“Simply stating that by doing the trained behavior you have a much higher likelihood of receiving a banana, in most cases a paycheck, promotion, or raise is not enough to guarantee success in this day and age.
“We don’t train monkeys, we train leaders. Leadership requires…the ability to think and act. Training people to get them to simply act without thinking is a recipe for disaster.”
That essentially is what has happened to American foreign policy. It is impossible to think because a Foggy Bottom mindset has fed administration after administration the same formula based on ideas that would do well in a museum. Instead of digging out new information, it manufactures information to fit its fictional views of the world.
“Diplomatic engagement” with the enemy is one of them. “Reaching out to the Muslim world” is another, and that is the path that has led to failure in the entire Middle East and now in Russia.”
The correctness of Rumsfeld’s notion that trained apes could do better than Obama officials depend on who is doing the training and if the trainer understands whether trainees really like bananas.
Maybe people in Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt and just about every other Muslim country, as well as Russia, really don’t like American democracy.
Perhaps Kerry should take time off and learn effective training from the video below and then conclude correctly that he cannot train the world as he wishes.