Kevin, I think you mis-understood Atrios. He's attacking the lack of accountability of those who got and continue to get it wrong on Iraq. His gripe, which I agree with, is that these "experts" are indistinguishable from the experts who are seen as Very Serious People and that perhaps more effort should be made to deride those who supported foreign policy initiatives like the Iraq war.

Atrios: "Apparently if one has access to the secret decoder ring, one can determine which members in good standing of the very serious foreign policy community are experts and which ones are merely 'experts.'"

I dunno. Sounds like snark directed at Goldenberg, who's just trying to offer some advice about who to take seriously. His advice may or may not be good, but at least it's an effort to offer something concrete.

Conversely, a long, jumbled laundry list of areas may be a warning sign of someone who's spread too thin to have deep expertise in any single field.

Yeah! When looking at resumes and job applications of other philosophers (I'm finishing up a Ph.D in philosophy) we often make fun of the ones that list way too many areas of competence. At a certain point, there's a worry that anybody who thought they were competent in that many areas might not even know what competence is.

As a fellow blind man, what I though Atrios was saying was why does Wolf, et. al., put all of these hacks on the air and treat them all as equal experts if they know that some are less credible than others. And why are the less credible ones still afforded much more credibility than you? After that it got very thin and round, but I think that's what he meant when he said they should stop handing out Brookings credentials to any jackoff that comes through the doors.

I read this as frustration and anger. Atrios is talking past Goldenberg. He's looking at people who say that O'hanlan and Pollock are serious critics of the war. They most certainly are not.
As you know, Atrios thinks the politics will play out in Sept. with the administration saying,
"the surge is working...even Pollock and O'Hanlan say so..." and then those Very Serious People will continue to debate how many troops should be in Iraq instead of debating how to get the hell out.

Since the acceptable level of discourse is only center-right to far-right we, as a country, will continue to have foreign policy debates like, "should we bomb Iran" until those who champion these policies are dismissed as the hacks and wackos that they are.

I think in general he's had it up to here (/me pointing way up high) with democracy arsenal the past few days. So Ilan is being known by the company he keeps. Just like you're a dfh because you blogroll Atrios.

You know, in America we license doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, accountants, stock brokers, real estate agents, soccer coaches and hell, even taxi drivers.

So how the hell do people become "experts" in foreign policy? Especially since these people have the influence to draw America into wars and all manner of foreign entanglements.

Why not hold foreign policy "experts" to similar certification standards as other professions? And if we do it for foreign policy "experts" let's do it for economists, too!

Have you seen what he's been eating? Jeez, it's a wonder he's even speaking English any more. I say if foreign policy experts can't deal with with gastrically provoked Atrios snark then how can they handle peer review?

Kevin, he forgot to mention Joshua Landis of Syria Comment (http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/). I've seen no better scholarship on Syria, no better commentary as events happen, and no more accurate analysis that turns out to be true than what comes from him.

how come Goldenberg left off that "non-exhaustive" list the likes of Pat Buchanan, Tony Blankely, Laura Ingraham, John Podhoretz, Neal Boortz, Bernard Goldberg and Melanie Morgan?

They're the non-exhaustive ones we see commenting about U.S. foreign policy -- amongst other things -- on TV all the time, and there seems to be no end to what they can and will say.

Regional experts generally tend to be more well informed than functional experts because of their narrower focus." ...

True. And that's fine if US foreign policy is considered or defined solely on a regional basis. While consideration of region- and state-specific conditions are critical, and the opinions of region- and state-specific experts are important, there are overarching principles and themes which should help guide policy, regardless of which region or state we are dealing with.

Those overarching principles and themes should be of critical concern to everyone, and have been of concern to the foreign policy establishment. Of which many, and in particular the blogsphere--in their rush to condemn the foreign policy establishment over Iraq--seems to have overlooked. While Iraq is important, our overarching foreign policy, our worldview, and the world that policy strives to create goes far beyond Iraq.

What are our core themes and principles? Democracy promotion? Human rights? Peace and stability? Protection of our domestic interests? Protection of our international/strategic interests? Free markets? When does one trump the other? You'll find plenty of debate and disagreement in the foreign policy establishment related to those questions--and those are the purvue of generalists, not regional experts.

Juan Cole?

"I'm not quite sure why Atrios unleashed the snark on Ilan Goldenberg's post."

