> But he's got a point: sure, the foreign policy
> community hasn't exactly covered itself in glory
> over the past few years

That little Iraq war thingy, as well as the failure to understand the fundamental nature of Bush/Cheney, would seem to me a bit worse than "failing to cover itself in glory".

Cranky

Something here reminds me of Mel Brooks as Governor Le Petomane in Blazing Saddles:

"Gentlemen, we've got to protect our phony-baloney jobs!"

Media reaction to the recent foreign policy pronouncements of Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani provides a case study in double-standards. While Obama received a hellstorm of criticism for his statements on attacking Al Qaeda bases in Pakistan and the use of nuclear weapons, the mainstream media has been essentially silent on the blatantly bizarre and downright dangerous national security vision Giuliani penned in the pages of Foreign Affairs.

For the details, see:
"Media Double Standard on Obama, Giuliani Foreign Policies."

Cranky: That's called "understatement for effect." Or maybe there's a fancy Latin term for it. But surely my point was clear?

In any case, war supporters deserve the shots they're getting. At the same time, I don't think that support for the war forever disqualifies you from ever having an opinion again about foreign policy. I'm less interested in shutting them up than I am in trying to get a megaphone for our side to shout through too.

A pox on every single one of you. You all were for the war, and you were *all* wrong -- the neocons, the VSP, and the liberal hawk bloggers -- including Drum and Yglesias. That you are all now having a family squabble about who is more wrong is kinda cute, but it doesn't change a thing -- none of you can be trusted.

> At the same time, I don't think that support for
> the war forever disqualifies you from ever having
> an opinion again about foreign policy

Mr. Drum,
I thought you had worked for a technology manufacturing business at one time? Surely you are familiar with TQM, the Toyota Management System, and the "5 Whys" exercise? Failing to honestly analyze and correct the true root cause of a mistake allows that mistake to continue occurring. I see no evidence, absolutely zero, that the vast majority of Iraq Invasion supporters have admitted that an error was made much less started a deep and brutally honest root cause analysis. So no, I don't have any trust in their opinions going forward.

Cranky

I don't think that support for the war forever disqualifies you from ever having an opinion again about foreign policy

Is that really what you think the VSP critics are saying?

freedom-hating mediocrities at the CIA, pin-striped wussies at the State Department, cowardly soldiers at the Pentagon. Now the bloggers' attacks are generally aimed at the think-tank world.

Except the professionals were right and the think-tankers were wrong. What's so hard to understand about that?

There's an important difference between the criticism coming from the netroots, and the old criticism from the neocons.

We have strong evidence that they blew it, in the form of a complete disaster in Iraq. The neocons not only had no evidence, but there is plenty of evidence that their old criticisms were completely wrong.

We also have evidence that many of them are preparing to blow it again, by advocating attacks on Iran, Syria, and who knows who else.

I'm less interested in shutting them up than I am in trying to get a megaphone for our side to shout through too.

That seems clear enough. The strawman response from Mr Rose also makes clear that the Very Serious aren't interested in sharing their megaphone with the Iraq War Cassandras.

The neocons poo-poo'd the pros and then drove the country off of the cliff...

bloggers are poo-pooing the people that cheered them on...

What's the danger, that we might put the country back on track?

One of the things that gave me comfort when Bush was elected in 2000 was that careerists at State would help guide foreign policy - and despite how Democrats and Republicans like to position themselves, State does a pretty good job of anchoring them. Presidents likewise get lots of advice from brilliant people and big-time yahoos.

But that's not how the last few years have played out. To reposition 2007 as 1999 is pretty disingenuous.

I don't think that support for the war forever disqualifies you from ever having an opinion again about foreign policy

At the highest levels (the White House and the Pentagon), it should disqualify you from voting, conjugal visits and the possibility of parole.

In an ideal world, it would also disqualify you from the Democratic presidential nomination.

This is the equivalent of saying "Warning against the dangers of communism is troubling to me, because it's something Hitler did."

The main critique should be toward the neocons, who still have considerable resources, and the process that failed to put a check on their agenda. There's no reason why the people involved in that failed process shouldn't be doing some public soul searching.

