How to fix everything

Yesterday, the head of MI6 (Britain's spying organisation), told a government enquiry that Edward Snowden's leaking of information about their spying capabilities now meant that:

"our adversaries are rubbing their hands with glee"

...while no doubt laughing an evil pantomime-style laugh and stroking their evil pointy beards (if that is possible while rubbing hands with glee).

It is difficult to argue with the contention that telling enemies about your spying capabilities makes it harder to spy on them because they'll stop doing some of the stuff they know you can monitor.

But why do we have so many adversaries in the first place?

Be nice to people

Imagine the scene in the playground. Big kid is hitting small kid. Occasionally he stops. Small kid then stabs big kid in the leg with point of his compass. Big kid adopts air of outrage and hits small kid again. Repeat ad nauseam.

Teacher steps in. "What do you think you're doing?" roars teacher. "It's him!" shouts the big kid, tearfully. "No matter how often I punch him in the face, he keeps stabbing me with his compass."

And, from the big kid's perspective, and the perspective of his friends, he's absolutely right and he'll keep on punching the small kid until he relents, hands over his lunch money and the status quo can be restored.

But when you're talking about global politics, maybe we could expect to look at it from the teacher's perspective instead.

How about, for every million pounds currently spent on bombing the hell out of people (even if they're evil - let's give 'our guys' the benefit of the doubt and assume some of the those killed really are bad guys), we instead spend half a million pounds giving them food, medical equipment and supplies, construction equipment, educational materials, etc, etc. Make sure it's all marked "A GIFT FROM YOUR FRIENDS IN THE UK".

And spend the other half million on domestic charities, just to keep the electorate happy.

We could try it for a bit. If it doesn't work, keep on doing it. If it gets stolen or destroyed or lost, keep on doing it. Something will get through eventually. Maybe spend two-thirds of a million and see if that's any better.

And before telling me that I'm hopelessly naive and that it wouldn't work, please try to produce at least one example of an occasion when it was tried.