Bouncing Some Ideas Around
Some Fuzzy Logic By Will Dugan
October 22, 2004
Some ideas bounce around my brain, ricocheting off the walls of my mind intermittently, but persistently.
I don't think of them all the time, but I keep going back to rehash the concepts again and again; hoping
to give some sort of expression to a vague notion that is crying to be let out. But I hesitate to let them
out; they are not fully developed and might not be able to survive the cruel world of exposure.
Well, I have an idea that I am going to set free. I am going to attempt to bring definition to a vague
concept. I am sure that I will need to work on this many times to try to refine and possibly give purpose
to this view.
OK, here goes. Democratic capitalism and the freedom that it demands in order to work properly could be an
effective tool to combat our enemies and bring about a more stable world.
Is it possible that we could do more to win the hearts and minds of our enemies by deploying General
Motors and Colonel Sanders than the 101st Airborne Rangers? You see, I think that our "War on Terror (and
terrorists)" shows a fundamental misunderstanding as to what is really going on in this battle. It is a
war of ideologies. Our enemy sees things, on a very primal level, differently than we do.
Our national psyche insists on using OUR definitions to help us formulate a strategy in the war we are
engaged in. By definition, our enemy uses tactics of terror, and are therefore terrorists. There may be no
logical argument to counter this viewpoint. But this viewpoint overlooks some obvious facts. The world
situation today is not the same as it was, say for World War II - the generals sat while the lines on the
map moved battalions of soldiers and regiments of tanks and armadas of warships around in a chess-like
game of strategy. That way of waging war is not completely gone, but THIS war is not like that.
While we have rightly recognized that the boundaries of countries do not fully contain and define who our
enemy is, we still fight the war as if they do. In some ways (and in some battles), we probably still have
to pull out the battle maps and work on the logistics of war as it has been waged for centuries. But we
must not fail to understand that, in a war of ideologies, where global boundaries are somewhat irrelevant,
some different tactics will be required to win.
Ideology ... what does that mean? Political orientation? Political theory? Way of life? Yes, all of those
and more. Our way of thinking and our way of life is worthwhile. Our society and our culture is certainly
not perfect (we have yet to create "heaven on earth"), but it is good. It recognizes some basic human
rights that are ideal (in theory if not always in practice). It is my opinion that part of our strategy in
this global conflict needs to incorporate every means possible to spread our way of life to the world.
With an oversimplified tongue-in-cheek sort of overview - if we can get our enemies to build factories that
produce goods, they will also become workers and consumers of those goods - they will be occupied by their
9-5 jobs, and their plans for vacations, and their desires to improve their lot in life by earning more and
getting more - they will be less inclined to hijack airplanes or plant car-bombs or become suicide warriors.
You see, I believe that Democratic Capitalism and the freedom that it demands in order to work are desirable
and would be welcomed by many of our enemies - if we could find a way to bring it to them.
Please understand that this idea is NOT fully developed, that it will continue to bounce around my brain.
I will write more about it later.
Copyright © 2009 By Will Dugan
