re: #156 EPR-radar

You hit the nail on the head, I think.

The Bush-Cheney crowd sold to the American public a view of the world that is strongly colored by WWII. It’s the idea that we, the US, can definitively run the world by totally conquering a few nation states.

We did it in ‘45, so we can do it today, too, right?

Well, first off, I think Americans like to take too much credit for winning WWII. The massive losses by the Soviet Union to Hitler are rarely acknowledged, as well as the giant cost that the Chinese paid. (We also conveniently forget that, even if we didn’t approve of Japan taking Manchuria and Korea, we were not about to go to war to save the Koreans and Chinese.)

This false model of America-as-savior is sold to Americans on the basis of our being the victor in WWII. It’s still done today. In some part the brouhaha over the Iran deal is because the model Obama is using for foreign policy departs from the old sales-pitch.

The belief that the US can fix the world if only we applied enough resources to gather enough military victories is folly.