Thinking Strategically

Want to know how to win the war on Islamic jihadist butchers? Jerry Pournelle points out some strategic steps we NEED to take in order to win this thing the smart way... Not the whole answer, but absent what he advocates, the task will be much higher in blood and treasure, as well as a lot less sure. The Iraqi War continues, but we don't do anything about the underlying causes of the war, which is our dependence on the Middle East for vital resources. If we were independent of Middle Eastern Oil, the Arab world would have to develop a real economy, learn to make things and sell them, and in general live with the rest of the world, instead of supporting people with too much time and too much money. They might actually learn to extract the oil themselves, which would require that they develop some actual capabilities other than bomb making and persuading young people to blow themselves up and kill policemen, or sit on the floor learning the Koran, or turning out Wahhabi preachers. Read the whole thing, would you? OK, another teaser from Dr. Pournelle's post: I said back in A Step Farther Out that there were three great examples of the futility of vast centralized bureaucracies: the Soviet system of agriculture, the American System of Education, and NASA. One of those has crumbled, and while the Ukraine has not returned to its pre-Stalin status as the breadbasket of Europe, production is higher than under Communism. There is no longer one big central Soviet system of agriculture. In America, though, the education establishment, and NASA/Aerospace Industry are even more centralized and accomplish even less than when I first wrote all that. Setting up the chess board at TMH's Bacon Bits