The title for this post is a quote from Avraham Shalom one of the former directors of Israel’s Shin Bet. He provided it during an interview in the documentary The Gatekeepers to explain Israel’s inability to ever actually be successful when dealing with the Palestinians. Ann Laurie’s recent post on Vice President Cheney’s recent interview and Wall Street Journal op-ed where he presents his belief that the negotiated agreement with Iran is a mistake, failure, and will (further) weaken the US and put it and its allies at greater risk seems to be a great example of this. What has always struck me is that Vice President Cheney, as well as a number of the thinkers he has either surrounded himself with, is enamored of, or seems to pay heed to, are all much, much better tacticians than they are strategists. What I mean by this is not that they do not understand the basics of strategy: ends are what one seeks to achieve in order to have a successful policy; ways are how one goes about reaching those objectives; and means are how you pay for it. Rather, Vice President Cheney, as well as his daughter Assistant Secretary of State (Liz) Cheney, and the many others who are attempting to block the P5+1 agreement on Iran’s nuclear program just do not seem to understand the concept of how the strategic level of operations is really ambiguous. There is little doubt that Vice President Cheney is a brilliant, tactical bureaucratic infighter and political tactician, but it seems pretty clear that he, and those he has served with, does not really understand the nuances that are the warp and weft of the strategic level.
If one peruses America’s national strategic documents, and I highly recommend that everyone give them a read – The National Security Strategy; The National Military Strategy; The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review; and The Quadrennial Defense Review – it becomes very clear very quickly that the international political, social, economic, and security systems are all shades of gray. The term we use for this is VUCA, which stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous – as in we are dealing with a VUCA environment. One of the most difficult things is to try to prepare personnel who are used to working and operating at the much less ambiguous tactical and operational levels to deal with the uncertainty and vagueness at the strategic levels of decision making and operation. Not every outstanding foreign service officer (either on the State or USAID tracks) or battalion commander will make an outstanding ambassador or general officer. Often the ability to make the transition is the ability to deal with ambiguity. And this is where Vice President Cheney, Assistant Secretary Cheney, and the numerous Congresspeople, Senators, think tank denizens, pundits, and others come back into the story. At the strategic level almost all problems are ill-structured, complex problems or what we used to call wicked problems. The reason for this is that the easy problems are much less ambiguous and are much more easily resolved at the lower levels. By the time a problem gets to the strategic level it is guaranteed to be hard to resolve. One of the realities of dealing with strategic level issues is not that one is going to solve a problem for all time, but rather that one is going to solve as much of the problem as possible to create both time and space to resolve other outstanding issues and the new problems that will arise from the current solution. And this last part is really important. A close friend of mine and former teammate always describes a successful strategy as creating the dog that caught the Buick scenario: once you’ve caught it, now what do you? It is pretty clear that Vice President Cheney does not seem to grasp the now what/what do we do now questions or recognize that every time that a strategy achieves policy success it changes the environment and creates new challenges, opportunities, and even threats.*
The purpose of the P5+1 Agreement with Iran is not to change Iran’s government or remake its society, rather it is intended to make it as impossible as one can make these things for Iran to achieve and move beyond nuclear weapons break out. One of the reasons, and perhaps the most important reason, that the need to pursue this agreement became so great was not that Iran was on the edge of breakout, but because our allies, partners, and peer competitors (Russia and China) refused to follow the US’s preferred strategy anymore: diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions. What really made this a wicked problem was not formulating the end state – that Iran needed to fully embrace a nuclear inspection regime and protocol, as well as limits on enrichment and production that would only allow for civilian energy use and scientific research and development. Instead it was working out a deal that got everyone on board and kept them on board. From a tactical perspective this is meaningless. The tactical objective is that Iran not be permitted nuclear weapons. The most tactically effective way to achieve the objective is to eliminate their ability to do so. Strategically it was a lot harder than that. Our allies and partners want to be able to tap into the long closed off Iranian markets. Vice President Cheney’s and others’ argument that the US, and especially President Obama, have failed to lead is simply incorrect. The President, for good or for ill, recognized that no one was willing to be lead anymore down the diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions path. By recognizing this reality the US was able to maintain a leadership position within the P5+1. And while it is true that the agreement is only the first step and has a definite expiration date, being able to move this ten to fifteen years down the road is itself a major accomplishment and not a sign of weakness or a bad deal or diplomatic failure. Sometimes the right strategy is to play for more time. Finally, and as is also the case with the recent US-Cuba agreements, opening Iran diplomatically and economically/financially provides the US, as well as its partners and allies a better chance of further encouraging change in Iranian government, domestic, foreign, and economic policies without having to resort to military force. It is very hard to stop the informational signal and it is certainly hard to stop market forces. A nation-state’s power comes in many forms – Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic (DIME) – the best strategists understand that each has their time and place. Perhaps one day Vice President Cheney will learn to appreciate more than just the military form of power.
