Irony

If you pay close attention to today's headlines, you'll get a very intense history lesson filled with irony.

The two big stories I'm reading are the drubbing of Pakistan's strongman Perez Musharraf in the general election, and the retirement of Fidel Castro. Musharraf is going down because, like anyone else close to the radioactive U.S., he's unpopular and ineffective. Castro is merely retiring at 81 after a long tenure on the world stage. Both are strongmen.

The cold war tactics of the "end justifies the means" and the use of military muscle as the way to affect the world have been consistently proven ineffective. Castro proved that savy politics, good P.R., and popular support are able to overcome the largest Pentagon budgets in the history of the world. Musharraf has proven that even with the support of the largest military machine in the history of mankind, you're a paper tiger and destined to fail.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to show it's incredible lack of any kind of savy by sending predator drones to kill the latest, greatest, al Qaeda high value target.

You'd think we'd learn. Maybe we will. But it seems that, at least during the last 100 years or so, it's been two steps forward (the Roosevelt administration), two steps back (the cold war), two steps forward (post-cold war) and two steps back (post 911).