Obama aide: Why Winnie the Pooh should shape US foreign policy

Winnie the Pooh, Luke Skywalker and British football hooligans could shape the foreign policy of Barack Obama if he becomes US President, according to a key adviser.

Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain, try something else.

Mr Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: â??Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.â?�

He spelt out how American troops, spies and anti-terrorist officials could learn key lessons by understanding the desire of terrorists to emulate superheroes like Luke Skywalker, and the lust for violence of violent football fans.

Mr Obamaâ??s candidacy was given an early boost by his opposition to the Iraq war and he has repeatedly said the US needs to rethink its approach to the Middle East.

Mr Danzig spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the childrenâ??s classic, which says: â??Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it.â?�
Barack Obama aide: Why Winnie the Pooh should shape US foreign policy - Telegraph

LMAO....and this is what some to be their Commander in Chief? This will make for quite the war room....bumpity bump.

Have a good one!:s4:

As for him being commander and chief I will say,

that our army won't be tough, but it will be adorable.

Mr Danzig relys on Winnie the Pooh for Inspiration ? Keep On Smokin it Mr. D.:stoned:

Thats a very interesting analogy he used right there which points out the fact that this is a new type of warfare we're dealing with. Now I'm not saying Obama has the answers necessarily but his aide is right when he says that new approaches have to be met. Just as we had to establish new techniques in the second 30 years war so must we with this new war.

Um.. maybe I didn't read enough Winnie the Pooh or something but I don't see the relation. This entire article was just a little weird and random.

I did agree with one thing in the article:

Quote:

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"In a subtle break from Mr Bushâ??s belief that the war on terror can be won, Mr Danzig, who is a Pentagon adviser on bioterrorism, warned that while the West can defeat individual terrorist groups and plots, it can never entirely remove the threat posed by nuclear proliferation or the prospect of bioterrorism."

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I see the war on terror much the same way I see the war on drugs that was introduced by Reagan. It is not something that we can truely realistically win. Instead of dumping all of our efforts to FORCE a change.. we need to do something else to help that region MAKE a change.

I don't know what that would be; I just acknowledge it is not a war that can ever be won. I don't think that doesn't mean we shouldn't do things to attempt to prevent it but it seems a bit silly to truely believe that we can defeat terrorism.

But winnie the pooh?? Really?? come on now, lol :stoned:

Leaving aside the foreign policy question for a second, I have to ask something I've always wondered about: what is a "Pooh?"

Winnie apears to me to be some kind of stuffed bear. Is "Pooh" a term for a stuffed bear? If Christopher Robin told me he had a "Winnie the Pooh," I would have assumed he had given a nickname to his diaper load.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Psycho4Bud

Winnie the Pooh, Luke Skywalker and British football hooligans could shape the foreign policy of Barack Obama if he becomes US President, according to a key adviser.

Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House, told a major foreign policy conference in Washington that the future of US strategy in the war on terrorism should follow a lesson from the pages of Winnie the Pooh, which can be shortened to: if it is causing you too much pain, try something else.

Mr Danzig told the Centre for New American Security: â??Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security.â?�

He spelt out how American troops, spies and anti-terrorist officials could learn key lessons by understanding the desire of terrorists to emulate superheroes like Luke Skywalker, and the lust for violence of violent football fans.

Mr Obamaâ??s candidacy was given an early boost by his opposition to the Iraq war and he has repeatedly said the US needs to rethink its approach to the Middle East.

Mr Danzig spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the childrenâ??s classic, which says: â??Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it.â?�
Barack Obama aide: Why Winnie the Pooh should shape US foreign policy - Telegraph

LMAO....and this is what some to be their Commander in Chief? This will make for quite the war room....bumpity bump.

Have a good one!:s4:

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If you want to leave this thread visible, then, P4B, I'll make an accurate point that a previous poster did, Dave Byrd.

I think your bias is showing here, original poster. This speech wasn't given by a future commander in chief. It was given by a man who may be a security advisor. Or may not be. He made a metaphor, which is a comparison to the Pooh story. Good metaphor because, as good ones are, it's simple and easy to see the bump-factor in this war.

Now for your question:
"and this is what some to be their Commander in Chief?"

I'm assuming you meant "Is that what some want to be their commander in chief?" thinking that that was Obama who made that metaphor? Help us understand it, please. Because the speaker's name was Richard Danzig.

LMAO! And I'm sure that Al-Quada, Iran, Humas, Hezbullah to mention a few would LOVE to hear that our national security advisor looks to the wisdom of Winnie the Pooh. No Obama didn't state it himself but what would be said about Bush if Stephen Hadley did?

By the way, thanks for the grammer check. Always nice to know that some people have your back.:thumbsup:

Have a good one!:s4:

It is an easy metaphor to ridicule because it is drawn from a children's story and includes the word "Pooh." But I think there is an apt metaphor there: maybe we could fight this so-called War on Terror without bumping our heads, if we could just stop bumping our heads long enough to think about it.

Another reason for picking a Pooh story is that maybe Danzig wanted to pick a story he thought Bush and his team would be familiar with. Something they could relate to.

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Originally Posted by Psycho4Bud

No Obama didn't state it himself but what would be said about Bush if Stephen Hadley did?

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Danzig wasn't speaking as an Obama advisor, he was speaking as a current pentagon advisor. He works for Bush right now, right?

