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Technorati9/11 Plus Seven
The events of the past seven years have yielded a definitive judgment on the strategy that the Bush administration conceived in the wake of 9/11 to wage its so-called Global War on Terror. That strategy has failed, massively and irrevocably. To acknowledge that failure is to confront an urgent national priority: to scrap the Bush approach in favor of a new national security strategy that is realistic and sustainable -- a task that, alas, neither of the presidential candidates seems able to recognize or willing to take up.
On September 30, 2001, President Bush received from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a memorandum outlining U.S. objectives in the War on Terror. Drafted by Rumsfeld's chief strategist Douglas Feith, the memo declared expansively: "If the war does not significantly change the world's political map, the U.S. will not achieve its aim." That aim, as Feith explained in a subsequent missive to his boss, was to "transform the Middle East and the broader world of Islam generally."
Rumsfeld and Feith were co-religionists: Along with other senior Bush administration officials, they worshipped in the Church of the Indispensable Nation, a small but intensely devout Washington-based sect formed in the immediate wake of the Cold War. Members of this church shared an exalted appreciation for the efficacy of American power, especially hard power. The strategy of transformation emerged as a direct expression of their faith.
The members of this church were also united by an equally exalted estimation of their own abilities. Lucky the nation to be blessed with such savvy and sophisticated public servants in its hour of need!
The goal of transforming the Islamic world was nothing if not bold. It implied far-reaching political, economic, social, and even cultural adjustments. At a press conference on September 18, 2001, Rumsfeld spoke bluntly of the need to "change the way that they live." Rumsfeld didn't specify who "they" were. He didn't have to. His listeners understood without being told: "They" were Muslims inhabiting a vast arc of territory that stretched from Morocco in the west all the way to the Moro territories of the Southern Philippines in the east.
Yet boldly conceived action, if successfully executed, offered the prospect of solving a host of problems. Once pacified (or "liberated"), the Middle East would cease to breed or harbor anti-American terrorists. Post-9/11 fears about weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of evil-doers could abate. Local regimes, notorious for being venal, oppressive, and inept, might finally get serious about cleaning up their acts. Liberal values, including rights for women, would flourish. A part of the world perpetually dogged by violence would enjoy a measure of stability, with stability promising not so incidentally to facilitate exploitation of the region's oil reserves. There was even the possibility of enhancing the security of Israel. Like a powerful antibiotic, the Bush administration's strategy of transformation promised to clean out not simply a single infection but several; or to switch metaphors, a strategy of transformation meant running the table.
When it came to implementation, the imperative of the moment was to think big. Just days after 9/11, Rumsfeld was charging his subordinates to devise a plan of action that had "three, four, five moves behind it." By December 2001, the Pentagon had persuaded itself that the first move -- into Afghanistan -- had met success. The Bush administration wasted little time in pocketing its ostensible victory. Attention quickly shifted to the second move, seen by insiders as holding the key to ultimate success: Iraq.
Fix Iraq and moves three, four, and five promised to come easily. Writing in the Weekly Standard, William Kristol and Robert Kagan got it exactly right: "The president's vision will, in the coming months, either be launched successfully in Iraq, or it will die in Iraq."
The point cannot be emphasized too strongly: Saddam Hussein's (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction and his (imaginary) ties to Al Qaeda never constituted the real reason for invading Iraq -- any more than the imperative of defending Russian "peacekeepers" in South Ossetia explains the Kremlin's decision to invade Georgia.
Iraq merely offered a convenient place from which to launch a much larger and infinitely more ambitious project. "After Hussein is removed," enthused Hudson Institute analyst Max Singer, "there will be an earthquake through the region." Success in Iraq promised to endow the United States with hitherto unprecedented leverage. Once the United States had made an example of Saddam Hussein, as the influential neoconservative Richard Perle put it, dealing with other ne'er-do-wells would become simple: "We could deliver a short message, a two-word message: 'You're next.'" Faced with the prospect of sharing Saddam's fate, Syrians, Iranians, Sudanese, and other recalcitrant regimes would see submission as the wiser course -- so Perle and others believed.
