Sunday, April 18, 2004

Posted here Sunday, April 18, 2004 at 2:32:51 PM     The real issue in Iraq, with the US budget, with multilateralism, with economic policy, is tone. Tone affects everyone down the chain. Those who do the grunt work will do it more violently if the tone is violent, more routinely if the tone is mild, more purposefully if the tone is optimistic and appeals to the heart. We learned in books like Heart of Darkness, and in the peae Corps and random travels to intersting places, the truth of this view: bad tome at the top creates thugs at the bottom. Good tone at the top is at least a restraint. Then there is the issue of distributing authority. ********