Osama bin Laden is Hari Seldon?
Not really the season, but...
Some time ago, if you were geeky enough to notice, this little item caught peoples' attention...
Al Qaida is The Foundation
Now, the interesting thing abou aQ is that they seem to quite openly discuss their goals, intents and methods, and then, more or less they do what they say, to the extent they have the capability.
So, their stated intent is to bankrupt the US and destroy it as a society. Check.
As Hari Seldon would point out, the best way to do that is to leverage social instabilities within the target to make it self-destruct, find weak points and push, then step back and watch it crumble.
In fact, as we are finding out, the US government response to aQ has been almost textbook stupid in how it dismantles precisely the good features of US society that make it so much better than aQ's vision of the world.
To finish the job, they need to embroil the US military a little further, another medium sized war within 18 months would do the trick; push for continued deficit and off-budget spending, then squeeze oil and gas supplies.
Final trigger would be minor but spectacular internal US attacks to get some political panic and overreaction.
The steps are there, of course the US government would never be so stupid and short sighted as to fall for such an obvious ploy.
And most recently aQ said they would destroy oil supplies
Now we don't yet know how this happened>
Hm, now this
Of course we can't blame aQ for this, but the continued shut-in of significant fraction of the Gulf of Mexico capacity is not going to help.
Gonna be a cold winter.
Some time ago, if you were geeky enough to notice, this little item caught peoples' attention...
Al Qaida is The Foundation
Now, the interesting thing abou aQ is that they seem to quite openly discuss their goals, intents and methods, and then, more or less they do what they say, to the extent they have the capability.
So, their stated intent is to bankrupt the US and destroy it as a society. Check.
As Hari Seldon would point out, the best way to do that is to leverage social instabilities within the target to make it self-destruct, find weak points and push, then step back and watch it crumble.
In fact, as we are finding out, the US government response to aQ has been almost textbook stupid in how it dismantles precisely the good features of US society that make it so much better than aQ's vision of the world.
To finish the job, they need to embroil the US military a little further, another medium sized war within 18 months would do the trick; push for continued deficit and off-budget spending, then squeeze oil and gas supplies.
Final trigger would be minor but spectacular internal US attacks to get some political panic and overreaction.
The steps are there, of course the US government would never be so stupid and short sighted as to fall for such an obvious ploy.
And most recently aQ said they would destroy oil supplies
Now we don't yet know how this happened>
Hm, now this
Of course we can't blame aQ for this, but the continued shut-in of significant fraction of the Gulf of Mexico capacity is not going to help.
Gonna be a cold winter.
posted by Steinn at 2:31 PM
2 Comments:
The father of psychohistory was Seldon, not Sheldon :-)
I was a huge Foundation fan in high school, and I've got to say that the comparison seems pretty weak. The Foundation was established not to bring about the collapse of the Galactic Empire, but to mitigate the duration of the long dark to follow. If anything, Al Qaeda represents the fear and ignorance that would typify the Interregnum.
Also, I don't see these guys as being big into mathematics :-)
Well, as long as I get to be the Mule. Muwahahaha, I will rule the Galaxy! Listen to my saxophone!
Oh, and happy Yule, Steinn!
Sipior
Well, there is a semi-serious claim that aQ set itself up with some thought to this as a model - not that they claim to know psychohistory, but that they worked to move society around by pushing on leverages.
Their purpose is entirely a separate issue from their method.
It is interesting that their statements seem remarkably honest in stating their intentions and even methods; normally when a politician makes an assertion you can bet on the opposite.
Sorry about the Seldon/Sheldon - er, different transliteration from standard galactic? I mean aQ has several different english transliterations.
Post a Comment
<< Home