Strategic thinking and Corporatism

Strategic thinking means thinking about the long term effects: blow-backs, synergies, negative feedback -- suppresses an effect and positive feedback -- amplifies an effect, of our actions. Generals are taught to think strategically.

Unfortunately Generals usually get to be Colonels by following orders and tactical brilliance -- which isn't always strategically smart -- so truly brilliant Generals are rare. Less rare than you'd think however, and so we've got work by the Joint Chiefs that has looked into all of it.

Those strategies used to be public information, but I believe are now classified, and those fellows examined all these sorts of thing. Colin Powell wrote the book on Asymmetric warfare, and then burned it because he and other Generals involved in Vietnam concluded that such warfare was counterproductive strategically.

More recently they either rewrote the books or dusted them off of hidden shelves because they had to reinvent asymmetric warfare to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, with pretty much the same inconclusive and strategically stupid results. Even the expansion into other countries reminds people familiar with Vietnam of our invasions of Cambodia and Laos. And folks familiar with the backstory can see how it also involved misunderstandings and bad decisions about countries all over the world in the name of fighting communism but actually in the name of corporatism and international banking.

Ironically the international banking folks won the Vietnam war at our expense. We don't even notice when our jobs get shipped to Vietnam and China.