Excuse me, but I rather think there's a couple of teensy subtle differences between the neocons and the left blogosphere:

Difference: the left blogosphere turns out to be right, and the neocons turn out to be wrong.

Difference: the Very Serious People stroked their beards very seriously and nodded along with the neocons as long as they could, and they sneered at the left blogosphere as long as... well, they haven't actually stopped yet.

Nice try at "you're equally as bad!", but it's as lame as "atheists are like fundamentalists!" and other you're-one-too playground jabs. The supposed symmetry breaks when you look at the actual facts.

The most bothersome aspect of Rose's scolding is his implied equivalency of structure between neocons and bloggers. Neocons had, and have, a literature, a hierarchy and an established political base. Neocons argue based on ideology and I suspect that was the basis of their criticism. Bloggers are a bunch of individuals with bunch of divergent views who have, for one, my ear. They have no cohesive ideology, no literature on blogism and no political base. Bloggers merely evaluate foreign policy experts and find many to be windbags. I find it amusing that he defends the concept that being wrong in the past should be noimpediment to continued pontificating.

Bloggers see a lack of credibility based on evaluation of past performance in the foreign policy establishment and wonder why they are still valued. Neocons see ideological failings in the structure of the national security bureaucracies and seek to repudiate the very way they perform not because they have failed on any absolute scale, but because they have not done things the way the neocons desired. They failed to do it their way.

Hey Kevin,

How about a trip down memory lane?

From a 3/27/03 post of yours:

PREDICTIONS....Here are my war predictions:

How long will the war last?
Answer: 6 weeks.
How many American deaths will there be?
Answer: 700.
How big will the occupation force be by the end of the year?
Answer: 80,000 troops.
How long will the military occupation last: Answer: 3 years.
How much will the war cost this year?
Answer: $110 billion.
How much will it cost next year?
Answer: $25 billion.
How much actual democracy will we bring to Iraq? Answer: 4

All answers are plus or minus a factor of two.

1 out of 7. That's what you get for relying on the VSPs.

Gideon Rose: "He [Yglesias] also repeats a silly canard about Foreign Affairs never having published anything opposing the Iraq war, which conveniently ignores this."

Rose's 'this' is an article which argues Bush should think twice about invading Iraq because Saddam might use his weapons of mass destruction.

That this just demonstrates to me Yglesias is correct and Gideon Rose is a wanker.

I'm less interested in shutting them up than I am in shutting them out of the halls of power.

These VSP's were deep in analytical thought about how to win in Vietnam, how to win in Chile, how to win in Argentina, how to win in Nicaragua, how to win in Iran, how to win in El Salvadore, how to win in South Africa, etc, and now how to win in Iraq. They have been wrong about everything since Truman's Doctrine to contain the USSR was crafted. Since then millions have been killed, dictatorships were installed and unimaginable amounts of money were spent on intangible (military) public goods. Since the VSP's have an absolutely horrible record I see no reason to engage them in a debate as the serious people they purport to be. They are serious about using American power to dominate others to enrich a very few. They are not serious about democracy, liberty and fair play, which is why I think they should be marginalized.

My main complaint about the DC foreign policy elite is their habitual secrecy and frequent dishonesty. There's no such thing as secret democracy.

"It is far better if the deliberations of a republic are known to its enemies than if the plots of a tyranny are hidden from its citizens". (Spinoza)

The essential difference Rose fails to note in his false equivalence is that the Neocon's were always calling for action: attack Iraq/Iran/Venezuela, etc.

Whereas the lefty bloggersphere is usually saying don't attack anyone, except when reality indicates it, like Afghanistan.

Huh. Something doesn't add up here.

"are very similar to those that the neocons made a few years ago: mainstream foreign-policy experts are politicised careerists, biased hacks, and hide-bound traditionalists who have gotten everything wrong in the past and don't deserve to be listened to in the future."

So:
Neo-cons were against professionals because they opposed the Iraq war;
bloggers are against professionals because they supported the Iraq war?

It seems pretty obvious here that we can't both be talking about the same group of professionals, doesn't it?

