The giant problem solving theorist of the 20th century, George Polya, said that in the craft of solving a problem, the first step - a most overlooked one indeed - is to understand it.
Polya's intuitive prescription has been vindicated by the 21st century. Alan Schoenfeld has spent many years researching the activity of problem solving, and he has found that by far one the most consistent behavioural differences between people who are very good at solving difficult problems and those who are not, is that the former spend a (relatively) very long period of time trying to understand their problems before venturing any attempts at solution.
Of what relevance is any of this to the thread?
If someone were to ask me to distil all that is wrong with much of global politics today I would reply that we have abandoned evidence and problem solving based approaches to that enterprise. We have replaced those things with abstractions like "the moral ground", "human rights", "pluralism" etc. And truly those things are paved with good intentions.
The ramifications, however, have been deadly, and often tragic.
Now I have made no secret of my generally unfavourable perspectives on Islam in this forum. But my opinions on that religion notwithstanding - my awareness of the need for the foregoing in policy has lead me to make some unexpected conclusions on the nature of 'Islamic terrorism.'
Like Ron Paul I have come to believe that Islamic terrorism is as much the product of the west - a consequence of our military interventionism - as it is the Islamic world, if not more.
To every action there is a reaction as it is said in physics - and the rule holds well in the behaviour of man too.
Islamic insurgency may have its ideological foundation in religion but its increasing escalation into the 21st century is without a doubt the result of the foreign policy of military interventionism and "democratic" nation building in that region of the world.
One of Dr Paul's favourite political analysts - the ex-CIA officer Michael Scheuer, has made his current life-work the warning about all of this - and I encourage interested readers to examine his writings (he has a blog-site named non-intervention) instead of taking my word for it.
Which finally brings us to Turkey's insurgency problem. Like the Islamic insurgency, perhaps insurgencies in general, this too, is quite inextricable from Turkey's internal and external interventionism - the one in regard to its Kurdish minority being now of historical length and the other in the Levant a recent one.
A supreme delusion of both the west and regional powers in the Middle East is that you can play the game of war half-heartedly, or as a side-player. The truth is war has been, is and likely will always be, that abyss that always stares back.
This is just what happened to Pakistan recently after its decades long dirty game in Afghanistan and with ethnic groups related to that country such as the Pathan people.
The Taliban, a Pathan insurgency aided from its very birth by the state of Pakistan, has now turned its guns on the exploitative hand that once fed it. The school shootings in Peshawar where militants shot dead children in a Pakistani army school is likely just the beginning of that tragedy unfolding before us.
Both the west and Turkey should take heed. We are also playing with fire that is bound to burn us sooner or later.
So what, if any, is the solution?
Another crucial thing that our "enlightened" era seems to have forgotten is that there are just two overarching principles in war. The first, and foremost, is not to fight the war. We should have never meddled in the Muslim world. Turkey should never have involved itself with the regional Sunni-Shia sectarian feuds.
The second is to fight to annihilate your enemy, completely. The second world war was won because the allies killed as many Germans, in their path slaughtering as many German civilians - women, elderly and children included - as it took to utterly destroy Nazi Germany beyond any hope of recovery.
That is the only way to win a war by fighting it. The path to victory in war always entails crossing the rivers of blood of the innocent.
And not a single war in our times has been or is being fought like that. Hence why no wars of our times is ever won. All of our insurgencies be they Islamic or Kurdish are as galvanized as ever, after decades of warfare.
Thus the west and Turkey are simply delusional if they think they can mess around with the life-determining affairs of other nations, that includes nations within nations like the Kurds no matter how much we wish otherwise, without having to fight wars with those nations, or at least deadly sub-groups within them. And without fighting to win those wars.
As usual, the good and common people of the world suffer the consequences of the games played by their political elites.
This is why I believe only those men and women who live in the frontlines of war with their family and children should ever have the right to start and maintain wars.
How much better it was back in the 'dark ages' when our political elites had to risk their and the lives of their families if they wanted to fight wars. But I ramble now.
