Charlie Rose

vongleichent  05/04/2012 12:05 PM Report

I'm not surprised that al Qaeda is hiding in the poorest countries. In any other country they would not last for long.

REMant  05/03/2012 12:07 PM Report

I doubt very much that al Qaeda has ever borne any resemblance to an international Communist conspiracy. And I'd like to know of what utility Afghanistan was to those who flew into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Or what utility occupying Afghanistan (or Iraq) will have in preventing a repetition.

Karzai, who did graduate work there, signed a "strategic partnership" agreement with India last fall, and why should he not have? Obviously he is not beloved by the Taliban, who seem to be supported by Pakistanis. And I would not blame them for that. They aren't doing it to gratify American paranoia. Nor is China, or Iran.

None of this has anything to do with "national security" and a great deal to do with the national security establishment. In 2009 and 2010 Jones worked directly for the Pentagon, just the way Rand Corp did during Vietnam. Don't ever get the idea they are in any way independently-minded. The only Rand study I know of that approached that was Anthony Downs' Inside Bureaucracy, which it doesn't seem anyone there has read. I recall being incensed by this guy's attitude the last time he was on. He was two years old when the Vietnam War ended, and I know opportunism when I see it. The older I get the more I realize "the best and brightest" are invariably the worst.*

Frankly, I wondered, too, just whose "homeland" Rodriguez thought he was protecting, as well as, from what.

*That they are considered so I think speaks to the young's conceit that they are better than their elders by virtue of being born of them. Thus it follows that savages are noble and like adolescents, oppressed. Requiring saving if not by God, then men in God's name.