Glenn Greenwald has it in for the so-called experts who have made such a mess of our foreign policy. His critique — that these guys and gals have a set of ossified and obsolete rules that determine what can be discussed, under what circumstances and how the issues should be framed — is spot on.
An interesting aside from today’s post, however, concerns Barack Obama’s comments about Pakistan. Readers of this blog know I found them irresponsible, but Greenwald notices something else, as well:
Most of the recent “controversies” involving Barack Obama’s foreign policy statements — including his oh-so-shocking statement that it would not make moral or political sense to use tactical nuclear weapons to bomb isolated terrorist camps as well as his willingness to attack Al Qaeda elements inside Pakistan if the Musharraf government refuses (as they did for some time) — were not “controversial” among the Establishment on the merits. They were “controversial” (and “naive” and “irresponsible”) because they breached the protocols and orthodoxies imposed by the Foreign Policy Community governing how we are allowed to talk about these issues.
This was vividly illustrated by the sharpest exchange from last night’s debate, where both Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd excoriated Obama for his comments on Pakistan, not on the ground that Obama’s statements were wrong on the merits (i.e, not that we should avoid military action inside Pakistan under those circumstances), but instead on the ground that he committed the sin of actually discussing with the American people what our foreign policy would be.
It’s an interesting phenomenon, when you get down to it, but one that has some potentially dangerous consequences for the nation.
As Powers points out, the Foreign Policy Community has proven itself to be reckless, irresponsible and deeply unserious. These “scholars” have lost the right to judge anyone or to declare anyone else unserious. It is long past time to aggressively challenge their most precious orthodoxies.
Leave aside whatever views you may have about the wisdom of attacking Osama bin Laden or other Al Qaeda elements inside Pakistan because that is a separate question entirely. There are few issues more vitally important than destroying the supremacy and monopoly of our Foreign Policy Community and forcing a re-examination of our most fundamental assumptions about America’s role in the world. To the extent that Obama’s campaign will continue to challenge not only the establishment’s orthodoxies by the Establishment itself (and whether he will remains to be seen), that can only produce vitally needed outcomes.
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