* The irony abounds given the famous quote Karl Rove gave to Ron Suskind about the Bush 43 Administration changing reality every time they acted.
Paul in KY
I think you may not understand exactly what objectives Darth Cheney strategizes for.
Hint: It is not for Israeli security or peace in Middle East.
Mathguy
“Perhaps one day Vice President Cheney will learn to appreciate more than just the military form of power.”
Only when he’s burning in the 9th circle of Hell.
wvng
@Paul in KY: Excellent point. It is like accepting GOP policy positions as they publicly describe them (“cutting taxes on the rich will create millions of good paying jobs!”) versus what they are actually trying to do (“cutting taxes on the rich will make the rich richer and they are our true base!”)
mai naem mobile
Dicksheet wants to his war on again. You see, he and his cronies already spent the money they made off the Iraq and Afghanistan adventures.
Seriously, I wish you could cut out the Cheney stuff from this piece and send it off to Republican legislators presented as written by Republican wonk and they’d be agreeing with what you say. It’s all about Obama being a Dem and black.
Paul in KY
@wvng: You’re on to it. He’s all about increasing extreme right wing, plutocratic Republican policies, domestically.
Slagging the Iran deal is a way to hurt a Democratic President, try & put some negs on Hillary, maybe ginn up some more armaments purchases by Israel.
MattF
@Mathguy: Burning or freezing, depends on your metaphor for evil.
The question of strategy or tactics seems to me to miss the point– Cheney did as much harm as he could, and one gets the uncomfortable impression that it was motiveless. He did it because he could. It was merely his purpose in life.
benw
Maybe one reason Cheney, et al, seem like great tacticians and bad strategists is that they fundamentally don’t believe in complex problems. Since looking down the barrel of a gun is so simple! And the failure of war to achieve “mission accomplished” in complex situations (e.g. Vietnam, Iraq) is because of cowardly betrayal at home, not the failure of military power itself. I don’t believe that they are great tacticians or thinkers, just that they think they can smash their way to more votes, money, and VICTORY.
IIRC, Obama said a very similar thing to that quote in an interview a few years ago. Paraphrasing that by the time a problem gets to him, its already VUCA, because if it wasn’t, it was dealt with already.
Archon
Within the purviews of what is and was politically possible I genuinely can’t think of a way the Bush/Cheney administration could have damaged our nation anymore than they did.
I don’t think it was nefariously done but I ask myself, what would have been done differently if it was?
brantl
No, there is every doubt that he is good at anything other than disguising his motives to stomp on other countries as THE OTHER, his full belief that military power trumps everything else (including researching the achievability of your goals), and that the US is always right (as long as Republicans are in charge, bully-boys that they are, remember Hulk-stomping Grenada?) as long as it is swaggering around using military force as though it is simultaneously a symbol of their manly dick, and also a broom.
Bobby Thomson
@MattF: some men just like to watch
the world burntheir Halliburton stock price.NorthLeft12
I don’t believe that word is the best one you could have chosen to describe the assorted loons and frothing at the mouth neocons that Mr. Cheney relies on to back up his odious and warped verbal explosions.
These are people who are reflexive and respond from the gut. Very little brain power, besides the formation of semi-coherent sentences, is required.
Faction
I have to agree with the “missing the point” chorus. It’s 2015, long past the point where you should be giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt that they’re acting in good faith. And Cheney’s not a brilliant tactician. He uses the same rhetorical tactic that the entire Republican party relies on: say whatever is necessary to win the day, even if it’s different than what you said yesterday or will say tomorrow. Dishonesty, illogic, inconsistency and hypocrisy are the waters in which they swim, because they know they will never be called out on it.
mere mortal
This was quite good and I found it valuable.
