In game development subtlety has to take a back seat to directness. This is particularly true in algorithms where many developers with dither around trying to tweak their algorithms to the nth degree while the more successful ones will come with more straight forward approaches that do the job.

That isn't to say directness is superior to subtlety. It's just that the successful developer knows when the situation calls for subtlety and when the situation calls for directness. The same is true in diplomacy. Diplomats tend to love to dither with nuanced approaches. Lakhdar Brahimi seems typical. He's the new special UN envoy to Iraq. In an interview, he said that there is never a situation where military force is preferable to diplomacy.  Really?

I've often wondered just how knowledgeable on human history diplomats like Lakhdar Brahimi really are.  In May 1941, Great Britain was faced with a nightmare scenario. Germany had overrun essentially all of Europe. France had signed an armistice and was effectively out of the war. Hitler was making peace soundings.  Should Britain have accepted Hitler's offer?  After all, peace is always preferable to war isn't it? At least according to Lakhdar Brahimi. There was no diplomatic scenario one could envision in which Hitler's gains could be turned back.  France's official government was now on Germany's side at that point. The United States was still locked in isolationism. Luckily for the world, Britain was led by Churchill and not Lakhdar Brahimi. Churchill lacked the subtlety of a Brahimi. He saw things more "black and white". He recognize that there are bad people out there. And bad people do bad things for reasons that civilized people can't understand.

World War II wasn't some misunderstanding that could have been avoided. Hitler wanted to exterminate large swaths of the population and preferred to use military force to do so. The only way to defeat Nazi Germany was with military force -- not diplomacy. 

Fast forward to today and based on the words of UN diplomats and the chattering classes in some parts of Europe and you would think we had reached the end of history. If only Israel was more reasonable. If only the Americans would negotiate harder with the insurgents in Iraq.  If only Americans would understand "why they hate you". But that is all wishful thinking because ultimately, there are bad people out there that not only are willing to murder as many people as they can to achieve their objectives, but murder is their preferred mechanism for reaching those objectives.

There is a tendency by some to believe that it is only Americans and in particular the Bush administration that uses violence to achieve objectives. They believe that the opponents of the United States are simply misunderstood and left with no alternatives. What they don't realize is that these opponents come from a totally different way of thinking. To a secularist, killing is abhorrent because they believe deep down that death is the end of the line.  But to the Islamo-fascists, death is merely another step in a long journey and hence do not fear killing or being killed as a secularist might. When dealing with people like Lakhdar Brahimi they have a huge advantange because they believe in the most direct of strategies possible -- violence.  Whereas Lakhdar Brahimi has already forsworn using violence to achieve any of his objectives.

What people need to wake up to is that there are bad people out there. Lots of them. And if you think Bush or Cheney or whoever your American boogeyman is, they're angels compared to what we're facing over in the middle east. The terrorists would not think twice about exterminating every man, woman, and child in Europe and the United States had they the means. Luckily, they don't. Our job, is to make sure that they don't get the means. And one way of doing that is to to to have local allies devoted towards a peaceful, democratic culture that is more interested in improving the lives of their own people rather than snuffing out those they hate.

That is why people like Lakhdar Brahimi are not terribly helpful in Iraq right now. Hard work has to be done. Fallujah has to be taken and it will probably require the most direct of approaches to be taken -- violence. Lots of it. Brahimi needs to understand that we're in a part of the world that values strength over nuanced approaches. Courage over subtlety. Power over compassion.

History has shown, regrettably, over and over, that in order for diplomacy to work, both parties have to be committed to a diplomatic solution. The insurgents in Iraq are, generally, not interested in diplomacy.