Which makes the resolution of the problem easy. Gideon apparently feels we, bloggers, should defer to Very Serious People simply because of their job titles. We bloggers, on the other hand, consider that rather more is necessary, in particular being competent. This is sharply different from the neocon complaint which never then, and never now, brought competence into the equation.

To the extent that people like Gideon defend incompetence and preserves the claim that the deferrence due "our betters" should be based on other factors (presumably things like breeding, networks annd ideology, the same pattern that brought us the successes of Iraq and Katrina), damn right bloggers have no time for him and, what's more, he's no different from the neocons in attitude and spirit.

Yglesias is about 10 years from being a very serious person and about 20 years from being a Broder.

I see a lot of parallels between the Very Serious foreign policy community and the MSM's Coctail Party Circuit that features the likes of Tim Russert and Brian Williams. Both groups are insular, self-referential and obsessed with preserving their special place in the American dialogue. Both have a tendency to form crushes on crazy conservatives who are all too happy to exploit their admiration to achieve their goals. Both bristle instantly when criticized from the left. Neither give anti-war liberals any credit for being right. Neither take any responsibility for their part in fostering war.

Rose is recycling the argument you hear a lot from the Russert's of the world: if both sides are criticizing me, I must be doing something right.

I agree with Kevin's point about dialogue. If the Very Serious foreign policy community would just listen to the netroots' critiques and respond to them on the merits, they'd find that liberals are all too willing to have a semi-civilized conversation about ideas. Unlike the neocons, liberals aren't out to destroy the foreign policy community. We are out to change their minds. But as long as they stay in the ivory tower, the netroots will continue attacking them.

Foreign policy professionals train themselves to deal with what is. Under normal conditions they require strong leadership to think in terms of what might be. They are not rebellious by nature at all, and tend to run in a pack.

This orientation predisposes foreign policy professionals in favor of the status quo, not so much because they like it as out of fear of what might replace it. They will follow almost any kind of leadership up to a point, which is why the same institutions that supported the first President Bush's decision to declare victory and let Iraqi rebels be crushed by Saddam also went along with the younger President Bush's decision to invade and occupy Iraq.

The blogospheric "masses" Kevin talks about are a far more diverse group. Let's face it, these masses include, on left and right, a lot of morons who flock to the blogs that confirm their own prejudices and shun the others. They also include people who look at foreign affairs as an extension of domestic politics. Those foreign policy professionals who hope, as many do, to rotate back into government jobs at some point are pretty nervous about that -- though less so now than at most other times, because it seems so likely that President Bush will be succeeded by a Democrat.

It's actually a small minority of bloggers -- I suppose I should say, "people associated with the blogosphere" -- who can make a real contribution to foreign policy and national security affairs. The next President or Secretary of State would be doing a real disservice if they did not try to leaven the ranks of State and Defense Department appointees with a few of the more knowledgable (usually, this means more specialized) bloggers. In general, though, I don't think foreign policy professionals whose careers are at stake in the work and writing they do are likely to be influenced that much by most of the blogosphere, composed of people who -- in their view -- have no skin in the game.

Gideon Rose points at that silly article to show they actually entertained a position against the war?

Yglesias is right if that's the only thing he can cite, and I've read Foreign Affairs all through that 2003-4 season and the magazine is a formalized, foreign policy joke.

Also, there's no reason to believe "the neocons" (whoever that group really is that Gideon cites) were off-base in their criticisms of the foreign policy community, at least just based upon their subsequently being wrong about action taken once having some measure of power and control.

In fact, it's utterly clear that elements of the "lefty blogosphere" have sound criticisms of both the entrenched "realist" foreign policy community and the neocons, and there is no logical incoherence in sharing certain criticisms of one community with a community that otherwise there is little common ground.

Gideon better up his game or the rout will come early and heavy, so he should step carefully into this new arena.

If that doesn't earn Gideon a Wanker of the Day award, I don't know what will. The Empire has very definitely struck back.

It's easy to find a lot of these "the extremists are like the people they are complaining about" whines, and I guess it's too much to ask that such a criticism actually evaluate whether one side are actually, you know, correct. It's like the he said/she said style of political journalism, but even dumber because there's less reason for it. (Although to be fair, it's also less harmful.) I mean, look at the quote.

