The Diplomad nails it with this wonderful essay:
Our Favorite Ten Lies
We are bureaucrats. We like things tidy. We like options clearly laid out — and we don't want too many of them. Above all, we like lists; we love top ten lists. We're not too good at math so we restrict ourselves to lists with ten things. Re Math: Don't forget that according to our personnel evaluation reports in the Foreign Service 90% of us are ranked in the top 10%.
Our Acting Principal Deputy Vice Chief Diplomad for Coordination of Coordinating Coordinators and List Making has sent us his top “ten mistaken ideas people hold.”
We are sure our intrepid readers can come up with more candidates for the list, but for what it's worth we present ours for your consideration.
In no particular order our list is as follows,
Top Ten Wrong Ideas that People Around the World Still Believe:
Here are the top five — visit The Diplomad for the short commentary for each of the ten entries. Very very good - spot on…
Posted by DaveH at January 20, 2005 06:36 PM1) There's some magic “Third Way.”
2) Foreign Aid Helps Poor People.
3) If the USA Pressured Ariel Sharon, there'd be Middle East Peace.
4) You can't make a country democratic by force.
5) The United Nations is the hope for the future of mankind,and its corollary, if we didn't have the UN we'd have to invent it.
Actually, we did invent the UN. Becuase we needed one. Like any technology, it doesn't work flawlessly. Design elements do odd things and it wobbles. Got something better to replace it?
Posted by: Allegro ghost at January 22, 2005 09:05 PM