That's easy--It's all about Atrios--you tear down in order to build yourself up. Those of us who haven't drunk the left-blogosphere kool-aid noticed that about him a long time ago. Why Brad DeLong should regard this guy as a "national treasure" mystifies me; there are so many saner voices on the left.

I think there's another dynamic at play here which doesn't seem to get mentioned in this VSP conversation, namely that the more topics that you list as having expertise in, the more likely you are to have a sense of the over-arching storylines within each one, but lack a sense of the details which are important in the specific decision-making process, or more likely the ability to distinguish between which small details are relevant to a specific decision.

HOWEVER, if you do know the over-arching storylines in a lot of different areas, then you also likely have the ability to summarize those storylines in a way that makes them understandable to a non-expert audience, even if the storylines happen to be wrong. But for the purposes of being a "useful" expert for the purposes of a television panel, the ability to translate incorrect meta-narratives in a way so as to make them understandable to a general audience is more important than a correct and specific detail-heavy diagnosis that will bore or confuse most of the audience. So someone like Bill Kristol, who is very good at discussing coherent-sounding and understandable nonsense, becomes an asset for a televised panel that lacks the desire to distinguish fact from fiction so long as the audience doesn't change the channel.

Sanity is overrated: nb. Tom Friedman is considered safe and sane.

Duncan Black is insane just like Nada is after he put on the glasses. Which is what the left-blogosphere kook-aid is. Just a new set of glasses, and you should try them. Put them on, and what do you see? Formaldehyde face.

Outside the limit of our sight, feeding off us, perched on top of us, from birth to death, are our owners! Our owners! They have us. They control us! They are our masters! Wake up! They're all about you! All around you!

That's easy--It's all about Atrios--you tear down in order to build yourself up.

Atrios site is dedicated to ranting about the people who are considered the serious voices in this country. Conventional wisdom amongst the pundits today is skewed so far to the right we have politicians openly singing about bombing Iran and it's considered acceptable discourse. I think that's a much bigger problem than Atrios' snarkiness.

FWIW, I don't have any problem with Atrios's snarkiness, and I also think his general point about VSPs is a good one. It's gotten way overdone in the past few weeks, but that's Atrios for you. No half measures.

Basically, I just wanted to rescue this particular post from the snark, that's all. It's not timeless wisdom or anything, but it seemed worth highlighting. It would also be worthwhile for some of the VSPs to seriously engage with Atrios's argument about them. If I can help that along, I will.

I get fired when I do bad at my job.

Is this the cheese dip?

Well, the last thing anyone that thinks they are on the VSP list wants to do is engage Atrios' argument and give it any validity.

The more validity they give to Atrios the lower their market value is.

How long does a young republican have to spend in the green zone to become an expert? It hardly seems fair that you don't get to become an expert after 9/11.

One criteria I might through out there is that you need to be embarassed when you are wrong. Better yet you need to have a track record of having some insights that are right.

Maybe we could choose the next generation of pundits by inviting folks under 25 to make predictions and write essays on their favorite subjects. If they guess troop levels, casualities, and political conditions in Iraq next summer they get on Hardball. If they guess a bunch of baseball trades they can get on ESPN.

Seems Juan Cole should make that list, huh? He's been right probably more than any of the others listed. I've met Valy Nasr, by the way, and he's a very sharp guy even if he was a bit over-optimistic before the war.

Well surely one also has to look at academic knowledge in contrast to hands-on experience. Somebody could have an area of expertise but it could be purely "book smarts."

www.fedlocally.com

Kevin, my impression is that Atrios unleashed the snark on Goldenberg because it is very, VERY, *VERY* easy to find countless "experts" on the teevee, on the radio, and on prime print-media real estate, such as the NYT, LAT, WSJ, etc., spouting the worst kind of bloodthirsty delusions, and it is damn near impossible to find *actual* experts on the teevee (this would be, I believe, a corollary to the "No liberals on the teevee" rule).

Anyone want to count the op-eds/appearances made by Bill Kristol vs. Rob Malley? How about Tom Friedman vs. Vali Nasr? I doubt your average American has seen one *tenth*, if not one *hundredth*, the minutes or words of *expert* opinion, compared to the "expert" opinion that is available virtually non-stop in the regular media.