This is actually a very strangely written article when you read the whole thing, because it seems to place the most importance on the Pooh statement and how that might influence Obama's policies in the possible event that Danziger has a future role in Obama's adminstration. But then it goes on to mention Danziger's current role as a pentagon advisor and the fact that he was speaking at a foriegn policy conference, and it really doesn't make any connection to Obama. If this Pooh metaphor was really any kind of outrageously stupid thing to say (and I don't really think it is), then isn't the story really that this current pentagon advisor said something stupid, not that Obama might have a silly policy in the possible future if he brings on this current pentagon advisor who said something stupid?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dragonrider

Danzig wasn't speaking as an Obama advisor, he was speaking as a current pentagon advisor. He works for Bush right now, right?

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LOL....No, he is currently Obama's brain "child". Sorry but I can't find ANY link between him and the GOP.:thumbsup:

Have a good one!:s4:

You gotta love soundbites.
Quotes taken out of context , spin to give a story edge , propoganda BS and outright fabrication.
Just what we've come to expect from politicians trying to score points off each other.

Sure me and psycho4bud got our differences, but factually he's right on this one.

"There's a deep irony here, which is that the discussion of the status-of-force agreement in Iraq deeply involves the Iraqi parliament, and the discussion on the American side doesn't give the American people the same kind of involvement," said former Navy secretary Richard Danzig, an Obama national security adviser."

Parties Do Battle Over U.S. Forces' Future in Iraq

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Psycho4Bud

LOL....No, he is currently Obama's brain "child". Sorry but I can't find ANY link between him and the GOP.:thumbsup:

Have a good one!:s4:

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I wasn't trying to link him to the GOP. I was saying he is currently an advisor to the pentagon. It's in the article you linked to:

Quote:

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In a subtle break from Mr Bushâ??s belief that the war on terror can be won, Mr Danzig, who is a Pentagon adviser on bioterrorism, warned that while the West can defeat individual terrorist groups and plots, it can never entirely remove the threat posed by nuclear proliferation or the prospect of bioterrorism.

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I don't know anything about this guy other than what was in the article, so I do not know if he is or isn't a current advisor to Obama. In relation to Obama, they describe him like this:

Quote:

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Richard Danzig, who served as Navy Secretary under President Clinton and is tipped to become National Security Adviser in an Obama White House.

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I don't know what "tipped to become" is, but it sounds like something in the future. Maybe he is a current advisor as well. They don't say.

My point was that the article focuses on him in his role as an advisor to a candidate, not his current role in the pentagon.

The funny thing is I am actually familiar with this page of this Pooh book, and this is not the first time it has come up in an adult environment to make a point.

I never read any Pooh stories, but I once worked for a woman who had this page copied and framed in her office. It doesn't make as much sense without the picture. The picture shows the little boy Christopher Robin walking down the stairs and he is holding the bear by one foot dragging it along with it's head on the floor. So every time he takes a step down the stairs, the bear's head goes bump on the next stair.

This woman I worked for thought it was funny, and she felt it described how things worked at our company. We would get so wrapped up in each individual crisis, that we couldn't step back and see if maybe there was a better way of doing things to avoid the crises altogether. Of course, that is the same point this guy is trying to make --- maybe we need to reevaluate our whole approach to terrorism, rather than just reacting to each terrorism crisis. His only mistake was using a metaphor that was so easy to take out of context and make look foolish, but his point is valid.

This woman I worked for also took the metaphor a step further, because at our company she considered herself to be the bear, and our management to be Christopher Robin, obliviously dragging her down the stairs by one foot, so that she had to bang her head with each step. I doubt that Danzig was trying to go that far with his metaphor, but if we were to apply this to the American War on Terror, who is Christopher Robin and who is the bear? Hmmmmm......

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dragonrider

I wasn't trying to link him to the GOP. I was saying he is currently an advisor to the pentagon. It's in the article you linked to

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Richard Danzig is the Sam Nunn Prize Fellow in International Security at the CSIS. He is also a consultant to the Department of Defense on terrorism, with a focus on bioterrorism. Dr. Danzig is a director of Human Genome Sciences Corporation, National Semiconductor Corporation, and Saffron Hill Ventures, a British venture capital fund.
Richard Danzig, Sam Nunn Prize Fellow, International Security Program

Good eye my friend...I missed that. Took a bit of digging but this is what I come up with. Apparently he is a consultant for the Dept. of Defense.

As for the "tipped" thing, I think they meant that as a news leak or something on that order....but that's just an assumption.

Have a good one!:s4:

Doesn't refer to a news tip in this case. They mean tip the same way they might mean "tapped" here. Danzig is one of the names they're going to send up the flagpole for a position as either the NSA or an undersecretary of some kind in the national security office IF Obama is elected. They're already beginning to vet some of those potential advisors and get them out in front of the public this far in advance with the messaging they want them to be spouting (hence the easy to understand metaphor about why there needs to be a new tact taken w/ the war). The same committee is also working on potential cabinet appointments. If it sounds presumptive and premature, just know that McCain's team is doing the exact same thing. This stuff starts once the candidates for the general election are identified.

Got this information earlier this evening from someone with the national DNC communications office. I am donating some pro bono communications time to the state office here in Texas, and so I asked a national contact about Danzig two days ago when this story first came up. He emailed me back an answer tonight.

The future source of energy is something all countries are faced with and as many have pointed out the realistic future is nuclear.
This brings about another question which is how can we justify banning countries from using nuclear power when it is the only solution to a world wide problem.
Who is going to dictate to the "unfriendly" nations and how many armed conflicts are we prepared to get involved in to prevent others acquiring the technology.
Threats are not going to be the solution as that can only lead to more conflict and loss of life .

There is a better way but it doesn't pay as well as warmongering.