Science and Politics

I would have to say I disagree strongly with the notion that science and politics are completely independent of each other. If we consider science to be the way the world is and politics the way the world should be than those two statements in themselves lead to acknowledgment of the other. When one says this is the way the world should be than they are also saying that it is not that way right now, making it clear that there is a way the world is. When one says that this is the way the world is, it is that way because of the decisions people make, decisions made on how they they think the world should be. Additionally you would not be able to have one without the other if the world is the way everyone would like it to be then there would be no need for politics , however this is not the case. Science is a fact and Politics are goals, you could not have a goal without knowing the facts of the situation or wanting to somehow change that which is.

Reponse to Weber's "Science as a Vocation"

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relations among science and politics (Christine Porcaro, Week 14, Reflective)

I believe that science and politics do mix and they should. I mean if science is trying to figure out how the world works/is and politics is looking at what the world should be, it seems to me that they need each other. I guess more specifically, politics needs science. Science promotes understanding of the world. For politics to work more successfully I think that it would be beneficial to understand how the world works. What shouldn't be done, is use politics has science. Trying to understand the world by having a preconceived notion of how it should be would give faulty results on how the world actually is which could be dangerous. I guess what I am saying is that politics and science cannot remain separate. We just have to make sure that science is understood so that when politics come into play people can make more informed decisions.

Terrorism Discussion, Week 13, Dialog

I feel that the discussion on Tuesday, while good, strayed off topic. The intent was to see how the world has changed after the attacks on 9-11, but the class got caught up on pointing out each others misuse of words. The focus should not have been whether or not drunk driving kills more people than the war in Iraq, but rather why we are targeted. We are targeted, because of our presence in the Middle East. I was hoping to have a discussion about if by responding to their hatred of our troops by sending more troops is really the best solution.

I realize our country holds the stance of not negotiating with terrorists, but I feel that doing the oppose of what they want is just going to strengthen their cause. For instance, if there is someone in Iraq who wasn't convinced that our presence in the Middle East was a negative thing but then they see US troops increase and their lives get worse, it isn't unreasonable for them to begin to protest our involvement, not matter what our intension really are. This isn't to say that the troops aren't there because they believe they are helping these people, the point is that the people don't think they are.


This next paragraph is in reference to the post I commented on earlier titled "Physical Victory is Better and Concessions." If the United States was capable of setting up a democracy in Iraq (as they say they can) I don't see how the Iraqi people could possibly accept this as a trustworthy government. Any country would be uneasy about a government facilitated by a major power, especially one that has been under the rule of major powers for a large period of its history (first the Ottoman empire, then the British). Their fear of being manipulated by another major power, let alone perhaps the first hegemony, is real and I don't see how it can be overcome in this situation.

Science and Politics (Kelsey Hunter, Week 14 Reaction)

I was a little disappointed our discussion didn't go further today in class, but I too like everyone was tired and worn out at the time. Also at the time I didn't really have an answer to whether science and politics should be kept separate. My answer is that they must interact, but I'm not sure if they can be practiced simultaneously by the same individual.

Let's say we see science as the way the world is- explanations for the world as it is- and politics as the way the world should be- actions taken to make the world change to fit personal beliefs. When I explain these concepts to myself in this way it seems obvious. A politician must take science into account before acting. Judgments about the way the world should be have to come from somewhere. In the most likely scenario (or at least I would hope) that the way someone decides how they think the world should be is based at least partly off the way the world is now. Also, that person must understand the scientific explanation- how and why the world is the way it is- in order to judge whether the world ought to be different or remain the same in the future. So maybe the scientist and politician are not the same person, but they at least must understand each other.

I think Halliday wanted us to understand this point. He described the tension between theory and politics (or science and politics), but he said that theory and policy making should go together. I learned in my Environmental Science class though that scientists and politicians speak different languages and often have a hard time of understanding each other. This is something that must be overcome, no matter what type of "science" we might talk about. This is also the reason I don't think the scientist and the politician can be the same person. Politics is about practical applications and sometimes science is too abstract or narrowly focused to apply to everyday situations.

"The Discreet Charms of Indian Terrorism" Week 13 Substantive

The author talks of a "Gandhian vision" which focuses on "politics as a dialogical encounter which, set within that moral univese, can reduce the area of human violence." (11)

Though I feel that Gandhi's view is respectable, I do not feel that it fits within the international system today. I feel politics post 9-11 have become more of a catalyst for violence than a reducer. Terrorists today use politics in what is called "spoiling" meaning they purposely target citizens in democratic countries, knowing that they will respond by electing leaders who will use violence in response. These leaders attack the areas with the terrorists, and end up killing citizens. These areas then allow terrorists to promote, in this case, anti-American sentiment and allows terrorist organizations to gather support for their cause.
There is also the case of corrupt leadership or promoting violence to ensure personal goals, such as oil revenues, rather than for diplomatic or humanitarian purposes. For this reason, I believe the war on terror has made politics a catalyst of violence.

Physical Victory is Better and Concessions

The class discussion yesterday about terrorism was an interesting one for me mostly because I disagreed with a lot of what was said. To me it seemed that there was a lot of contradiction and idealist talk that I felt was unrealistic and wrong. The idea that terrorist like those in Al Qaeda are motivated to kill Americans is because we are a consumer culture and can buy more than them does not hold much weight with me, mostly because it is wrong. Al Qaeda attacks the US with the express purpose of ejecting our influence from the region so that they can overthrow the “un-Muslim” governments of many states in the Middle East and establish a new Caliphate from which they can expand their brand of extremist Islam to the rest of the world. Salafists believe that Islam should be the world’s religion but before it can be they must take back historically Muslim lands from oppressive un-Muslim rulers. With this in mind I do not feel that Afghanistan or Iraq now are overreactions to this type of terrorism. Afghanistan because it was the place from which 9/11 was planned and Al Qaeda members were trained. How could the US allow Afghanistan to continue to function in this way after 9/11? Invasion was necessary to change this state of affairs because the terrorists there were not going to stop using Afghanistan as a base just because we would have liked them to stop. Iraq is more complicated because of the controversy of the initial invasion and the reasoning behind it, but that is a debate that I believe is unimportant to the future of Iraq since Al Qaeda has made it a point to fight the US in Iraq and regardless of how we got there Al Qaeda has decided to stand and fight us there now. In this regard I would like to point out that the so-called Surge strategy in Iraq is working to perfection. American forces there recently recovered a map drawn by now dead Al Qaeda leader ABU Musab Al-Zarqawi which outlines how Al Qaeda moved men, weapons, explosives, and money around Baghdad. US forces used this map to cut off these routes one by one forcing the insurgents into the desert surrounding the city where the 30,000 surge forces were waiting to pick them off. Now days pass without bombings in the city which has not happened yet in Iraq until this point. Think for a second, how long has it been since you have turned on the news and heard about a massive car bombing in Iraq? This by the way is all reported by Fox News at the following link http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312343,00.html?sPage=fnc.world/iraq. This peace will create an opportunity for the Iraqi government to take control and move forward instilling confidence in the Iraqi people in their government. The US strategy to pacify Iraq is working and if allowed to succeed, it will provide in the end a safe and stable democracy in the Middle East that will go a long way towards hurting the terrorist cause and presenting a favorable view of the US in the Middle East. What my point is is that I believe that physically defeating Al Qaeda and other terrorists in the Middle East will do more to damage their cause and ability to attack the US then making concessions will because that will only embolden terrorists towards their ultimate goal of ejecting the US from the Middle East and expanding radical Islam to the entire world.