A couple of edits, late in the piece:
“By the time a problem gets to the strategic level it is guaranteed to be hard to resolve.”
Don’t you mean something like “by the time a problem gets complex enough such that tactics and strategy are farther and farther apart”?
“Vice President Cheney does not seem to grasp the now what/what do we do now questions or recognize that every time that a strategy achieves policy success”
You have to mean “every time that a tactic achieves”, right?
Sorry for the suggested edits, but it was a dense piece and I didn’t want to misconstrue anything.
Oh, and shorter paragraphs. We goldfish on the internet need more breaks to catch our breath as we read the thing out loud to ourselves.
Roger Moore
@Paul in KY:
I think you’re underestimating the militarists’ antipathy toward the concept of a deal. A lot of them oppose the deal because it’s a deal. They want flat capitulation to our every demand or nothing.
kindness
Cheney isn’t ‘brilliant’ on any level. Sorry. That must be simple ass kissing there.
boatboy_srq
/pedant
This piece also explains why governing while suffering untreated ODS is impossible. If everything BHO says/does is bad, then flip-flops over policy, bills and government procedures are inevitable and only explained by pointing out that the Illegal Kenyan IslamoFascoSoshulist wanted the opposite action/position/bill at the moment the flip is flopped. ODS is tactical: there’s no strategy beyond complete and unyielding resistance.
@Archon: An “October Surprise” DHS Terror Condition Red and emergency postponement of the elections in the name of Public Safety. Shrub’s key failure was one of imagination: he honestly did not seem able to grasp that McCain wouldn’t be a shoo-in to replace him, and went along blithely confident that the electorate was tamed and that all would continue as before. Cheney would almost certainly have pulled that trick, but he wasn’t POTUS. Outside that, there really wasn’t much those two could have done to make things worse.
Paul in KY
@MattF: Oh, he has strategery all right.
Paul in KY
@Archon: Hell yeah it was done nefariously. Dubya was on his way to being a 1 termer before that fucktard Bin Laden gave him that gift. They went into Iraq to break it & in process transfer enormous amounts of money to Military Industrial Complex (some of which came back in contributions to Republican Party).
By his Strategy, it was all a great success.
lgerard
jail time !!!
God is good!
Archon
@boatboy_srq:
I see you point, but considering that elections weren’t postponed in 1864, when the country was in the middle of an enormous civil war and 1944 in which the country was a major participant in the largest war ever fought, I don’t think they would have been able to postpone elections due to a potential terrorist attack no matter how serious they framed it.
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: I’m speaking about Cheney only. His minions may have objectives that don’t quite dovetail with his.
catclub
@Archon:
1. Bush could have let Cheney bomb Iran.
2. Bush could have come out as anti-Islam on sep 12. He did not.
3. (More uncertain) Sabotage/malign neglect of the financial crisis. Refusing any bailouts or rescue policies.
MattF
@lgerard: Federal judges expect that their orders will be followed. Period. Rule of law, et cetera.
Paul in KY
@Archon: I’m sure that possibility was discussed at some level in their den of evilness, but was rejected as just being an overreach (even for them).
benw
@Paul in KY: They got to get their war on, make a pile of $, AND force the Democrats at the time into weak, long-term damaging positions. All they had to do was convince everyone that the 9/11 attacks were no one’s fault, except maybe Clinton’s, which took about 0.5 seconds. God, I’m still pissed at our media, politicians, and a big chunk of Americans ourselves for letting those assholes get what they want.
guachi
President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry showed tremendous leadership in crafting this agreement – the kind of leadership the Republicans seem incapable of.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’m not personally inclined to give a shit what shuffles lifelessly out of Dick Cheney’s cadaverous mind and mouth but I imagine it must have been quite cathartic for Cheney to recount his failures in Iraq and how they inform his view on the current situation with Iran.
Elizabelle
CNN has Rand Paul on. He thinks it’s outrageous to send someone to jail over a religious liberty issue.
He thinks, if taken to limits, states and localities will opt out of the marriage licensing business entirely.
There’s the view from Planet RandGrift. Liberty. To deny others their pursuit of happiness, mandated by the US Supreme Court.
Archon
@Paul in KY:
I do wonder if he looked at his Dad’s Presidency and said to himself “winning a war quickly and decisively didn’t help him at all”, and decided to push an insurrection and eventually a long war.
