic, which says: “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it.”
Mr Obama’s approach will be popular in Europe, where President George W. Bush has spent the week on a farewell tour, arriving in Britain yesterday for meetings with the Queen and Gordon Brown.
In a subtle break from Mr Bush’s belief that the war on terror can be won, Mr Danzig, who is a Pentagon adviser on bioterrorism, warned that while the West can defeat individual terrorist groups and plots, it can never entirely remove the threat posed by nuclear proliferation or the prospect of bioterrorism.
In a briefing which will inform Mr Obama’s understanding of terrorists, Mr Danzig said he learnt much from recent interviews with jailed Aum Shinrikyo terrorists who released sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo underground in 1995.
He said that even people who are relatively well off and successful can feel like failures and become alientated from their societies. He said one terrorist told him: “We have been raised on a theory of superheroes. We all want to be like Luke Skywalker.
"When we’re doing mundane things, we lose track of our ambition but when someone comes along, like Asahara, the head of the cult, and presents himself as a messiah and gives us a picture of progress that is ordained by heaven and that we are carrying out a saintly mission on earth that is for us extraordinarily evocative.”
Mr Danzig added: “The parallels with al Qaeda are obvious.”
He said that another lesson about terrorists can be learnt from studying violent football fans. “One of the best books I’ve read on terrorism in recent years was not about terrorism at all,” he said. “It’s Bill Buford’s book Among the Thugs, which is a description of soccer violence in Britain.
“Buford became absorbed by soccer violence. He describes the most appalling examples of soccer violence by fans against fans. But he describes with relentless honesty how he finds sickening things attractive. He says violence lets the adrenaline flow; it’s like sex, you live in the moment.”
Barack Obama aide: Why Winnie the Pooh should shape US foreign policy - Telegraph |
1. We are seeing the magical transformation of Obama from an Anti-War candidate to being the "smarter" Warrior/Presidential Candidate.
And it's taking place right before our eyes. But no one is making mention of it.
This coincides with the L.A. Times' OP-Ed article today which literally vindicates George Bush and admonishes his critics who said he was lying about the WMD's.
This is absolutely remarkable!
And we are seeing it happen without noticing it happen.
2. This message of Obama aide, Richard Danzig (who would become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House) represents a
CHANGEover by Obama. Danzig validates the current Administration's assessment of the threat from Islamist actors (individuals, groups and states) but he does this more subtly so that many who might take the time to listen to this entire podcast of his address will be able to ignore the implications because it isn't explicit.
But it is no different than the message of the Bush Administration. It's just more subtle. And that isn't a good thing unless you like being able to ignore facts. And we know that a huge % of Americans absolutely want to ignore the facts. And so, Danzig's style is very subtle yet he gets the message across if you are smart enough and are paying attention. But one thing that is unmistakable is that Democratic elitism and condescension in his attitude throughout the speech.
(The spelling thing he repeatedly refers to is so obviously a superiority tool aimed at putting down conservatives, who I think actually
may be more challenged by spelling and grammar than liberals. And Liberals would be eating that stuff up.)
There were/are many who chafed at the current Administration's style and always criticized GWB & Co. for using "scare tactics" when all it was doing was making clear what the scenarios were and what the options and possibilities were. What I could never understand fully until now was that some of those people really did not want to know the details. They just wanted to have things sugar coated and to be shielded from the cold hard facts of the threats against US.
These people should love Danzig's style, which probably would be similar to Obama's style, which would allow or encourage the faint of heart to just go along with the program rather than outlining an explicit message of, "THIS is happening. This MIGHT happen. And so we are doing THIS about it."
In effect Danzig and Obama would be seeming to say to these more '
sensitive' Americans, "don't worry your pretty little heads. We've got things under control." A style of leadership GWB tried to accommodate but never could. When he tried to do the same thing critics called him being too secretive and said he was hiding the truth from the American people.
:eyeroll
3. Another angle to explore is that Richard Danzig is likely to be in a advisory & decision making position in an Obama Administration and it is worth a moment to learn a little about him. This article gives us a slice of who he is. His bio tells us some. But listening to the podcast (linked above) will tell you a lot. He doesn't sound like a bad guy but you get impressions about him after hearing him speak.
Here is a short bio:
Quote:
Richard Danzig
Sam Nunn Prize Fellow, International Security Program
Associated Research Focus:
Defense Policy
International Security
Terrorism & Transnational Threats
Associated Programs:
International Security Program
Expertise:
Terrorism, bioterrorism, national security, international security
Richard Danzig is the Sam Nunn Prize Fellow in International Security at the CSIS. He is also a consultant to the Department of Defense on terrorism, with a focus on bioterrorism. Dr. Danzig is a director of Human Genome Sciences Corporation, National Semiconductor Corporation, and Saffron Hill Ventures, a British venture capital fund. He served as secretary of the Navy from 1998 to 2001 and undersecretary of the Navy from 1993 to 1997. From 1977 to 1981, Dr. Danzig served in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, first as a deputy assistant secretary and then as the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for manpower, reserve affairs, and logistics. In 1981, he was awarded the Defense Distinguished Public Service Award. He received that same honor-the highest Department of Defense civilian award-twice more, in 1997 and 2001 for his work with the Navy and Marine Corps. Between 1981 and 1993, Dr. Danzig was a partner in the law firm of Latham and Watkins. He received a B.A. degree from Reed College, a J.D. degree from Yale Law School, and a B.A. in philosophy and Ph.D. degree from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.
Richard Danzig, Sam Nunn Prize Fellow, International Security Program |
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