Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

For people unfamiliar with @crisisgroup: They specialize in superb, well-researched reports about violent conflict. They interview participants on both or all sides of a violent conflict and suggest rational ways to de-escalate.

When you read their reports, the things they suggest always seem like common sense. Side A should consider to Side B's reasonable concern about issue X; side B should cease killing civilians and resume full compliance with Treaty Y; third-party mediation is of the essence; etc.

It's always common sense, if you're an outside party to the conflict. It *always* sounds like a much better idea than bloodshed. Yet if you've lived in places where the conflict is taking place, you know that no one is going to take the advice.

You know that people are so invested in the hatred and the bloodlust that the idea of "reading a report from some fucking foreign NGO and doing what they say" sounds utterly preposterous to them, not to mention naive: "These people have *no idea* how evil our enemy is."

The US is now at a moment such that a @CrisisGroup report would be appropriate. I doubt that will happen. Much of its funding comes from US donors; they're probably so invested in one side of the crisis (probably the anti-Trump side) that they wouldn't take kindly to that.

And I suppose that since no one ever takes their advice overseas, it's not likely we'd take it at home. But the kind of advice they give should be in the media. I sure see the same phenomena at work.

I see Americans who perfectly grasp the stupidity, futility, and horror of violent conflicts abroad--and the circumstances that give rise to them--behaving in ways that are certain to make this situation worse, not better.

All happy countries are happy in their own way; every civil war is alike. Lunatic racial, ethnic and sectarian hatreds, blindness, pride, reduction of the enemy to a caricature of evil, rigid ideological certainty, atrocity stories, martyrs--

--an inability to see things as the enemy does, a compulsion to escalate, and an astonishing failure to imagine the consequences of doing so. Double standards: "When the enemy does it, it's an incitement to violence; when we do it, it's just speaking the truth."

Irrationality: "The way to persuade my enemy of the justice of my cause is to impose fear and pain upon him and his family." Apocalypticism: "The situation is so extreme that morality no longer applies." Lack of empathy: the enemy is an invader, a fascist;

every member of the enemy population, including civilians, must be killed or forced into unconditional surrender.

You can all see how idiotic and futile it is when it takes place in the Balkans. Or Kashmir, or Congo, or Syria.

That's all.