Members of the administration tried to imbue this strategic vision with a softer ideological gloss. "For 60 years," Condoleezza Rice explained to a group of students in Cairo, "my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East -- and we achieved neither." No more. "Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people." The world's Muslims needed to know that the motives behind the U.S. incursion into Iraq and its actions elsewhere in the region were (or had, at least, suddenly become) entirely benign. Who knows? Rice may even have believed the words she spoke.
In either case -- whether the strategy of transformation aimed at dominion or democratization -- today, seven years after it was conceived, we can assess exactly what it has produced. The answer is clear: next to nothing, apart from squandering vast resources and exacerbating the slide toward debt and dependency that poses a greater strategic threat to the United States than Osama bin Laden ever did.
In point of fact, hardly had the Pentagon commenced its second move, its invasion of Iraq, when the entire strategy began to unravel. In Iraq, President Bush's vision of regional transformation did die, much as Kagan and Kristol had feared. No amount of CPR credited to the so-called surge will revive it. Even if tomorrow Iraq were to achieve stability and become a responsible member of the international community, no sensible person could suggest that Operation Iraqi Freedom provides a model to apply elsewhere. Senator John McCain says that he'll keep U.S. combat troops in Iraq for as long as it takes. Yet even he does not propose "solving" any problems posed by Syria or Iran (much less Pakistan) by employing the methods that the Bush administration used to "solve" the problem posed by Iraq. The Bush Doctrine of preventive war may remain nominally on the books. But, as a practical matter, it is defunct.
The United States will not change the world's political map in the ways top administration officials once dreamed of. There will be no earthquake that shakes up the Middle East -- unless the growing clout of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas in recent years qualifies as that earthquake. Given the Pentagon's existing commitments, there will be no threats of "you're next" either -- at least none that will worry our adversaries, as the Russians have neatly demonstrated. Nor will there be a wave of democratic reform -- even Rice has ceased her prattling on that score. Islam will remain stubbornly resistant to change, except on terms of its own choosing. We will not change the way "they" live.
In a book that he co-authored during the run-up to the invasion, Kristol confidently declared, "The mission begins in Baghdad, but it does not end there." In fact, the Bush administration's strategy of transformation has ended. It has failed miserably. The sooner we face up to that failure, the sooner we can get about repairing the damage.
34 Comments so far
Show AllLet's face it, we all know that 9/11 was a staged attack meant to justify the NeoCons imperial aims of controlling the Middle East and its vast oil wealth. That 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis was no coincidence. The Bush and al-Saud families have been hand in glove with each other for decades and there was doubtless some covert planning going on for years between them to achieve certain aims. Read Craig Unger's excellent book, "House of Bush, House of Saud" and it readily becomes apparent that there's more to this story than meets the eye.
Bush and the NeoCons MUST be tried for war crimes. If they are never held accountable for their actions, then it will, by precedence, leave a very dangerous Weapon of Mass Destruction in the hands of all future presidents that they can pretty much do as they please with no accountability whatsoever. In essence, it will mean the death of our Constitution, and by default, our country.
And that would be a sad day, indeed. Because as it is right now, we HAVE lost our country and our Constitution and only WE THE PEOPLE can bring it back. But only if we get our oversized backsides off of our sofas and out of our oversized SUV's and DO SOMETHING.
Sally UU! Good to have you back!
The 15 Saudis (if indeed those 19 they told us about were the actual perpetrators - on 9/10 the FBI/CIA/NSA/Condi Rice/Cheney knew nothing, on 9/12 we suddenly had a complete dossier on all 19) all had their US passports issued to them through a CIA operation in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Osama bin Laden was trained by the CIA.
James Earl Ray was on the CIA payroll.
Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA operative.
Anyone CIA a pattern?
snydly
The purpose of W&Co's war of terror was/is not to catch or destroy terrorists, but to concentrate the wealth and power of the status quo while looting the treasury and wrecking the government for the benefit of the multi-national corporations.
And they have done a masterful job of it.
RT DRURY: Tragically true.
ERQ: Good post.
POET: Excellent question.
Have any of you ever heard of the tail wagging the dog?
