Friday I listened to a presentation by Dr. Thomas Gouttierre, a nationally recognized authority on Afghanistan and Director of the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s (UNO) Center for Afghanistan Studies. (Check out this article from The Omaha World Herald published the same day. www.omaha.com/article/20090911/NEWS01/709119935/-1/FRONTPAGE )

During the question and answer period, I asked Dr. Gouttierre the following question. According to the current Army Counter-Insurgency Manual, even with the reinforcements currently being asked for, the total force is too small for the task. Even if we were to project the size force required by doctrine, wouldn’t that cause us to be seen as occupiers and infidels and make establishing the peace that much harder?

Gouttierre’s reply was while this was the case in Iraq, it would not be the case in Afghanistan. Afghans, Gouttierre continued, by and large recognize there can be no true change to their situation without the assistance of Americans. Goutteirre also said he believes the new team of Obama, Gates, Petraeus and McCrystal have a much better vision for what is needed to establish a working government for the Afghan people.

Gouttierre concluded his remarks with the opinion that leaving Afghanistan without finishing the job would only result in disaster for us.

Friday night I was watching Bill Moyers’ Journal and his interview with Nancy Youssef, McClatchey’s Chief Pentagon Correspondent. The contrast between her views and Gouttierre’s were distinct. I invite you to listen. Here is the link.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09112009/profile.html

Food for thought for all of us.

Sometimes I think politics is not actually a conflict between liberals and conservatives. The conflict is instead between the intelligent and the unintelligent. No better example exists than the controversy over whether school children should be allowed to listen to the President of the United States tell them to study hard, stay in school, and respect their teachers. Anyone who opposes this event is stupid. And anyone who opposed President George H. W. Bush delivering a similar message in 1991 is stupid, too.

So part of the quest to give ourselves a more functional politics yielding a more effective and efficient government is finding the answer to this question. How can we arrange our processes so intelligence moves to the forefront and unintelligence is suppressed?

Today we’ll talk about making that happen.

To begin, let’s recall how one revelation in Rick Shenkman’s Just How Stupid Are We concerns the impact . . .

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