Picking up the pace in Iraq
Steven den Beste:
"...there's another reason why it is that the rate of change has been accelerating, and that's because many things start slow and then pick up speed. That happened with things like the power grid, but where that is most critical and most important is in the attitude and behavior of the people of Iraq themselves.
"For 25 years, the people of Iraq lived under the most brutal and harsh of oppression. Anyone who drew any attention and suspicion at all would vanish in the night, or be taken away publicly in daylight. Some people were taken pretty much at random, tortured, and released just so everyone else would remain in fear of the government. Some people were forced to watch their own children be tortured; some such children were maimed or killed. In a situation like that, everyone learns to be extremely scrupulous about saying and doing exactly what they think those in power want them to. When any hint of dissent leads to a horrible death, you don't tend to get many dissenters. And if you hold such an opinion, you lock it deep inside yourself and try to suppress it.
"So they're not used to thinking for themselves, and making decisions for themselves. They're not used to being free."
Oppression and socialism combined to kill initiative in Iraq. The Kurds, who escaped it over 10 years ago, were some of the first to breakout after the fall of Saddam.
"...We humans are designed to think and make decisions, but we have to be taught, and usually we have to be forced, to blindly follow orders. Our fundamental independence can be suppressed but never eliminated. It's still in there, waiting, in everyone. And now that oppression has lifted, it's starting to bloom in Iraq. As time goes on, it become more wide spread, in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. And it will accelerate.
"And that means we're beginning to win the war. This was the real reason for conquering Iraq. This is our best strategic weapon against the extremists who attacked us. Their power is in their ideas, their beliefs, and basic to them is a dedication to uniformity and central control, of submission of the masses to the will of the few. We counter that with our idea about individual liberty, and our idea is better. I believe that it's better ethically and esthetically. Societies based on our idea are more productive in nearly every way. And our idea is more competitive memetically. Our idea is more seductive, more attractive. Against it they have little defense.
"Diversity and freedom are anathema to them, and it is our dedication to those things which have made us more powerful than they are. If our idea continues to spread, their ideas will be marginalized and will wither away. And then the war will be over.
"We will eliminate our enemies not by killing them in hordes, but by infecting them with ideas which will convert most of them to friends. That process has now begun."
Steven den Beste:
"...there's another reason why it is that the rate of change has been accelerating, and that's because many things start slow and then pick up speed. That happened with things like the power grid, but where that is most critical and most important is in the attitude and behavior of the people of Iraq themselves.
"For 25 years, the people of Iraq lived under the most brutal and harsh of oppression. Anyone who drew any attention and suspicion at all would vanish in the night, or be taken away publicly in daylight. Some people were taken pretty much at random, tortured, and released just so everyone else would remain in fear of the government. Some people were forced to watch their own children be tortured; some such children were maimed or killed. In a situation like that, everyone learns to be extremely scrupulous about saying and doing exactly what they think those in power want them to. When any hint of dissent leads to a horrible death, you don't tend to get many dissenters. And if you hold such an opinion, you lock it deep inside yourself and try to suppress it.
"So they're not used to thinking for themselves, and making decisions for themselves. They're not used to being free."
Oppression and socialism combined to kill initiative in Iraq. The Kurds, who escaped it over 10 years ago, were some of the first to breakout after the fall of Saddam.
"...We humans are designed to think and make decisions, but we have to be taught, and usually we have to be forced, to blindly follow orders. Our fundamental independence can be suppressed but never eliminated. It's still in there, waiting, in everyone. And now that oppression has lifted, it's starting to bloom in Iraq. As time goes on, it become more wide spread, in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. And it will accelerate.
"And that means we're beginning to win the war. This was the real reason for conquering Iraq. This is our best strategic weapon against the extremists who attacked us. Their power is in their ideas, their beliefs, and basic to them is a dedication to uniformity and central control, of submission of the masses to the will of the few. We counter that with our idea about individual liberty, and our idea is better. I believe that it's better ethically and esthetically. Societies based on our idea are more productive in nearly every way. And our idea is more competitive memetically. Our idea is more seductive, more attractive. Against it they have little defense.
"Diversity and freedom are anathema to them, and it is our dedication to those things which have made us more powerful than they are. If our idea continues to spread, their ideas will be marginalized and will wither away. And then the war will be over.
"We will eliminate our enemies not by killing them in hordes, but by infecting them with ideas which will convert most of them to friends. That process has now begun."
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