Work Smarter not Harder

When the Russian Revolution was overcoming the Soviet Union when it collapsed and created Yeltsin's democracy, the younger people bringing this about used fax machines and early cell phones and the early version of the Internet and emails to communicate to bring this about. Because the older Soviet leadership was not tech savvy then.

Often good things are created by people just one or two steps ahead of the old guard.

The U.S. is weary of terrorist bombinbs like the two 1993

1993 World Trade Center bombing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_World_Trade_Center_bombing‎

Wikipedia

The World Trade Center bombing occurred on February 26, 1993, when a truck ... Yousef arrived illegally in the United States on September 1, 1992, traveling ...

and then 2001:

September 11 attacks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks‎

Wikipedia

From top to bottom, and left to right: the World Trade Center burning; a section ..... site of the collapsed World Trade Center after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Howevever, when people look at the middle East now and Iraq and Afghanistan, what really has been accomplished?

Maybe a trillion or more dollars have been spent with not a lot to show for it by just the United States. The argument could also be made that the response to what happened in 2001 there and our reaction to it helped cause the Great Recession which seriously affected not only the U.S. but also to some degree the whole world.

If you have ever seen any people deal with a completely unbelievable and unexpected crisis, often the first reactions aren't very useful. But, over time, people learn to be more and more efficient at accomplishing what they actually want to happen.

Unfortunately, this is true for the terrorists as much as for Americans and Europe. So, in order to have a country still 50 to 100 years from now we must be very efficient indeed in what comes next.

I see the problem as basically "World View". And a person or groups world view is often formed in various different ways. In some ways we here in the U.S. form our world view from friends, the Internet, TV and movies. However, in many parts of the world people's world views are completely from family and friends and what happens to them. People in many countries never even go to school at all. So, trying to make them think like Americans or even Europeans is not going to be   productive.

So, many times you are dealing with people like they were in the 12th to 14th century. So, we appear to people like this like we are literally from another planet. Because they might not even watch TV or ever go to school where they live (both as boys and girls). Educating people like this is almost impossible. (maybe one or two or 20 or 100 or 1000 but not hundreds of thousands and millions of people.)

Even if you come here to the U.S. regional loyalty often trumps national loyalty. But, at least here we root for football teams and baseball teams rather than getting our rifles out and shooting anyone from another locality that comes near. However, this is often how things are done around the world if you are not here in the U.S.

So now, imagine you are sending in drones to kill these people's relatives. What are those people going to think? They are going to take up arms against the U.S. and that is the problem with what we are doing now. We are UFOS fighting people out of the 12th century in their minds who know only what they know because they haven't had the advantages people here have had here and in Europe for hundreds of years already.

And that is where we stand today. So, what is your strategy for keeping our country the U.S. intact the next 100 to 500 years without stuff getting blown up here by 12th century people from other countries coming here right where we all live? 


Later: Terrorist stuff out of the Middle East has been seriously affecting life here in the U.S. since about World War II. So, we have already dealt with at least 64 years of various levels of terrorism directed at Americans (inside and outside of the U.S) and directly at America. It is not that hard to imagine therefore, various kinds of terrorism out of the middle East still trying to reach Americans and America 25, 50 or even 100 years from now. So, an adaptable long term strategy lasting 25 to 100 years needs to be in place. Because that is what we are now facing in reality.  And, for me, this is a very sobering thought when I consider that we only had to deal with Hitler for about 15 years at most before he was assassinated. However, we had to deal with the Soviet Communists from 1917 until 1990 and be in a cold war with them from about 1945 until 1990.