Only one commentator namely MiMiCcS has pointed out that the consequences of 9/11 match conveniently the prerequisites of “Clean Break”, the strategy report issued by a group led by Richard Perle and included Feith , that was commissioned directly by the Israeli government.”
In fact, these individuals were both key members of the Bush administration and the powerful American Enterprise Institute (which contributed 27 advisors and functionaries to the Bush administration) and were part of a Israeli think tank called The Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (IASPS):
http://www.israeleconomy.org/index.php
In a report done in 1996, before the formation of PNAC, which was called "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm" they listed Israeli goals and concerns:
REMOVING SADDAM HUSSIEN:
"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right"
MIDDLE EAST STABILITY:
"Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites in their efforts to redefine Iraq,"
CONTROL IRAQ, HELP ISRAEL:
"Were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najf to help Israel wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hezbollah, Iran, and Syria."
MANAGE AND CONSTRAIN US REACTION:
"To anticipate U.S. reactions and plan ways to manage and constrain those reactions, Prime Minister Netanyahu can formulate the policies and stress themes he favors in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the Cold War which apply well to Israel."
Link to the full report:
http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm
Can you see how these became America’s interests? A little country of 7.3 million in the Middle East is subsidized by more than 5.5 billion a year by the US in foreign aid, armed, guarantees, (http://www.washington-report.org/html/us_aid_to_israel.htm#Lies) and is licensed to cause war crimes and mayhem, while being protected from one and all at the UN Security Council and General Assembly or anywhere for that matter. The US is Israel’s well trained attack dog, kept on a short leach. So that is why Obama or McCain or even any senator or representative has literally to be vetted, approved and branded for AIPAC. Who is advocating acts of war on Iran?
So much for American freedom and democracy! You are free to do what is good for the Mafia that runs Israel. Why does 46-48% of the US budget have to be dedicated to more than half the military killing machine in the world? It is firstly in defence of a terrorist state daily extending an illegal occupation.
Here are the code words surprisingly not used in the article or this comment: Zionist, Conspiracy, Peace, Road Map, Wall.
Well, maybe you did not use "codewords", but that will not help you. Some whining, racist bigot will falsely label you as an antisemite. Just wait.......
Did the war strategy fail? Or did the war IDEA fail? War is part of a failed ideology. The USA has failed in the seven years since 9/11 to create a geopolitical environment of peace and stability. Instead, the USA has made a MUCH hotter tinderbox of this world that will spontaneously leap into combustion at some unpredictable time. Even the extreme right fully expect another 9/11. The right WANTS another 9/11.
The way to change the animus behind the deeply misguided policies noted in this article, is for the American people to demand that a different vision of our world and its future, guide our foreign policies. If an increasingly powerful grassroots-based movement along such lines does not develop, we can expect "more of the same."
I would like to recommend that everyone who would like to see our foreign policy again become something admired by the external world, endorse the new Universal Declaration of Human Rights petition recently created by The Elders (which group includes Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Mohammed Yunus, Mary Robinson and Kofi Annan) at the following address:
http://everyhumanhasrights.org/universal-declaration/read-it
Secondly, I would like to recommend, for the same reasons, endorsement of the following United Nations Association "Declaration Against Pre-emptive War" petition - which also urges an enlightened sea-change to US foreign policy;
www.UNASD-petition.org
It is only via more and more Americans becoming meaningfully involved - including putting our "John Hancocks" behind such new and better visions - that substantive change for the better will occur.
The success of the neocons plans are unbounded. Unfortunately that success is measured , not in the objectives of the criminally ignorant cabal that pushed us into a war, but in the destabilisation of a nation ( that of Islam) that has 1.4 billion members. While most of those are peaceful and nonviolent the image of the USA as a blundering invader, violent and ignorant, has helped destabilise the several governments in that region, has forced the factions that call for extreme reaction to gain credibility, and has committed this nation of ours to a path that will lead to horrible defeats and decades or more of violence.
We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
LawyerAlex---
Could not agree with you more! Except for one thing. Where is the evidence that Bin Laden was behind 9/11?
I intend to waste my vote in Indiana.
