Pirates me hearties, pirates!

[Kevin]

K I'm finally getting back to this post.:)

Hi,
First, they must be the ones who want it. And with that we cannot help much other than by diplomacy and propaganda. Once they do want it (or at least a sizable group with some power does) then we can help. We can help mostly with education. Education in the democratic process, in improved farming, in low tech business start ups, in family planning, in basic health and hygiene. We can also help with financing (loans, not hand outs), with security, etc. But it has to be at their request.

OK I still believe that a sizable portion do want it. But your parenthetical comment becomes key "with some power". There isn't a sizable portion with power. The currently largest group is also not really native. The Islamic Courts Union seems to be the most in control, but they are forcing sharia based laws on populations that don't want it, but can't do much about it. It's my understanding that the Ethopians (with some UN and US help) went in to topple this regime at the request of the people of Somalia. That to me seems to be a group that does want help. But they can't get anything sustained or don't have enough local power to bother with. I still would like to see a good way to address that.

In historical times, founding a nation usually means replacing a nation's government with another government or form of government. The only relatively non-violent example I know of is the Glorius Revolution. Most often, the process is much bloodier.

Good read. Stuff I didn't know and it appears some things that happened there had some influence on ideals that the the US founding fathers did. Interesting way to have things happen.

The problem is that the process is slow. And by that, I mean generations slow. The bulk of the world doesn't seem to be willing to let the process play itself out. Perhaps they are right, but to date their attempts to fix things have lead to worse rather than better.

That seems to be what I've noticed. But the exercise of seeing if we can learn something from all this history to help things happen in a better way doesn't seem wholly pointless to me. Individual humans aren't rapid adopters of new ideas. Most people, after they decide on something or form some belief system stick with it. That's part of why racism has taken so long to get rid of. The people that had mental pathways that said "people that don't have the same skin color as me are inferior" didn't stop believing that until they were dead.

There are medical reasons for this. Creating new neural pathways becomes harder as you get older. The mental processing does get "stuck in a rut" in a somewhat literal fashion and you have to actively work harder to not think that way. This is why I agree education and exposure is critical and most critical at the youngest ages.

This is why I think public schooling does need help and support and is valuable. Parents should be and need to be heavily involved, but even the best of us doesn't know everything. Higher exposure rate will help create more neural pathways, even if they aren't always used and re-inforced. But the research I've seen is that creation is harder than reinforcing, so if you get the connections made earlier and they can be built later.

Even if a kid is told that "people of color are inferior to you" by their parents day in and day out. If they are exposed to people of color and get to see that they aren't in fact inferior they'll have a much better chance, of making that rational switch when they have more control over their thoughts and actions than if they only got that poison but didn't get anything else.

This I can see mattering in nation building as well. If you are exposed to only monarchy or dictator ship you won't see the reasons why something else is better as easily. So yeah, propaganda and education, matter, and yeah I can understand the generations.

This is another reason why I like to have a few really radical folks around go too far. It gets your "average" or moderate some exposure and they get to thinking about the idea.

Unfortunately I'm not sure of a good way to help make education better to utilize what we do understand of brain chemistry. It's also not really being utilized well in the existing structure.

That's a very complex question. You can't blame the people individually for it, because individually, the people are too weak to change it. But you can blame the people collectively for it, because collectively they do have the power to change it. Collectively, they accept it.

See above. If no one individually even understands that you can do something different or better, then they can't know collectively either. So I guess we are back to the propaganda level again. Try and get the youth to understand that there can be change (as they are the easiest to ones to teach) and then hope that in a few years they can get something going huh? That still sucks. Living with generations of anarchy can't really be fun for the guy who really just wants to get up raise his crops (or go to work) and have a family. Can we bootstrap that process more quickly?

Besides, that is a larger question than we are dealing with here. The question here is simply, "Are the pirates at fault for their actions?" And the answer is always, "yes, provided they are sane."

I'll buy it, in as much as I'll buy that any sane person is responsible for their actions. But I do again have to say, they don't always understand the alternatives and wonder if we can let them know about that better. I honestly can see why someone would choose piracy as the best option of what they see before them. It is hard to wrap my head around because I've been exposed to so many other options. But it's not completely different from the inner city problems we face here. Those people don't always get enough exposure to the better options. Though some of them do and still choose the crappy "solution". I was so proud of Bill Cosby's outburst on that subject and his proposed solutions.

So I'm alright with killing the pirates. I'm not a fan of bloodshed, but personal responsibility is something I do believe in. So we can hold them responsible for their actions and I can live with a few death sentences being arbitrarily issued to them without giving them a trial. Especially given that I think that might be a rapid way to deliver some education. But that better be done with the delivery of additional information to these people of other things they can do to survive.

See I don't fully think this can be just boiled down to a smaller issue. Even if I admit my ignorance on several facets of it.

I think you are right, there is no way to fix these problems from the outside unless we're willing to conquer those countries, govern them for the decades necessary to build their infrastructure and educate their population and eradicate their tribal hatreds. The quick fix doesn't work. And I don't think the West is willing to take on that burden. And, probably, morally shouldn't.

Which sucks. I'd love to find a way for it to work. I'd love for humanity to evolve a little more I guess.

But we can do something about the symptoms, whether they be piracy, kidnapping, or terrorism. We can make the cost of those actions so high that no one, no matter how extreme, will support them. But do we have the stomach for it?

Sure, and I'm not completely against the idea of making that cost high and using it as an additional tool. I understand that some rights have to be trampled on to protect other rights. I agree that even if they were fully educated decisions by the pirates that they still made a choice.

I'm not sure that not blowing them means we don't have guts though. I'm not sure it's the only way. I'm pretty sure it's the fastest way though. Is it gutless if the administration tries to solve the piracy issue by stepping up education and aid and trying to capture the pirates and give them a fair trial? Personally taking the longer harder, but ultimately more beneficial route seems to take more guts than just taking the easy path.

Personally I do think that some killing mixed with other methods is probably the better short term answer. But I'm not willing to bring the connotations that saying we don't have the guts to just blow them up has to bear on the administration just yet.

And for the record I was and still am all for hunting down Bin Laden and killing him and many other members of Al-Queda, I don't think they need a trial at this point. I also think that other actions we are taking in Afghanistan now are the right thing to do. We are helping them to build from within based a lot on what they want even if we don't always like what they want. I like that the current administration has said that we are going to step things up in Pakistan and that we are first going to keep trying to work with the Pakistani government to do so but that we are willing to escalate if they won't work with us. As mentioned I don't like war, I wish we didn't need war, but I realize that humanity isn't at my ideal. I served in the US military, even if it was just the National Guard. I would not have done so if I didn't believe that war was really the best answer in this imperfect world.

I do think the war in Iraq was a big mistake though. But at least most of the execution hasn't been too bad (though there have been issues). The mess we are in now, we are stuck with for awhile. I don't like paying to keep troops over there but we can't just leave yet either. It's a crap situation and we created, we need to have the guts to fix it too.