The charges the bloggers are making now are very similar to those that the neocons made a few years ago: mainstream foreign-policy experts are politicised careerists, biased hacks, and hide-bound traditionalists who have gotten everything wrong in the past and don't deserve to be listened to in the future... Back then, the neocons directed their fire primarily at the national security bureaucracies — freedom-hating mediocrities at the CIA, pin-striped wussies at the State Department, cowardly soldiers at the Pentagon. Now the bloggers' attacks are generally aimed at the think-tank world.

But the two are completely different! When neocons said that about critics of the war, it was... well, not self-evidently wrong, but close enough that the burden of proof should have been on them. The CIA being slanted against war? The Pentagon underestimating the value of military action? And when bloggers today say it about think tanks and the administration, if anything, the reverse is true, at least if you leave out the invective: of course people in or reporting directly to the administration are politicized, of course think tanks are biased, and war supporters might not be wrong about everything, but those who still support it were wrong about the big thing and have shown no signs of improvement, so...

Shorter Gideon: liberals are exactly like neocons except for in all the ways that actually matter.

What's funniest to me is Rose's snark on Yglesias where he sneers that Foreign Affairs did so print an objection to the Iraq War. He says it was "convenient" that Yglesias didn't mention it. Hilariously, the summary of the article seems to fully support the notion the the Very Serious People were Very Seriously Wrong about practically everything:

Summary: President Bush's case for war on Iraq overlooks a very real danger: if pushed to the wall, Saddam Hussein may resort to using weapons of mass destruction against the United States. Such a strike may not be likely, or may not succeed, but attacking Saddam is the best way to guarantee that it will happen. And Washington has done far too little to prepare for it.

The charges the bloggers are making now are very similar to those that the neocons made a few years ago: mainstream foreign-policy experts are politicised careerists, biased hacks, and hide-bound traditionalists who have gotten everything wrong in the past and don't deserve to be listened to in the future.

Well, no, that's not at all true on any level more significant than that both groups complaints, at the most zoomed-out level, could be summarized as "the status quo policy consensus right now is wrong", and even then that's a false equivalence since they are each referring to a different status quo.

Seriously, the complaint the neocons (largely, themselves, mainstream foreign policy "experts" and "professionals") made was that the general norms internationally accepted as ideals, even if not always adhered to in practice, of the post-World War II generation were wrong for the US, even as ideals, given the existing geopolitical context. It was that untapped speculative possibilities existed which could be realized through a novel approach in US foreign policy, and that speculative threats which had not actually materialized existed which might materialize if that approach was not taken.

The complaint levelled now against the foreign policy "expert" community that, while sometimes rejecting the more extreme theoretical positions of the neocons, largely came around to backing, though often in a cautious and qualified way, the neocons practical prescriptions is not at all of the same tenor; rather, it is a complaint that the ideals of action through international institutions where possible, the need for the legitimacy conferred by international institutions for armed action in anything but proximate self-defense, the concept and limitations of just war embodied in centuries of Western theory, and the priority of peaceful conflict resolution through search for mutual interest as the center (though not the limit) of American foreign policy that had been held for generations or in some cases centuries prior to the last handful of years are important ideals that need a renewed commitment, and that the community of so-called experts has lost its way in the last handful of years as the neocons have distorted the landscape in that community and the community has shifted, not to accept the neocons views, but toward them in some practical ways which have been demonstrated and catastrophic failures in practice over the last few years.

The two complaints have no substantive similarity though there may be some vague rhetorical similarities in the particular framing of the argument used by particular critics, and both complaints are ultimately complaints about the existing foreign policy practice, and so have a vague similarity once you zoom so far out that you can't see any of the substance. But there is hardly a useful or meaningful comparison to be made there.

It's about on the level of arguing "Because Hitler argued that the Weimar government was responsible for problems experienced by the German people of the time and critics of the present administration argue that the current administration in the US is responsible for problems experienced by the American people today, the criticism and prescriptions of those present critics are 'very similar' to those of Adolf Hitler."

So the question is why the Very Serious People LISTENED to the neocon cranks, but seem offended by the common man getting a word in.