-30-
Osama bin Laden succeeded brilliantly on 9/11/01. Not so much by killing over 3000 people and destroying billions of dollars' worth of infrastructure, but by inducing us to send our troops into places where his allies and fellow fanatics could slay and maim them, by causing us to waste over $3 trillion and cripple our economy, by getting us to slaughter and torture innocent Muslims and generating huge numbers of new terrorists, and by undermining the very legacy of freedom we claim to be defending. Like the AIDS virus which uses the body's own mechanisms to destroy itself, Osama's terrorist meme found an ideal target in a Machiavellian, corrupt, sadistic and feeble-minded administration and congressional majority.
Now even Obama has a moderate infection with this mental virus, and Biden, McCain and Palin are hopelessly intellectually crippled. We have become the evil we so deplore, just as the courageous, prescient Rep. Barbara Lee warned us we would.
Alex
And they still haven't found the guy who said at first "I didn't do it" and who later in video footage supplied by the CIA said "I did do it". Time to call a good cop, I say.
Anyone who believes the objectives listed in this article for going into Iraq and Afghanistan is insane or worse. With Professors like these, and tuitions being what they are, thats criminal.
Iraq and Afghanistan were resounding successes based on the real objectives.
The professor obviously did not read Clean Break. This was a strategy report issued by a group led by Richard Perle and included Feith , that was commissioned directly by the Israeli government. The report called for among other things the removal of Saddam Hussein. They just hired us out to do the job, the fee was we had to give them tens of billions more than we already provide to keep them safe.
There is of course the oil issue, wanting to destabilize the region, positioning for the next wars against Pakistan, Russia and Iran, getting poppy production up, positioning for the pipeline in Afghanistan when the time is right, destroying the national guards equipment to make states more dependent on the Federal government, etc. Saddam had a lot of dirt on Bushs daddy, and had to be silenced. The Ayatollahs in Iran also have a lot of dirt on us, like how we brought them to power and the hostage situation that involved Bush.
As Bush said, Mission accomplished (but the mission is quite different than what you are told).
MiMiCcS sez:
"Anyone who believes the objectives listed in this article for going into Iraq and Afghanistan is insane or worse...Saddam had a lot of dirt on Bushs daddy, and had to be silenced. The Ayatollahs in Iran also have a lot of dirt on us, like how we brought them to power and the hostage situation that involved Bush."
**************
I want to believe you but...what kept either Saddam or the Ayatollahs from properly distributing such embarassing knowledge in order to survive ahy unexpected demise? Saddam had months before his capture by US forces to get this stuff out. The Ayatollahs have had 29 years since the revolution to put their stuff out--what happened?
Poet
There is stuff out there. The English language versions don't get circulated widely.
Most Americans don't know much dirt about their own CIA, in spite of the fact that it is out there. How often do you read real facts about the CIA in the newspaper.
This professor has bought the war on terror hook line and sinker because he is not really capable of thinking for himself. In order to stay within what he perceives to be the consensus, he accepts the necessity of a war on terror but doesn't stop to consider whether it is a rational concept.
Military historians have recognized that war is obsolete since the introduction of nuclear weapons. The war on terror planners do not accept this judgement and continue to believe in a policy of limit war. This is illogical and ultimately self-destructive, but they have no choice because war is all they're good at. They have no choice.
But Bracevich has a choice, being a purportedly rational man, an intellectual leader, as he purports to be. He can examine the argument for war and subject it to a reasoned review. He does not. If the consensus was to hop around on one leg, he'd be hopping, too, but inform the world at the same time, he's got a better way to hop.
Anyone who accepts the official story of 911 is self-deluded. There has been time enough to examine the evidence and recognize it for what it was: a false flag operation designed to create the political will for the "long war".
PNAC, lots of NeoCon names........be careful, Col Bacevich, some whining, racist bigot will falsely label you as an antisemite........they just can not stand the truth!
Bacevich may be somewhat premature in his conclusion.
Many of those who carried out the Bush policies are still in power. There are permanent bases in Iraq after all; the US isn't leaving. I find it hard to see as a total failure from their point of view. A better measure of "failure" would be a war crimes trial of the Bush cabinet.