How else to explain disbanded the Iraqi military with no pay in a country with 50 percent unemployment? It’s so mind-boggling I’m starting to lean towards it being done on purpose to start an insurrection.
Brachiator
@Mathguy:
Ninth Circle is ice cold. But just the right place for Cheney.
D58826
ot but AP is reporting that the clerk who is refusing to issue marriage licences has been ordered to jail by the judge.
Patricia Kayden
@lgerard: Yes, Ms. Davis will spend some time in jail for her defiance. Hope she’s there for a long time. You don’t get to defy the Supreme Court because of your religious beliefs.
WaterGirl
@lgerard: where did you see that?
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle: Rand is okay with discrimination so no surprise there. Remember what he told Rachel Maddow about the Civil Rights Act? He’s not a minority so screw them.
Elizabelle
@Patricia Kayden: Happily, I think they will allow her bible to accompany her.
Do you think the rest of the clerk’s office will be high fiving once the cameras leave?
OT: Rand Paul telling CNN he thinks Donald Trump is “a fake conservative.” What was his first clue?
Patricia Kayden
@WaterGirl: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-kentucky-clerk-gay-marriage-20150903-story.html
WaterGirl
@Patricia Kayden: thanks!
Elizabelle
@Patricia Kayden: Yup.
Rand Paul has a direct manner of speaking and is kind of soft spoken.
I can see someone thinking he seems reasonable. If they have no command of English. Once you listen, the nuttiness factor is HIGH.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: I can’t even… The man is an idiot.
Paul in KY
@benw: Me too. I will be pissed about that if I live to 106.
Waysel
@Paul in KY: Yup.
scav
Speaking of strategy and tactics, maybe setting up contribution funds and announcing amounts raised before the choice between fine or time is not the canniest of orders.
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle: I read on JOEMYGOD that Ms. Davis’ employees don’t agree with her stance, so I expect that they are relieved that she’ll be out of the office for awhile. However, I’m not surprised that they are not publicly speaking up against her given the prospect of retaliation and death threats from her supporters.
As to any claim that Trump is a fake conservative, I cannot say that that is true. He sounds like a true conservative to me — sexist, xenophobic, racist and stupid. Republican voters seem to like him, after all. You reap what you sow and today’s Republican Party deserves many Trumps.
Botsplainer
@Elizabelle:
Her son is one of the deputy clerks. In small counties, they’re notorious hives of nepotism and small time villainy. I can’t imagine this is going down well,
Paul in KY
@Archon: That was to help out the Neocons/Likud Israel (remove Iraq as a functioning Arab state that could mess with future Israeli expansion plans) and of course to keep US on ‘war’ footing thru 2004 elections & to continue the use of expensive military stuff, that then has to have replacements bought, etc. etc.
Hoodie
@Faction: It’s not a question of giving them the benefit of the doubt. Cheney’s goal is to maintain the existing power structure, which he may believe is in the best interests of the country, and conveniently makes his family and his cronies rich and influential. When that kind of coin is involved, it’s really easy to fall into ends justify the means. I doubt Cheney gives a rat’s ass about Iran getting a nuke per se and probably doesn’t think that Iran getting a nuke is really an existential threat to anyone, given the deterrence of US and Israel nukes. After hall, he and W didn’t seem all that concerned about North Korea getting nukes. He more wants to avoid a change in the alliance between the US and the Saudis (and other Gulf States), and softening relations between the US and Iran could do just that. Because of that, the idea that it is essential to prevent the Iranians from breaking out is just a proxy for Cheney’s internal logic that the current US/Saudi must be preserved at all cost.
On the other side of the coin, Obama may be similarly using the need to prevent an Iranian nuke as a stalking horse to change that balance because, well, it hasn’t really worked all that well and resulted in us wasting a lot of lives and resources in stupid regional conflicts. The problem is that the Saudis can’t police their own neighborhood, and have to rely on us to do it for them, on top of exporting religious fanaticism to maintain their internal control. Iran is structurally more stable, and there is some evidence that the Iranians would be more effective as a regional power. In addition, as you point out, Obama has the better tactical argument – this agreement will kick the can down the road at least a few years. Cheney’s makes no sense, tactically or strategically.
lgerard
@WaterGirl:
https://twitter.com/BGPolitics?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^author
lgerard
I would love to see the Bar Association weigh in on the propriety of attorneys advising a client to ignore a court order and put herself at risk just so they can advance a personal agenda
dmbeaster
I think this analysis is wrong as to both Cheney, as well as the reference to Israel and its motivations.