Fuck the VSP! This country is a mess, thanks to them. They should all hang their heads in shame.

They should all hang their heads in shame.

Well, since they have no shame, you're half right.

I wish Kevin was my boss. "You made a decision that cost 750,000 lives and cost hundreds of billions of dollars? Well we all make mistakes! You'll get 'em next time!"

I don't understand the point this person is trying to make. The neocons used to criticize establishment foreign policy "wisdom," and so ... what? Was that criticism invalid, and so all criticism is invalid? If this flagrantly fallacious bit of reasoning is the best they can do by way of a defence, then maybe they are too dumb to be anything but wrong about everything. It's a reverse application of his own logic.

Calling people who are against the abuses of American power just like neo-cons is an ad hominem of the very worst type and demonstrates a real lack of arguments against their adversaries and their desires for a just foreign policy.

Kevin Drum >"...we can only have it if the VSPs open up the castle gates and invite the barbarian hordes to join the tournament..."

That can only happen if the VSP manage to get down off their Very High Horses

We`ll see

"...Ambition must be made to counteract ambition..." - Federalist No. 51

This is a very interesting remark. I think it is true. We are saying the same thing the Neocons said, which is, "your policies suck." We have the ability that comes with hindsight, to look at each side's policies in the context of our times and see how each worked out. On that basis, surely the liberal view wins hands down. Cold war tactics of diplomacy and resistance short of war are not perfect, but better than confrontation. Talk talk beats fight fight.

Back in 2002 and early 2003, I was saying to those who were supporting the then up-coming war against Iraq that I was sure this was a mistake because it was the first time General Scowcroft and Jim Baker had agreed with me on a matter of American foreign policy. And it was also one of those rare times I agreed with CIA senior analysts and folks like Richard Clarke and Bill Odom, who got their start in government positions of authority with Ronald Wilson Reagan (Mr. 666).

In Gideon Rose's world, that somehow makes me a hypocrite-- and he and his firends can go back to sleep about their utter ignorance and recklessness in supporting Bush's Tragic and Horrible Folly that has undoubtedly caused the long departed historian Barbara Tuchman to spin in her grave. Yes, Rose is Wanker of the Day, if not the Week.

Atrios is ultimately right. These people ARE undemocratic by their very nature. They only exist to tell people what issues they are, and are not, allowed to debate vis-a-vis foreign policy. They exist to serve a rich and monied elite, and to cover their asses at all times. They simply do not fulfill any other roll. As much as they pretend to be experts, they aren't. Most of them don't have any training or degrees in half of the subjects they speak about. They are chosen for a willingness to ignore reality and push forward a pro corporate and pro-elitist agenda at the Detriment of the wishes of the American people.

"In an echo chamber like the blogosphere, however, skepticism can sometimes morph into yahooism, and that frankly reminds me a little too much of the current crew in the White House for comfort. Not everybody we disagree with is automatically a cretin."

The ridiculousness of this lame "argument" of Kevin's is rightly blown out of the water by Glenn Greenwald:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/08/20/rose/index.html

Kevin, you suffer from some sort of personality disorder that inevitably forces you to attack those whom you ultimately end up agreeing with simply out of fear of appearing too far out of the mainstream. It's weak and pathetic.

However, because you usually end up crawling back, chastened, to the side of the righteous, I'm sure that, come the revolution of the wild-eyed netroots radicals, your reeducation process will be relatively painless.

Everyone's an Expert
Louis Menand:
"It is the somewhat gratifying lesson of Philip Tetlock’s new book, “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?” (Princeton; $35), that people who make prediction their business—people who appear as experts on television, get quoted in newspaper articles, advise governments and businesses, and participate in punditry roundtables—are no better than the rest of us. When they’re wrong, they’re rarely held accountable, and they rarely admit it, either. They insist that they were just off on timing, or blindsided by an improbable event, or almost right, or wrong for the right reasons."

and

"Tetlock also found that specialists are not significantly more reliable than non-specialists in guessing what is going to happen in the region they study. Knowing a little might make someone a more reliable forecaster, but Tetlock found that knowing a lot can actually make a person less reliable."

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