If Obama wins he seems to headed in the direction of a Clintonian foreign policy. So the narrative will be loftier, more articulate and will mollify many. They will try to bring the US back to our imagined "city on the hill" status. Gone will be the bellicose Bush/Cheney rhetoric, but remember that Bill Clinton was no Gandhi. Will the actual polices be that different?
I would prefer that "we" shed our "great nation" status and just try to get along - for the first time in history.
That would be unAmerican of us.
And the point of this article is?? Anyone??? Bacevich is a little too late and a little too smug with his brilliant analysis. I read the PNAC docs in 1999/2000 and when the WTC fell over, I knew exactly what happened.
He should have known, too, and said so then - ---->>>>>> before Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz and Bush invaded and occupied Iraq, murdering who knows how many innocent people, wasting our national treasure - our sons and daughters - as well as trillions of dollars (when it's all said and done), and the future of this nation that still had the possibility to truly lead and do good on this Earth.
It is never too late to speak the truth before the next war, especially since the Iran war drums keep getting louder. Evewn Obama calls Iran a rogue nation.
How can a whole nation of 70,000,000 folks be rogues? Maybe a rogue government or president, but the whole nation?
I have to say looking back the cold war was the answer to world peace. America under the cold war didn't act like the police of the world, you are for us or a against us policy. Russia in a way outsmarted the USA by saying you win. Now the cold war is maybe starting again but Russia has the upper hand it isn't starting 10 trillion in the hole. Trouble for the world America doesn't have a play book they have just one play and it fails with every snap of the ball. Time for America to not only change the coach in the next election ( both Obama and McCain are not the answer) but USA has to change the owners the people that control the coach.
I agree. With the end of the Cold War, America should have returned to the little isolationist bubble that prevented it from entering WWII at the outset. There was no enemy and no need to police the world. This was not possible however because of what Eisenhower warned of, the Military Industrial Complex. Arms producing corporations had become so big and powerful during the Cold War arms race that they began to control the executive and legislative branches of government.
The ungodly amounts of capital wasted on the military during the 1990's could have gone to internal infrastructure, income tax decreases, tax credits for researching viable alternative sources of energy, education spending, universal healthcare, infrastructure like proper levies for N.O., etc. The entire world would benefit from the US looking inwards and fixing its problems instead of looking outwards and trying to exert its culture and values internationally.
The main failing of all this is the US general populace failing to rise up and demand a viable presidential candidate who would decrease military spending in favor of infrastructure and social programs.
WHY DID THE US NEED TO SPEND MORE THAN ALL OTHER NATIONS COMBINED ON ARMS IN THE 1990s? THERE WAS NO ENEMY. THEY COULD HAVE CLOSED ALL THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY BASES, BUT KEPT THE NUKES. THAT ALONG WITH GEOGRAPHY WOULD HAVE KEPT THE CONTINENTAL US SAFE FROM ATTACK FOR THE NEXT 100 YEARS AT LEAST.
The U.S. has been consistent in it's spending for military purposes since WWII at approximately 46-48% of it's budget. The 1990's reflected the Republican Party's belief that the years since Nixon had reduced the military effectiveness of the U.S. Reagan's promise was to re-establish that perceived deficiency by allegedly driving the USSR into bankruptcy by the government's drive to perfect a 'Starwar's' program race the USSR could not hope to compete in let alone win. Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations pursued the economic advantage opened by the Reagan economics of 'supply side trickle down,' as he cut taxes and began to dismantle the parts of the government that helped people. In one day he negated the entire membership, and actual working structure, of airport traffic controllers in the country. He proceeded to eliminate out patient support, and hospitalized support, for 3/4 of the mentally ill in this country.
I don't want to continue this. It's all documented. HW Bush's Middle East collusions, his furthering of propaganda about public education, welfare, etc. Clinton continued the lies and ignored every truth, Rhwanda, Dufur, S. Africa. The sellout of NAFTA and CAFTA. But military spending was untouchable.
There was no drafting of young men at shit wages. It was a 'professional military' requiring a real salary with giant re-up bonuses. This enabled the rest of the citizenry to believe itself a moral cheesecloth, a ubiquitous rationalization for non-involvement and disinterest in the machinations of empire and resource abduction by force.
