Hi Rog
On 23 Mar 2002 at 13:34, RISKYBIZ9@aol.com wrote:
> You don't like the way I state that through history we made mistakes and
> learned from them. What exactly do you want instead or in addition? I know
> you aren't suggesting that we DON'T consider them mistakes or that we DON'T
> learn. Progress requires facing what worked and what failed and attempting
> to make fewer mistakes in the future. If I appeared callous to any pain, I
> apologize. That is not my goal.
The reason why I picked up on the earlier point....
>From an earlier post by Rog:
> RISKY:
> England just withdrew from Hong Kong.
> El Salvador and Vietnam were regretable and educational mistakes in
> opposition to that peaceful bastion of non-imperialism the Soviet Union.
.... was because it seemed so out of character for you. Not, I hasten to add, from a
number of other commentaries I have seen on the 'lessons' of Vietnam by others,
although fortunately not from members of this forum.
Learning from mistakes is one thing but the impression that I get more often than not is
that the mistakes we are talking about here are about being caught (Ollie North) or
being beaten (Vietnam). And that these are the important lessons from which to learn -
i.e. don't get caught or beaten next time.
Perhaps I'm wrong here but I certainly see no evidence of my being mistaken in relation
to US military or foreign policy or of corporate values - and with regard to corporate
values possibly the most pernicious of which is the idea that not only must you be seen
to succeed but that the competition must be seen to fail. Microsoft is a prime example
here.
Applying a learning curve for the wrong thing is no better than not having learned at all.
Perhaps I am being unfair here but if so then show me where.
>
> By the way, redefining my argument around some scale where the size of the
> lesson is equivalent to the numbers of deaths is bogus.
OK I was deliberately overstating the case here but I did have a point. If there appears
to be callousness towards the idea that the death of millions is no more than a means to
enable a society to learn from a 'regrettable' mistake then the subsequent deaths of a
'mere' few thousand should not be taken with too much alarm given the same learning
criteria. It's only when these few thousand are part of your own group that the situation
seems to change. This has been my point all along though. Not that the WTC attack was
justified (it wasn't) but that ANY attacks of this nature are wrong because thousand of
innocent lives will be lost utterly needlessly. This also includes Afghanistan.
On a slightly lighter note I noticed that you avoided Gavin's comments on libertarian
socialism. Seems like I'm not the only one that has picked up on this. This is probably
one of the few political ideologies that is in accord with the MoQ.
See Ya
Horse
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