The "Heh" days are over; Bring on the "Duh" 's!

“I do believe that we are instinctively prone to look for technological solutions,” said one senior Pentagon official. “That’s the way we are wired, and that’s the American tradition.

“But bigger armor, more high-tech detectors and jammers will only take you so far. We never will solve the problem until we can get better intelligence and can break up these I.E.D. cells. And that will require changing the attitudes of the local population toward these explosions and those responsible for them. The Iraqis will have to help us root out the people involved.”

All together now: Duh!
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Now let's re-examine current occupation techniques**, with reliance on technology and might over intelligence and knowledge of human nature:
Q. #1) Building more enemies, or friends to the cause?

(Take your time -- I'll wait, though many aren't so patient... Use other countries' histories w/technology reliance over common sense/human knowledge to see if there's a pattern. Have such efforts succeeded in stopping -- or merely escalating -- desperate violence elsewhere? Are there common traits those fighting the great "War on Terrorism", and if so, which techniques have proved successful in quelling violence and which are essentially just "spinning their wheels" for a good number of years, at a very very high price tag that will of course affect efforts in the future? Think demographics, a survey of several countries, and again, we can't emphasize too much a common knowledge of humanity, psychology, history, and science. The latter not for technology benefits so much*, but for the sheer honesty needed to see what is working -- and what is not. Plenty o' good case studies out there -- Americans as a whole have never bought into "entitlement" attitudes, at least not for a successful long run. Something about that pendulum, our ideas of individual worth over collective lumping, and the sheer mix of ambition and survival techniques -- moxie, if you will -- amongst those who had the good fortune to plant themselves successfully on these shores... )
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* the best machine ever built was Man.
We cheapen ourselves by refusing to acknowledge it.

** as with the nod to science, feel free to discuss honestly effects such as the refugee problem, and don't shy away because of politeness from discussing such aspects as the rising sex trade in Iraq, because crimes against the person are emblematic here: it's passionate, affects families, and is more culture related, I suspect, than many Americans -- knowing only their own -- can ever hope to realize. Something that runs deep, and can't be quickly apologized away or compensated for. Things like what happens years down the road when you point a gun today at an innocent old man, and bully him in front of his family, young members present for the humiliation. If a family, clan or tribe can't secure their own family in their own home -- protecting, maintaining, even adapting traditions internally, not at the barrel of a gun... well you can save quoting all the technological successes in the world.

Unless you're a big fan of after-the-fact "Duh's".






p.s.
Worth clicking that link, just to ponder the headline. We're lucky so much of the WWII generation is not here to see it... Good Lord.