Suggested Discussion Outline

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johnkarls
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Suggested Discussion Outline

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A. Sarah Chayes’ Guiding Principles

A-1. Machiavelli – Always try to avoid interfering with your subjects’ property and women insofar as possible.

A-2. Nizam al-Mulk – Know your subjects through direct, personal contact insofar as possible. Avoid intermediaries since the use of intermediaries will always produce corruption which will cause you to be hated, since you will be blamed for the actions of your intermediaries.


B. Anything That Anyone Considers Noteworthy About Countries Discussed By Sarah Chayes

B-1. Afghanistan
B-2. Morocco
B-3. Algeria
B-4. Tunisia
B-5. Egypt
B-6. Uzbekistan
B-7. Nigeria


C. Does Sarah Chayes Prove Her Thesis That Revolution Is Caused By Corruption???

C-1. Are there other causes such as poverty???

C-2. Is Radical Islam itself a cause??? [NB: we rarely hear about terror associated with other religions and indeed Karl Marx, though preaching the same economic message as Jesus Christ (from each according to her/his ability and to each according to her/his need), was anti-Christian because Marx perceived Christianity as the Opiate Of The Masses (i.e., laying up for themselves treasures in heaven rather than revolting against anyone starting with the Roman Empire and continuing through the Russian Czars.]

C-3. Since Homo Politicus: The Strange And Scary Tribes That Run Our Government by Dana Milbank (long-time Washington Post OpEd Columnist) and The Squandering of America by Robert Kuttner (long-time Business Week Columnist) agree that that nothing happens in THE CESSPOOL THAT IS WASHINGTON DC except as the result of extortion by the politicians and bribery of the politicians, both in the form of “campaign contributions” -- why isn’t there revolution in the U.S. as Sarah Chayes’ thesis indicates should be happening???


D. Can Any Revolution Regardless of Cause (Including Corruption) Succeed Against A Determined Ruler???

D-1. Hitler and his Propaganda Minister Goebbels, if they had succeeded in conquering the world.

D-2. Stalin, if the Soviet Union had succeeded in conquering the world.

D-3. Chairman Mao, if China had succeeded in conquering the world and subjected it to his programs such as The Great Leap Forward, The Cultural Revolution, etc., etc.

D-4. Saudi Arabia which refused to permit Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates to even enter the Kingdom to lecture its government on how it must kowtow to The Arab Spring (after the U.S. had thrown Egypt’s President Mubarek under the bus), and immediately dispatched troops to neighboring Bahrain to put down the rebellion of its majority-Shiite population, effectively putting a stop to The Arab Spring.


E. Why Did Sarah Chayes Avoid Discussing Any U.S. Adversaries, Such As Iran???

E-1. Does Iran’s Government (an unelected Supreme Leader who controls everything and an elected President, aka Scapegoat-In-Waiting, who doesn’t even have authority to go to the bathroom without permission) illustrate how the advice culled by Sarah Chayes from Machiavelli and Nizam al-Mulk should be employed???

E-2. Is Iran a greater threat to the world than ISIS because of (A) its insistence on acquiring nuclear weapons, (B) the announcements by Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, The United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman that EACH will acquire nuclear weapons as soon as Iran goes nuclear, (C) the incessant threats to annihilate various countries issued by Iran Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei indicate that he will probably start a nuclear war in no time flat, and (D) the fact that since virtually all of the world’s agricultural fertilizers come from petrochemicals and 50% of the world’s oil & gas comes from the Persian Gulf or downwind from the P.G., 50% of the world’s 7 billion population will probably become unsustainable overnight???


F. The U.S. Drone Program

F-1. Is Sarah Chayes' failure to discuss the U.S. Drone Program attributable to a conscious decision to discuss only Southern Afghanistan and countries in which the U.S. Drone Program is not employed??? [Please see Par. B for the list of countries she chose to discuss.]

F-2. Is the U.S. Drone Program a more serious violation than corruption of the advice culled by Sarah Chayes from Machiavelli and Nizam al-Mulk???

F-3. Is there any objection to a Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign to Pew Research to implore them to conduct polls to determine the impact on public opinion in Islamic countries of the U.S. Drone Program -- especially now that it no longer appears true as Leon Panetta once reported to the National Security Council (p. 288 of Leon Panetta’s Worthy Fights which was our focus book for our 3/11/2015 meeting) that ‘Al Qaeda’s leadership was being removed faster than it could be replaced’”???

F-4: And while we are at it, is there any objection to a Six-Degrees-Of-Separation E-mail Campaign to Pew Research to implore them to conduct polls in Islamic countries and polls of members of Al Qaeda and its affiliates regarding the extent to which Osama bin Laden is still worshipped (while America is still hated) and the extent to which his followers feel an obligation to execute Osama’s fatwā to nuke 10 million Americans???

Editorial Note = There were two dissents to F-3 at our 3/11/2015 meeting, as a result of which we did not even get around to discussing F-4 which had also been proposed in our 3/11/2015 Discussion Outline.

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