U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who until now showed that he understood the folly of the preemptive war doctrine, just crossed the line into Rumsfeldian stupidity. Instead of addressing the context and forming a new paradigm of strategic policy for the world, Gates hearkened back to the failures of arming proxy-states to further U.S. interests.

Here’s Gates’ answer to how we can convince Iran to give up on their nuclear ambitions:

“Our Arab friends and allies can strengthen their security capabilities…I think [it] sends the signal to the Iranians that this path they’re on is not going to advance Iranian security but in fact could weaken it.”

“[S]trengthen their security capabilities” is just a euphemism for “buy more weapons from the U.S.”

And more to the point, “Arab friends and allies” is only referring to the dictators in the region with a record of human rights abuses, torture, corruption, and complete disdain for democracy (think: the Saudi royal family, Hosni Mubarak).

So really what Gates meant was “the autocratic U.S. agents in the region should get more guns, bombs, and missiles.”

Haven’t we been down this road before? Hasn’t the U.S. already tried the “give one side more guns than the other” tactic, foolishly believing that more weapons somehow equals peace?

In the 1980s after Iran’s revolution, our answer to combat the “threat” in Iran was to arm the secular Arab dictator next door with a modern military machine – complete with biological and chemical weapons (including weapons-grade anthrax and botulism right up until Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990).

Seems that idea didn’t turn out too well – not for the Iranians (estimates of more than 500,000 dead), nor the Iraqis (300,000+ dead), nor for the Kuwaitis (invaded and occupied in 1991), the Israelis (SCUD attacks during the First Gulf War), nor the Shiites, the Kurds, etc., etc. In fact, we’re still paying the price for blindly arming a power-hungry dictator with WMDs.

So what makes Gates think that this strategy will work any better now? Does he really believe that putting more weapons in the hands of – let’s face it – only two nations (Saudi Arabia & Egypt) is the answer? The same two nations from which many of the 9/11 hijackers came? Two nations whose complete lack of freedom has created major terrorist networks inside their own borders they can’t control? (Two weeks ago a suicide bomber nearly killed Saudi Arabia’s anti-terror chief.)

You can file this one away with the “new strategy” in Afghanistan (new = more weapons, more troops, more bombs – how original).

Is no one in Washington paying attention anymore? Have we decided to just assume that when any strategy fails, it must have been because we didn’t fire enough rounds of ammunition?

If we are ever to progress, we need to revolutionize America’s world view and develop something truly “new” instead of just supersizing the same failed military tactics.

A major revision of our worldview begins with acknowledging context – and this is a role for the media. We tune into the news not to hear some idiot tell us their talking points and instigate blind anger, but to understand the causes and effects of what is happening in our world.

This requires, first and foremost, that our journalists stop focusing on the sensational and spectacle, but instead on the economic, social, and geopolitical factors that are at the root of contemporary events.

We have to stop seeing the world through a prism of isolation, and begin to acknowledge that violence, terrorism, and war don’t just materialize out of thin air.

Insurgents/rebels/militias (whatever you want to call them) in Nigeria aren’t just out to make trouble – they’re pissed that multi-national oil companies are pumping a valuable natural resource out from under them (land that they have lived on for generations) and exporting the profits out of Africa with little concern for the poverty, environmental destruction, and corruption that such profit-taking requires.

Yet any news stories rarely look at this context – they simply report that more crazy black people in Nigeria have taken a hostage or attacked a pipeline (and we are left to assume it’s because they “hate progress”).

[...nearly $30 billion in annual profits - not bad, considering they are pumping some of it from a country where per capita GDP is $1,500...]

We need our journalists to show us that religion is not the cause, but merely a convenient tool used by would-be despots to gain power.

Somalia isn’t a haven for Islamic militias and would-be terrorists because they are Muslim – it’s a shithole because of desertification and the consequential lack of suitable land for agriculture that causes food shortages and eliminates income opportunities. Now even their coastline is preyed upon by fishing vessels from European and Asian countries. The warlords that seek to benefit financially and politically from this chaos use religion as a rallying cry because few people are willing to kill indiscriminately over fish or sorghum.

However, the news just reports that more crazy black people (this time Muslim) are hijacking and killing to fulfill their jihad (and we are left to assume it’s because Islam is a violent religion…or so we’ve been told – repeatedly).

Our journalists must show us that some of the worst crimes against humanity are not because of our racial or ethnic differences, but the result of human pressures on ever-dwindling resources.

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda wasn’t about one tribe killing another over historical hatred – it was about a crowded nation left with little land to grow food, raise a family, and hand down to their descendants. But the political leaders that instigated the genocide (notably, through talk radio…) knew few people would be willing to hack their neighbor to death with a machete over where to put a fencepost. So they used tribe, ethnicity, and race, which is why in areas where there were no Tutsis to kill, an equal number of Hutus were killed instead.

But the news media just reported (and still reports) it as more crazy black people killing because of “race” (because when Africans kill each other, it must be over ethnicity/tribal affiliation – but when we kill Iraqis, Afghans, or Pakistanis, of course, that has nothing to do with race…).

Once our media begins to show context, a stupid-ass quote from our Defense Secretary about arming our Arab allies to convince Iran to stop developing nuclear weapons will be exposed for its insanity.

After all, the main reason Iran is developing nuclear technology is to deter a U.S. invasion from one of the many neighboring countries America currently occupies. Thus, putting more weapons in the hands of more of Iran’s neighbors would only strengthen their resolve to get a nuclear weapon before it’s too late (nuclear deterrence has worked well for that other part of the Axis of Evil, North Korea…).

But of course, that kind of context is ignored. Instead, we are told – again and again – Iran is developing nuclear weapons to “wipe Israel off the map.”

When it comes to understanding the news, context is everything.

An uninformed (or misinformed) public can’t sustain true democracy. All they can do is follow those waving the bloodstained flags of race, ethnicity, religion, and division.