Conservation With Jennings

Answer: Basically none as events in Iraq and Afghanistan prove we’re still conducting large scale conventional wars against entire nations, responding to national security threats by deploying huge armies and focusing on the threat posed by national governments while ignoring that posed by non government actors unless they do something really outrageous like Sept. 11.
Question: Why is this?
Answer: It’s simple the whole power structure in Washington is set up around the idea of all powerful national governments and all powerful nation states, so is the thinking. Our military is designed to fight other nations, our state department to conduct relations with them, our Congress to react to actions of other countries, the press corps to cover the behavior of government. So it’s easy to see why these people don’t get it and don’t want to get it. Everything in Washington is centered around the nation and national government so a theory that states power is now in the hands of entities out of government will not be well received.
Question: How does this affect our war in Iraq?
Answer: Simple we’re squandering our resources on efforts to build an Iraqi government when there is no such thing. Instead of working with effective non government entities on the ground, our troops are fighting to protect a chimera called Iraq. Our politicians and generals come up with no constructive suggestions for Iraq only the failed policies of the past: negotiate with other Iran and Syria, send in more troops, pull out, call in the United Nations none of these things will work. But they’re all we hear because these solutions involve the nation state. Unfortunately our leaders can’t think beyond the nation state even though entities other than the Nation state are driving war and diplomacy these days. Our military is in a particularly bad situation because it’s traditional weapons and methods are ineffective and no new ones are being suggested.
Question: What is the reaction of the two parties Democrat and Republican and the left and the right to 4G Warfare?
Answer: The Left doesn’t get it at all, the right halfway gets it but refuses to acknowledge its consequences. Democrats, with the exception of Gary Hart who is long out of power, don’t even talk 4G, Republicans seem to understand it but don’t want to think about it.
Question: What is the cause of this refusal to understand a basic fact of our time?
Answer: Well first the media has basically ignored 4G and refused to talk about it. Two thirds of our politicians these days refuse to even discuss an issue or a concept unless they see it in The New York Times or hear it discussed on Rush Limbaugh. Since the mainstream media has effectively kept 4G out of the national consensus it can’t be discussed.
Question: Why does the media not want to discuss 4G? Even though the theory has obvious merits in real life?
Answer: My guess is that it contradicts the Neo Marxist Dogmas that pass for political thinking in modern America. 4G certainly contradicts Cultural Marxism which teaches that all cultures and peoples are slowly becoming one in a global utopia and war can be prevented by cultural sensitivity it also makes nonsense of Neo Conservative dogmas which teach that American military power and free trade will lead to a one world Utopia. The opinion leaders would rather ignore 4G rather than think about it because it requires them to think beyond their prejudices.
Question: Are there any other reasons why our political leaders ignore 4G?
Answer: It shows that their basic beliefs are flawed and obsolete. Virtually everyone on the left believes in all powerful government, the reality of shadowy non governmental entities being able to effectively wage war upon and sometimes defeat governments destroys their fantasy of unlimited government power. They can’t accept the fact that government is merely a limited human mechanism and not an all powerful force. Most politicos on the right are old fashioned patriots, they believe in the nation and in loyalty to it. They can’t accept the reality of a world where a large percentage of the world’s populations rejects the nation state and places their loyalties elsewhere. That’s a completely alien concept to them and it disturbs them because to them the nation is something holy to be worshipped and any rejection of it is treason.
Question: So mentally neither left or right is prepared for 4G or capable of effectively reacting to it?
Answer: In a word yes.
Question: What will it take for our leaders to come to grips with 4G?
Answer: Either a complete disaster in which a great many innocent Americans die, something far more destructive than Sept. 11, or the rise to power of a new generation of leaders who reject the old thinking. Hopefully, it will be the later and not the former.