An except. For the full article + context go to "Mere Rhetoric"
... this isn't about Democratic foreign policy experts being traitors. Coulterism aside, the vast majority of Democrats really do think that the policies they recommend are more likely to make the world safe than the other side's policies. Center-left foreign policy experts aren't evil, they're just wrong. They're creatures of bureaucratic and educational institutions that are invested in interpreting rather straightforward events in specialist terms that aren't at all appropriate for the context of the Middle East. So Ahmadinejad's speeches that Israel should be wiped off the map are understood in these foreign policy circles as power grabs by domestic Iranian hardliners rather than as declarations that Ahmadinejad will nuke Israel just as soon as he can. Now of course, many experts will concede that it's both - but then they go right on suggesting policy on the basis of this 'sophisticated' insight rather than on the obvious understanding that anyone can take away from the speech (because if you based policy on what everyone can see, why would we need experts?) |