Moral High Ground
Jul. 7th, 2006 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forsythHere's a paraphrased quote from an interview with Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6. The guy who would have been James Bond's boss, if y'know, James Bond were real.
"And – the point he stressed time and again, even in a bonus comment after the official program session had ended – the Western world, notably the United States, was doomed unless it reclaimed “the moral high ground.” By the end of the Cold War, he said, there was no dispute world wide about which side held the moral high ground. As a professional spy master, he said that reality made it so much easier for him to recruit operatives – they would volunteer to come to him, because they believed in the cause. Therefore, as a matter of pure strategic necessity, the United States needed to behave according to its best traditions, not the exigencies of an open-ended wartime emergency. (I’m paraphrasing a little, but not taking too many liberties.)"
So, wait, he's saying that people are more willing to work with the good guys. Who'da thunk it.
"And – the point he stressed time and again, even in a bonus comment after the official program session had ended – the Western world, notably the United States, was doomed unless it reclaimed “the moral high ground.” By the end of the Cold War, he said, there was no dispute world wide about which side held the moral high ground. As a professional spy master, he said that reality made it so much easier for him to recruit operatives – they would volunteer to come to him, because they believed in the cause. Therefore, as a matter of pure strategic necessity, the United States needed to behave according to its best traditions, not the exigencies of an open-ended wartime emergency. (I’m paraphrasing a little, but not taking too many liberties.)"
So, wait, he's saying that people are more willing to work with the good guys. Who'da thunk it.
