Logic Overpowers Intuition: The Obama WAR!!!

President Obama decided to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in the next six months and then begin pulling them out a year after. He overlooked negotiation and mediation as effective options to end the war. He insists on what does not function to humanly end a war: war intensification.

Soon after taking office, both Lyndon Johnson and Mikhail Gorbachev took measures to escalate their inherited conflicts, the Vietnam War and the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan. Both wars were a human disaster.

Wars are intellectually old fashion and a globally discredited means for welfare.

Political and social complex conflicts cannot be managed through the use of litigation or wars, but with dialogue.

The President welcomed a full range of opinions and invited contrary points of view. The more he learned about risks, the more he gravitated toward a stronger if temporary buildup. Obama was intimidated. His diplomatic sense and pacifist’s intentions were annulled. The alternative to war could be a collaborative intervention of all parties using conflict strategic methods by negotiators and mediators. Ideally, this could be accomplished in a milieu of informality, humility and piecemeal steps. Smaller agreements offer the potential of early action, and could be included under an umbrella of a general agreement at a later date.

It is reported that President Obama summoned his national security team to the Oval Office. He had made his decision. He said: “I’m not asking you to change what you believe,” the president told his advisers. “But if you do not agree with me, say so now.” There was a pause and no one said anything.

The strategy escalate-then-exit resulted from an earnest decision making process in the Obama White House dominated by analytical processes. The decision was entangled by pieces of the puzzle. Obama lost sight of the sense and shape of the entire conundrum.

The intensification of war outcome was the result of deceiving logical thinking. The decision making process lacked intuitive wisdom; the views of artists, poets, pacifists and conflict solvers.

                       

Luis Miguel Diaz

Luis Miguel Díaz, unfortunately now deceased, fathered four children and distrusted language, theories and authority, including his own as a father. Admires artists and scientists and their lives. He received his Law Degree at UNAM, Mexico (1974); and LLM (1976) and SJD (1986) at Harvard University Law School. President of the Interdisciplinary Center for Conflict… MORE >