I had the pleasure of listening to Fareed Zakaria and Thomas Friedman speak tonight at my school. The key take-aways for those who care are:
1. US will get nothing done under it's broken political regime. Partisan non-cooperation will be the slow ruin of America, likened to a cancerous tumor that slowly eats at the patient. There is an incentive for party members to be noncooperative with one another that comes from fund raisers.
2. A thorough, and timely strategic review needs to occur. The political/economic/foreign policy goals of America are ambiguous and are thus extremely wasteful. Too much money, manpower and time is being thrown at problems who don't have a definitive strategy or goal. Many of our "endeavors" need to be ceased, as we are spread too thin as a country (likened to the British Empire). If we chose to scale back in many programs/campaigns, we could save a hell of alot of money.
3. America needs to innovate now, as it's the only way to ensure that future generations will have (at the very least) the same living standards as today.
4. Arabs are tired of the yardsale that is Iran, and really would not care that much if Israel attacked them (although they would publicly chastise Israel). It is almost an expectation from the Arab world that Iran will be attacked. It would do well to shut them (Iran) up.
5. Afghanistan is a broken country, always has been...always will be. Expect nothing from them except more narco trafficing.
6. Uncertainty is the new norm, and from now on...expect the unexpected.
Many of the topics came back to lack of political party cooperation. The parties are trying to freeze eachother out, and the casualties are the American people. There was very little economics discussed, to my dismay. It was more geo-political in nature and was a very good discussion. Some of this is redundant stuff, but I thought it'd be beneficial for some to get this stuff "hot off the presses."
1. US will get nothing done under it's broken political regime. Partisan non-cooperation will be the slow ruin of America, likened to a cancerous tumor that slowly eats at the patient. There is an incentive for party members to be noncooperative with one another that comes from fund raisers.
2. A thorough, and timely strategic review needs to occur. The political/economic/foreign policy goals of America are ambiguous and are thus extremely wasteful. Too much money, manpower and time is being thrown at problems who don't have a definitive strategy or goal. Many of our "endeavors" need to be ceased, as we are spread too thin as a country (likened to the British Empire). If we chose to scale back in many programs/campaigns, we could save a hell of alot of money.
3. America needs to innovate now, as it's the only way to ensure that future generations will have (at the very least) the same living standards as today.
4. Arabs are tired of the yardsale that is Iran, and really would not care that much if Israel attacked them (although they would publicly chastise Israel). It is almost an expectation from the Arab world that Iran will be attacked. It would do well to shut them (Iran) up.
5. Afghanistan is a broken country, always has been...always will be. Expect nothing from them except more narco trafficing.
6. Uncertainty is the new norm, and from now on...expect the unexpected.
Many of the topics came back to lack of political party cooperation. The parties are trying to freeze eachother out, and the casualties are the American people. There was very little economics discussed, to my dismay. It was more geo-political in nature and was a very good discussion. Some of this is redundant stuff, but I thought it'd be beneficial for some to get this stuff "hot off the presses."
