Tom Friedman nails it in today's op-ed. The problem isn't that we can't think like the bad guys, it's that we're not thinking like good guys.
I don't blame President Bush at all for his failure to imagine evil. I blame him for something much worse: his failure to imagine good.
I blame him for squandering all the positive feeling in America after 9/11, particularly among young Americans who wanted to be drafted for a great project that would strengthen America in some lasting way — a Manhattan project for energy independence. [New York Times]
Amidst new reminders that we are not out of the woods, in terms of security -- as, of course, we can never be -- Friedman's essay should ring a lot of bells. Some of the best minds of our generation are idling right now, waiting for the economic engine to start turning over again. I ran into quite a few of them last week at the ETECH conference. Some are working on 9/11-inspired security projects, but with no real sense of satisfaction or hope.
A "Manhattan project for energy independence" is one example of the kind of initiative that could raise hopes, enhance security, and put idle minds, CPU cycles, and bandwidth to work again.
Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2002/05/19.html#a252