{"id":2958,"date":"2009-10-12T05:15:39","date_gmt":"2009-10-12T13:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=2958"},"modified":"2009-10-12T05:15:39","modified_gmt":"2009-10-12T13:15:39","slug":"magical-thinking-watch-foreign-policy-chapter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/magical-thinking-watch-foreign-policy-chapter\/","title":{"rendered":"Magical thinking watch: foreign policy chapter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Obama Administration is bruiting it about that the president is impatient with the slow pace of &#8220;nation-building&#8221; in Afghanistan, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/10\/12\/world\/asia\/12civil.html?_r=1&amp;hp\">reports<\/a> the New York Times.\u00a0 Nine months (Obama&#8217;s White House tenure)&#8211;or, hey, call it even eight years (since the bombing began)&#8211;has not been enough time to lessen corruption, establish a viable government and court system, or train the feckless police force.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cThe president is not satisfied on any of this,\u201d said a senior administration official.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So they really are that ignorant&#8211;i.e., as ignorant as the Bush nation-builders.\u00a0 The culture of a non-self-serving civil service, as much as we rightly deride bureaucratic bloat, is a triumph of civilization that takes centuries to evolve.\u00a0 Ditto the practice of due process of law.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course, nation-building in Afghanistan is no more unlikely a foreign policy accomplishment than ending poverty in Africa.\u00a0 Declare one undoable and a proper application of logic would bring the whole naive edifice down.\u00a0\u00a0 But maybe one step at a time is all one can hope for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Obama Administration is bruiting it about that the president is impatient with the slow pace of &#8220;nation-building&#8221; in Afghanistan, reports the New York Times.\u00a0 Nine months (Obama&#8217;s White House tenure)&#8211;or, hey, call it even eight years (since the bombing &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/magical-thinking-watch-foreign-policy-chapter\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[93,359],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2958"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2961,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2958\/revisions\/2961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}