Are you bothered that foreign policy experts, don't seem to...

[Wetzelbill]

know all that much about foreign policy?

Some do, for sure. And, to tell you the truth, there are a lot of foreign policy voices who have definite regional expertise, say if somebody is an authority on the Middle East he/she may speak Arabic, Farsi and know the historical and contemporary events pretty well. Those credentials are important, however, often politics and ideology can render all of this moot. I mean this for both Dems and Republicans. Most of the foreign policy status quo, Left and Right, jumped on the Iraq War bandwagon. Richard Holbrooke, for example, while critical of the Bush administration's methods and eventual handling of the war, was in favor of the action itself. You could barely tell the difference between John McCain, Thomas Friedman, Joe Biden, William Kristol and lots of other politicians and pundits either. The experts, by which I mean people who specifically worked in FP all of their lives, began to sound more like politicians and pundits than people who know, or should know about the region

That troubles me. Because it shows me that ideology and politics trumps actual knowledge when it comes to matters of significant national security and interest.

My opinions, some of which I kept to myself or with family and friends and some which I wrote in columns, were more right than almost any expert out there. I suppose a lot of it was dumb luck, but I did a solid amount of research at the time, looked at Iraq, it's situation, history, the neoconservative ideology and concluded that, one, this war was going to be a helluva lot tougher than just about everybody was thinking, two, that were were going to be there for a long time if not permanently, three, as long as we were there our soldiers would be getting killed, and four, Saddam wasn't a viable threat and had no WMD.

I also believed that our policy - lack of - in the Middle East was going to inflame the Arabic-Israeli conflict, and felt that a war - like the one we just had in Lebanon- would be inevitable. It was all almost blindingly obvious, if you looked at history and did not focus on politics and rhetoric. I know lots of people who thought similarly, many of whom are on this board. Yet, most "experts" I saw on TV or whose comments I read, sounded more jingoistic "Democracy," "Stay the course," "be strong on national security."

It was odd to me.

Even know, I rarely see any politician, pundit or expert come up with any ideas outside of a narrow scope. Everybody seems to rehash the same tired stuff over and over and over, yet they miss the most simple concepts.

It's like they take history and practicality and either warp it or toss it out the window.

In my opinion, it seems foreign policy experts make opinions on politics and ideology rather than knowledge, facts and rational thought.

That surely is one reason why we are in the mess we are in overseas right now.

It makes me wary of future engagements, for sure, because there seems to be very few, if any, honest, unbiased brokers giving sound analysis nowadays.

[ThomCat]

1. What is an expert?

I'm a corprorate consultant. I deal with other consultants all the time. It's often very obvious who knows what they're doing and who doesn't. Many people are considered experts simply because influential people say they are, not because they really are.

I think many of the 'experts' in the current administratin simply wear that title like a suit of clothing. Someone bought it for them, so they put it on. I don't think most of them are truly experts in anything except knowing the right people and agreeing with the right political points.

If we could get rid of the hacks and political appointees and put some real experts in there maybe things would start to make some sense.

[leveymg]

2. You have an advantage over almost all policy "experts."

They have a professional investment in the status quo. You don't. That frees you to think for yourself. They can't, or won't express their doubts publicly, for fear of losing their cushy Washington jobs.

That's how it usually works in a system in decline - whether it be an empire or the stock market -- the contrarians are right more often than those who ride the market indexes up and down.

That's also why the smart money doesn't kill the mavericks and dissidents. Their contrarian wisdom is essential to the survival of the system. Without the skeptics and loyal opponents and hedgers to act as a brake on downswings, systems will crash of their own stupid inertia.

[Jacobin]

3. George Herbert Walker Bush was a foreign policy expert

He was a geo-political 'practicalist'. What he did made sense for the most part and was in the final analysis something that could be accomplished and did not outrage the world, and was in our self interests.

His son and the neo-con fundie crazies are quite simply, fucking insane.

[leveymg]

5. I respectfully disagree about the practicalist/insane paradigm

The objective situation of the United States, particulary its relative economic dominance, has deteriorated significally in the quarter-century since Reagan-Bush 1 took power. The present group is playing a much higher risk game.

The stakes now are much more those of life or death for the system.

By the laws of probabilities, this group will fail more often, but if they win, their gains would be significantly greater in terms of the survival of the system.

I'm not saying that this group isn't fruit loops -- many of them are -- but, their high-risk approach isn't necessarily irrational, if one accepts that the alternative is extinction as a great power. These people do assume that the choice is stark -- either intimidate and reconquer the world, or have the U.S. Empire taken away.

Of course, we stand a much better chance of survival if we stop behaving as the world's last rogue superpower, but that would require a smarter strategy than just trying to grab everything of value and killing anyone who gets in our way.

[Jacobin]

6. I would disagree with that

Playing 'all in' poker using countries who were once your allies as chips will inevitably lead to utter disaster. There is no 'selfinterest' test with the neo-cons. They are bat shit crazy. They are ideologues. They don't look at facts, rather they manufacture their own, and that won't last long.

Wyly Coyote running off the cliff...that's where they are, they just haven't looked down yet. The rest of us have.

[leveymg]

7. I didn't say that Wile E. is likely to win.

He practically never does.

[Jacobin]

8. Thanks for the visual!!!

He just looked down.

:hi:

[Nay]

4. Ideology and politics have trumped knowledge for quite a while

now, Bill, and it's getting even worse. For the past 30 years, conservatives and fundies have been preparing themselves by getting the appropriate degrees in history, biology, foreign affairs, law, etc.; building and funding think tanks, talk shows, radio broadcasters; buying media outlets, university chairs, and congresspeople.

The whole thrust of the movement is to substitute ideology for actual knowledge. They aren't upset by their "failures" in the ME or anywhere else, because they aren't failures in their eyes -- they are successes. The conservative who thinks the Rapture will come when the ME blows up is an active participant and cheerleader for the blowup. The conservative who just wants to make a buck is happy to sell personnel and materiel to the participants in the war. The combination of these two -- the religious nut and the greedy pig -- is a perfect storm for the rest of us. We can't even get a guy on mainstream TV to call it all bullshit.