'Politics are so boring.' Of course, when you have no required flesh to subject to the result of poor politics. With the silence came private paramilitary development, domestic security technology, etc. While the rest of us put up with joblessness, underemployment, wasted college educations in the sciences, computer engineering, animation, civil engineering etc. The industrial sector was ruined. Literally millions of people doing nothing. But the government says 4.6% unemployment. The reality no one knows. People receiving unemployment checks are the 4.6%. It is estimated the underground economy of this country is over a trillion dollars. If you, by now, do not know what that is...
Actually, the GWOT, ostensibly created after 9-11, was a putting into place the Project for a New American Century's plan for total global dominance of the US for the next century. 9-11 was the "New Pearl Harbor" needed to convince the American public to go along with the plan.
How's it working out for them?
Rumsfield truly believed that the US could militarily dominate the world with mercenaries and drones, along with other advanced weapons. They still have plans for computer attacks, space domination and pandemics. They're not done yet.
The other 6,000,000 people in the world don't seem to want to go along with the plan, though. Can the US kill them all? I wouldn't put it past them to try.
The thing is, the ruling class doesn't seem to realize that they need us to provide them with the luxury they're accustomed to. Remember Reagan's plan for nuclear war? It involved printing change-of-address cards for every American to use after they had evacuated to the rural areas. They believed that the post office would still be functioning after nuclear war! The same people are running things now.
They are insane, and we're at their mercy, and Americans are dithering over which corporate candidate to pick. I agree with jlocke. If you want to participate in voting, vote for Cynthia McKinney
racom40
I'd sooner write in 'deputy dog' as McKinney. She does not have a sterling record. Why not write in Dennis Kucinich? The sad truth is there are only the two with a chance to take the whitehouse, the political game is fixed to shut out the voice of the people.
Pssst I think you missed three zeros: 6,000,000,000
bushco is insane
period
9/11 was a tv show
none of it was real
the us is the aids of the world
now the staggering imperial death machine is reduced to kill the iraqis, kill the afghans, kill the iranis, and the list goes on
throw black boys in prison
bob woodward teases us this week with tales of the new strategy in iraq - guess what it is - killing, killing and more killing
assassins
you people are seriously fucked up
i mean seriously
cheers, b
One has to ask, were the neo-cons always this insane? To think that effective use of violence against people would cause them not to hate those who used violence against them.
That's like arguing that gang rape leads to 'true love'.
How on earth did people ever fall for this sort of bushit.
It is not meant to be realistic. That part is the sales pitch of the PR machine. The realpoltik of the Bushcos is down and dirty, who gives a fuk how many die. The realpoltik means making really difficult decisions for the whole world. If certain populations must be culled in the process (Sunnis), then so be it. The end always justifies the means in a pragmatic world rule, especially when you are God's chosen people.
This is the Henry Kissenger methodology at work. Talk about elitist crap from hell!
A war for peace is like sex for virginity.
-“To acknowledge that failure is to confront an urgent national priority: to scrap the Bush approach in favor of a new national security strategy that is realistic and sustainable -- a task that, alas, neither of the presidential candidates seems able to recognize or willing to take up.”
Notice the use of the word “neither”. The author is limiting the thinking to tweedle-dumb and tweedle-dee. In this frame of thought, of course things look hopeless. Have you heard of the Green party?
-“Senator John McCain says that he'll keep U.S. combat troops in Iraq for as long as it takes.”
News flash: So does Obama. Guess which party is for an end of the occupation, hint: It’s not the Democrats.
-“Yet even he does not propose "solving" any problems posed by Syria or Iran (much less Pakistan) by employing the methods that the Bush administration used to "solve" the problem posed by Iraq.”
It funny how Syria, Iran and Pakistan don’t pose “problems” for Norway and Austria. The US’s problem is not the outside world, it is the corporate party.
The question now is can this change the way WE live?
I doubt it. If you look at the patterns of history. Some wise man once said, The truth is always first opposed with violence, then ridiculed, before finally being accepted as self-evident. Heliocentric theory and germ theory are great examples.
It will take a new paradigm to wake us out of our slumber and even then we must survive violence and ridicule...