A phenomenon that a teacher may encounter at times is a
student that works hard and meticulously catalogs what he finds. He is a good
student and merits receiving a good grade for his work, but the problem is that
he has a limited capacity to think creatively which makes it so that he does
not analyze what he catalogs nor does he add much value to it.
Being a teacher who believes that creativity can be
developed when properly motivated even if some are born with it, you agonize on
how to grade a student like that. What you want to do is motivate him to think
creatively and add value to his research thus get a better grade, but without
discouraging him by making him feel inadequate despite his hard work. What do you
do?
Well, the answer to that question is that every teacher
probably has a unique way to deal with such a student. For now, there is an
example of a work done by someone displaying a high capacity to do cataloging
but a limited ability to analyze what he has discovered, or add value to it.
This, in itself, is not a sin but the sin that this candidate commits stems
from the fact that he compensates for his inadequacy in a way that is
illegitimate.
He is Marc A. Thiessen who wrote an article under the title:
“What Obama doesn't get about the Islamic State” and had it published on August
25, 2014 in the Washington Post. Reading the article and trying to relate it to
the title, you get the sense that Thiessen wishes to communicate a belief that
Obama does not understand the extent of the threat posed to America by a group
calling itself the Islamic State.
This prompts him to commit the sin of cataloging all the
false accusations that were leveled by other authors against that group. This
done, he raises the tone of his presentation with remarks like: “Good grief”
and with the use of italics to emphasize that the war between America and the group is on because the group
started it and maintains it even if America is not responding in kind.
Thiessen also catalogs all that the President has said about
the group. And to him, this is proof enough that the President continues “to
play down the threat posed to the United States ,” which is what makes
him refuse to take the lead and work to defeat the Islamic State. To buttress
this point of view, Thiessen catalogs what other people have said about the
subject. Among them, Ben Rhodes who is the deputy national security adviser,
Gen. Martin Dempsey who is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Chuck
Hagel who is Defense Secretary.
So you ask: What did these people say that is so big but
that is so “played down” by the President? According to Thiessen, Ben Rhodes
admitted that the execution of the American journalist represented a terrorist
attack against the United States .
As to Dempsey, he says this is an organization that has an apocalyptic
end-of-days vision. Chuck Hagel, for his part, called the Islamic State “an
imminent threat” to which Thiessen jumps to his feet blurting this being the
case, and asking: “what's the holdup in attacking its command, control and
communications in Syria ?”
It is obvious that this self-appointed latter-day armchair
rear admiral is not satisfied with the work done by a deputy national security
adviser, a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a Defense Secretary. He
wants to tell them what to do but, believing that the holdup may be the
President himself, he quotes him as saying: “People like this ultimately fail,
because the future is won by those who build and not destroy.” And this is
where Thiessen pounces on him – doing the literary equivalent of yelling:
People like this don't fail. They have to be stopped. Nazi Germany didn't fail.
It was defeated.
Yes, Nazi Germany was defeated but the question remains: how
many evildoers failed on their own, and how many were defeated? It is not
creative to pick on something notorious and mention it at every occasion to
illustrate a point. If you want to argue against what the President said, you
need to layout a complete analysis as to why America
must get into a war that has the potential to humiliate it and bankrupt it not
after a “long slog” but almost immediately given America 's current condition.