On the state of America

My original position:
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1. People wouldn't "hate America" if it didn't set itself up to be hated.
2. Current policies aggravate other global citizens and are perpetuating hatred rather than curbing it.

New learnings:
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1. Even if nations themselves are held in equilibrium, independent groups have opportunities to secure dangerous materials.
2. The fall of the Soviet Union and other innovations have left many of these materials unaccounted for and much easier to acquire in secret.
3. If the power to demolish a nation now lies in the hands of -any- deviant rather than just powerful ones, then we are indeed endangered in a manner different than the traditional habits of wars between nations. [Key insight]
4. That would justify our endeavors in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other nations that harbor and foster these kinds of powerful deviants. The current dissent and cynicism can be understood as people misattributing this as a war on nations rather than a war on terror networks and infrastructure.
5. We might also understand, then, that the strict discipline against public disclosure is to ensure that our opponents do not gain intelligence that enables them to defend against attack. The complexity of this issue is such that it feels disturbingly alienating to a population that has never had to think of wars in these terms.
6. This dissent expands to our international peers, who interact with us in organizational structures specifically designed to address nation-level problems, and are unaccustomed to addressing these kinds of decentralized, non-nation-specific threats (or are very, VERY poor at doing so efficiently)
7. We therefore are stuck in a frustrating conundrum: in order to efficiently attack and dismantle a decentralized enemy, we are forced to attack them on other nations' soil--something which, by traditional terms, is an infringement on those nations' sovereignty and something which our nation-institutions are specifically designed to oppose.
8. Furthermore, there are no easy ways of targeting an opponent that thrives in the shadows and crevices of the wildlands. An attack on a nation that supports these people is our next best alternative, for it disables one of their key resources.
9. Furthermore, we may lament that nobody appreciates people who successfully prevent chaos; we only celebrate those who step in to fix things after they're visibly broken, even if that's a far dumber way to go about things.

What still worries me:
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1. Even if all of this is true and logical, the course of action we have chosen depends directly on the expectation that those deviants do, in fact, have disturbing levels of access to such materials. If they do not, then there was no such urgency to take this course of violent action; rather, our government capitalized on the paranoia amongst us following 9/11 to go forth with this plan prematurely. A slower-paced course of action could have afforded us the ability to help other people understand our position and change our international institutions to enable them to address these new kinds of issues. This is admittedly, however, a slow process akin to trying to create a skunkworks operation within a large, sluggish organization--a task that may very well prove impossible. If the potential loss from inaction grows faster than the risks from acting prematurely, then acting now rather than later is a sensible and preferable option.
2. To take this course of action, we must necessarily assume that the current nation-based peacekeeping structure is incapable of helping us dismantle terror networks. I can believe this, that rogue states will happily lie through their teeth on the international stage and proceed with dubious acts. It's not an easy belief for me, though, and I'm unable to share others' comfort in understanding the United Nations and the international forum as a structure incapable of understanding this threat and evolving to address it.
3. I wonder if this was the same mode of thinking that led us into Vietnam, in which a similarly intangible enemy--communism--was understood to pose enough of a threat to warrant intervention in the Vietnamese civil war. Would we then have to reevaluate our modern understandings of Vietnam as an unjustified war if we ensured a lesser evil for the world by intervening in the manner that we did?

If I am to adopt this viewpoint in full, then, here is the heart of the issue:
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Faced with a difficult decision, a nation chose a path that most people wouldn't understand. The criticisms have emerged since primarily speak to the outcome of the decision, not the quality of the decision itself. Their theories of how our nation came to its decision are now in favor, because the poor outcome naturally facilitates the assumption of poor decision-making.

Here's why I cannot be comfortable in our decision:
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If there are other options that have not yet emerged, the very decisiveness that characterizes a good decision maker also serves as his weakness; his commitment to selecting from the present set of options denies him the opportunity to select from far better ones that may emerge in time.

My current understanding of what happened:
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A nation that was generally indecisive about how best to address terrorism experienced the worst terrorist attack in its history. This created the sense of unity and urgency necessary for action to be taken, and taken soon in order to prevent similar disaster from befalling others. The nation therefore chose the best course of action amongst those available to it, with a clear and present sense of danger and sense of obligation to its citizens and to the world. Difficult to understand, this course of action was mired in the press, and the nation had trouble explaining itself clearly. In turn, this silence fostered distrust, and people were left to form their own understandings of why the nation had acted in a way that appeared dubious by traditional measures. Now that things have turned out poorly, those people are finding many ways to support their conceptions of the nation and its decision-making logic, even though those conceptions are inaccurate.

If we are to view the story in this manner, then our judgment of the nation's actions depends upon our own predispositions. If we value decisiveness in the midst of chaos, we would think one way; if we value patience and continued exploration, we would think the other.

I am known as somebody who take a while to make decisions. I'm quite comfortable in doing so, and usually am able to find great rewards by doing this. In times of chaos and urgency, however, I become much more decisive. Time pressure demands that I commit to a course of action and take all the necessary steps to get it organized, lest I find myself with no solution at all. Some people tell me I'm quite good at doing this, oftentimes getting the task accomplished and creating order in times when most people would panic and break down.

If this is the state of mind that our leadership had to endure at the time, then I have no right to be neither supportive nor dismissive of their course of action. I can lament that their intentions could not be made clear to the public, and that the press contributed to their vilification by making painfully apparent the details that they did not and could not know when they had to make their choices. I can say that I would have preferred to wait longer for better options to emerge, but if I were faced with the same pressure, I don't know if I *could* have acted differently.

All of this remains contingent upon my assumption that the actors in this drama acted the way I would have acted, with the interests and convictions I would have held at the time. I have generally stood on the other side, shocked by the words that I cannot imagine myself ever uttering. Some people are attuned to seeing the similarities between themselves and these characters; others are attuned to identifying and trying to understand the differences.

How funny and tragic that this phenomenon alone should be sufficient to separate a nation built on both these virtues.