Thomas Friedman was in Dalian for the Summer Davos meeting recently. After talking to the President of DUT, who told him how DUT is focusing its future research on energy technologies, Friedman mused about a strange story from Iraq that seems to highlight the way that the current US government is basically wasting precious assets and using big military hardware like fly swatters. And here is his conclusion from his latest column:
That image of a $6 million high-tech U.S. helicopter with a highly trained pilot blowing an insurgent off his bicycle captures the absurdity of our situation in Iraq. The great Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi said it best: “Great powers should never get involved in the politics of small tribes.”
That is where we are in Iraq. We’re wasting our brains. We’re wasting our people. We’re wasting our future. China is not.
It seems to me that this odd concatenation of circumstances puts my English Language Consulting project into the right perspective. China is working on the future, whereas we in the West are working on bad policies and being victimised by worse politicians.
Friedman had good things to say about Dalian, but in conventional terms used by Big MSM figures doing a once over in any foreign city.