Both have a definite strategy, which is embracing the alleged benefits of non-stop military action to take what you want by force. Of course, that guarantees that peace can never occur, but they define peace as always having your foot on the neck of your enemy. And of course, this strategy is self-justifying since your enemies deeply resent being treated as your bitch, and so are constantly fighting back. That then justifies non-stop aggression under the guise that “they only understand force.”
Cheney wanted to start a war with Iran in 2007-2008, but had lost influence with GWB due to so much going wrong with Iraq under Cheney’s direction (I am sure Cheney still deeply resents GWB for not bailing out Scooter Libby, who perjured himself for Cheney. Cheney was clearly the mastermind of the outing of Valerie Plame, and Libby carried out his orders. I suspect GWB rebuffed Cheney’s entreaties to do something for Libby partly because he was unhappy with the embarrassment Cheney caused him for recommending wars that did not turn out so well). That did not stop Cheney from having two aircraft carriers steaming in the Gulf as provocation in 2007-2008, an action contrary to smart military principles (having carriers steaming in confined waters too close to shore, when they are equally effective in the Gulf of Oman) and served only the purpose of hoping to provoke Iranian military action.
Adam L Silverman
@kindness: If you think so, you aren’t paying attention. He’s a very, very good bureaucratic infighter and tactician. I believe he committed not only strategic malpractice, but should also be investigated for violation of the 3rd Geneva Convention – the one that deals with torture, as well as the US laws, including the ratified treaty that functions as US law. But failing to recognize that he understands the system we have and that he’s excellent at manipulating it because I know his policy proscriptions are wrong or I don’t like his politics is a mistake. If you do not understand who, exactly, you are dealing with, you aren’t going to be successful.
dmbeaster
@lgerard: That type of situation is usually impossible to untangle, because the client wants to violate the court order. It is rarely a situation in which the client does so primarily because of the attorney’s advice. The attorney’s first duty is to represent the client zealously, even if what the client wants is objectively crazy. There are few limits on when the attorney must decline to act even though it is what the client wants, such as knowingly participating in false testimony by the client. But that practically requires the client to tell you in advance that the proposed testimony is a lie. Even if the proposed testimony is incredulous, if the client claims it is true, the attorney is not supposed to second guess the client. Another example is malicious prosecution, but again, if the testimony is disputed (and it usually is), the attorney is not supposed to second-guess his own client as to the viability of his client’s story.
It is an unfortunate by-product of the adversary system that the attorney is largely immune from the consequences of crazy client behavior.
pamelabrown53
@Faction:
But isn’t saying ANYTHING to win the day an example of tactics over strategy? While I’m loathe to call anything Cheney as brilliant, I do see him as a ruthless tactician who ignores the forest for the trees. That’s why his hypocrisy is so off the charts. This is the guy who said that deficits weren’t important and almost single handedly trumpeted the unitary executive theory…especially in the realm of foreign policy.
boatboy_srq
@Archon: Actually Lincoln did declare martial law; SCOTUS overruled him on that. And there are other incidents recorded as well where martial law or a facsimile of it have been imposed:
In neither of those instances was Washington DC ever directly hit. The Confederacy did get very close but never reached bombardment range of the capital. Neither Germany nor Japan got within 3000 miles of the city. If there’s a comparison to be made, it’s to 1812, when the British took Washington and burned it; however since there was no Presidential election during that timeframe (the 1812 election was over before the British invaded). The GWoT, on the other hand, was everywhere and at any time, and the strike that triggered the GWoT mess hit the Pentagon (among other places) which scared the Beltway far more than the WTC attack did even though NYC fared worse. And with Roberts and Alito on the court (joining Scalia and Thomas) there’d be a solid SCOTUS support for the break with precedent.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
Then he’s crazy, stupid, and/or pandering. Across the whole country, a handful of dead-ender clerks have refused to issue marriage licenses, and this on an issue the Right Wing has demagogued for more than a decade. To get from there to the government getting out of the marriage business is ridiculous.
