Incompetence is a better explanation than conspiracy in most human activity.
Peter BergenRead
Pakistan's key leaders have succumbed to the assassin's bullet or bomb or the hangman's noose, and the country has seen four military coups since its birth in 1947. Yet the Pakistani polity has limped on.
Interpretation
Despite political turmoil and violence, Pakistan has managed to survive as a state.
This quote highlights the challenges faced by Pakistan, including political assassinations and military coups, yet it underscores the resilience of the nation and its ability to persist despite frequent crises. It suggests that while leadership may falter through violent means, the country itself continues to endure, reflecting a complex political landscape marked by both instability and perseverance.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the stability of nations in crisis during a political science seminar.
Incompetence is a better explanation than conspiracy in most human activity.
Adding to your list of enemies is never a sound strategy, yet ISIS' ferocious campaign against the Shia, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, and Muslims who don't precisely share its views has united every ethnic and religious group in Syria and Iraq against them.
The deep problems that afflict the Middle East are not easy to fix, but they must be dealt with if we are not to see a son of ISIS, or even a grandson of ISIS, developing in the years to come.
The diagnosis that poverty, lack of education, or lack of opportunities have much to do with terrorism requires a fundamentally optimistic view of human nature. This diagnosis leads to the prognosis that all we need to do to solve the terrorism problem is to create societies that are less poor, better educated and have more opportunities.
If the Arab Spring was a large nail in the coffin of al-Qaeda's ideology, the death of bin Laden was an equally large nail in the coffin of al-Qaeda the organization.
The Sunni militants that make up ISIS are not the underlying problem in Syria and Iraq, but rather they are a symptom of other deeper problems.
I still passionately support comprehensive immigration reform legislation with a path to full and equal citizenship.
I don't see any possibility of Britain and the U.S. allowing a sovereign independent Iraq; that's almost inconceivable.
Political reform need not go hand in hand with economic liberalization.. I hold unconventional views about this.. I do not believe if you are a libertarian, full of diverse opinions, full of competing ideas in the market place, full of sound and fury, therefore you will succeed.
Foreign policy is an explicitly amoral enterprise.
Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.
The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
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