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
I disagree. The goal of jailing her for contempt is to force compliance, and I’d rather that she comply and avoid further punishment than defy and face further coercion.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: Yes. well. A handful of clerks against same sex marriage, yes.
But what happens when, inevitably, as we’ve been assured, people start showing up to marry their pets, farm animals (under duress or not), major appliances, vehicles, and whole nations we do not have treaties with? What then?
The junior senator from Kentucky is nothing if not far-sighted.
boatboy_srq
@Paul in KY: Mustn’t forget that Shrub’s single-term status was voided not only by OBL and 9/11 but by the ’04 hurricane season and li’l bro JEB!’s handling of FL’s multi-storm recovery as well. Katrina clobbered Shrub’s reputation and legacy like nothing before it in no small part due to the handling of Charlie/Frances/Ivan/Jeanne the year before (which was wrenched from FEMA’s grasp thus avoiding the fiasco that New Orleans was the next year).
boatboy_srq
@Roger Moore:
Yes, yes, and possibly but given the first two options unnecessary, respectively
Marmot
@benw:
Man oh man, me too.
Paul in KY
@pamelabrown53: The ‘deficits don’t matter’ was said to an underling in confidence. He’s never said that publically. Once again, the strategy here is to transfer huge sums of federal dough to right wing concerns & thus make money unavailable for ‘social’ spending.
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
He’s running for the Republican nomination. Everyone knows it’s just a bunch of RINO grifters there.
Paul in KY
@boatboy_srq: OBL voided it, IMO. Good handling of hurricane recovery by brother didn’t matter to hill of beans. Dubya was getting terrible reviews, until about 0830 EST on 11 Sep 2001.
Elie
@benw:
Very good points about the reality of Republican group think in general — all international problems require a military solution where you go out and pound something. Right on that you say the military is just not designed for certain kinds of interventions and if you use it on those, you just make things a lot worse and you, as Adam points out, necessarily bring on a new set of other problems stemming from that intervention — each time you change the reality.
There are a whole lot of people who do not get that — not just for strategic thinking in foreign policy, but in anything that doesn’t have an immediate, black and white solution. I work with these people every day and it drives me effing crazy…
wilfred
Isn’t that the strategy? The 2002 NSS states the following:
Since 2001, every action the US has taken in Mena, the ME and Iran has been to promote these values, beginning with outright destabilization and the pursuit of regime change in every country that doesn’t promote them. Even without such a clearly stated ideology can one not infer the strategy from the tactics?
benw
@Elie: Thanks.
Because of this, current Republicans simply can’t think strategically, in the way Adam defines it. By definition, nothing can be a complex problem. It’s a massive FP blind spot that will get us into another goddamn war if we elect a Republican in 2016.
I’m not sure ANY military can be *designed* for occupations like Vietnam or Iraq (although some people like Petraeus seem to think you can make a counterinsurgency army, I’m skeptical). My feeling is there are too many easily-acquired powerful guns and explosives in the world now, so if a populace doesn’t want to live with our boots on their neck, insurgency is an effective option, no matter how many bombs we drop.
EDIT: and sorry your coworkers are a bunch of dickheads.
Omnes Omnibus
@wilfred:
Not for Cheney and Bush.
No. You have noted a goal. A goal is not a strategy. And tactics are not strategy. One cannot infer a strategy when the choice of tactics is equally well explained by an absence of strategy. Constantly beating on something with a hammer is not a strategy.
RaflW
I doubt it, but one can hope I suppose. Meanwhile in the world we actually live in, it is seemingly much more possible the Iran deal will go through. And if that has any impact on Cheney at all, past history suggests he will just get even more dug in to his war-war-war/Obama-failure-Obama-failure… position.
I’m just flabbergasted that anyone outside of the Weekly Standard type orbit even cares anymore what Cheney says.
Frank Wilhoit
There is no strategy because they are not playing to win. They are playing for points on the style of play. This is how they maximize the fundraising — and that is the “strategic” goal, if it is not too simple to merit the word.
bluehill
Good post. Thank you.
Ruckus
@benw:
they fundamentally don’t believe in complex problems.
And so they have no concepts of complex answers. Anything, problems/situations/questions/answers has to be reduced to the shortest idea that will fit in their attention span or on one triple spaced page with 2 in margins.
Everything is reduced to bumper sticker ideas, so they can sell it.