Oh, and when Ilan Goldenberg protests that "Hey, I know some experts! Being an expert matters!" I think Atrios is justified in saying, basically, "Then where the hell were you, and they, when the "experts" were all running off to war last time (and fuck, even *NOW*, e.g., with O'Hanlon and Pollack being unrepentant Bush war shills), and what the fuck should make us think that we can trust you to get the job done better *next* time, which is soon, with Iran, if you won't admit you fucked up last time? Oh, wait, stop the presses, your experts have hurt feelings, so let's talk about that *first*."

As I mentioned on another post, Goldenberg could have included such people as Nir Rosen, Dahr Jamail, Patrick Cockburn, and Robert Fiske who are quite knowledgeable about what is going on in the Middle East.

Any such list that doesn't include Juan Cole -- and name him first -- isn't worth our attention.

As an anti-war liberal, Atrios is a jerk. Ilan Goldenberg wasn't sticking up for anyone in particular, he was in fact accepting Atrios' premise that not everyone who calls themselves an expert is, in fact, an expert. But on the other hand, the Atriosphere has come to act like being called an expert automatically disqualifies oneself from actually being an expert.

Atrios doesn't bother to establish anything Goldenberg, himself, has done or said that is immoral or inaccurate. It's just another day in the mythical blogotrenches against a supposed faceless, unified community of evil idiots.

These convenient generalizations are things that I usually spend my time deconstructing on right-wing sites, but Atrios is a fool if he thinks fake expertise is anything but a universal problem.

If the world ran the way Atrios wanted and people got fired at think tanks the first time any foreign policy idea went wrong or became unpopular, the likely effect would be the think tank o'sphere becoming even more monolithic, risk-averse, and conformist. Anyone who's a progressive should value academic freedom, including at think tanks. Your idea about foreign aid or health care may flame out disasterously for reasons genuinely beyond your control. If that's the end of your job, that's the end of the idea flow.

Kevin, my impression is that Atrios unleashed the snark on Goldenberg because it is very, VERY, *VERY* easy to find countless "experts" on the teevee, on the radio, and on prime print-media real estate, such as the NYT, LAT, WSJ, etc., spouting the worst kind of bloodthirsty delusions, and it is damn near impossible to find *actual* experts on the teevee (this would be, I believe, a corollary to the "No liberals on the teevee" rule).

Chris is a perfect example of the Atriosphere. How, exactly is what Michael O Hanlon says Ilad Goldenberg's fault? Should Goldenburg have bombed the NYT office to prevent the publishing of the editorial? Did Goldenberg support the Iraq war? Do you even know? A lot of TV producers put idiots on their television programs, and your response is to...shout at Ilan Goldenberg? Why don't you go shout at Sumner Redstone, or someone who actually controls the media?

and what the fuck should make us think that we can trust you to get the job done better *next* time, which is soon, with Iran, if you won't admit you fucked up last time?

How, exactly, did Ilan Goldenberg fuck up? Have you bothered to establish his record? Did he fuck up by failing to volunteer to be a human shield? Didn't you, also fuck up in this respect?

Atrios was probably just in a generally annoyed mood when he wrote that post. It's not the biggest deal in the world. But, yes, it's a little ironic since, as near as I can tell, Goldenberg was agreeing with Atrios. He wasn't trying to address the general issue of all the knotheads who get so much TV time, just making a point about how non-experts like you and me might be able to judge other people who are experts. Seemed like a useful conversation to me, especially since I don't always have a good handle on who to trust myself.

As for Juan Cole, sure, he belongs on the list. I'm sure his omission wasn't deliberate. It was just a quickie list.

Juan Cole definitely belongs on the list. But what in the word is 'Tony' Cordesman doing there?
He was a real fearmonger in the pre-invasion days.Got everything totally wrong. He was also a previous foreign policy advisor to John 'Bomb Bomb' McCain.

Should Goldenburg have bombed the NYT office to prevent the publishing of the editorial? Did Goldenberg support the Iraq war? Do you even know?

Right or wrong I think Atrios' point is pretty clear and I don't think he is directing his ire at Goldenberg specifically. He is really firing at the Think Tanks and the concept of a foreign policy "clerisy." In his own words:

... if people really want there to be a "clerisy" of very serious people we're supposed to respect - a concept I reject, but at least it could be improved upon - they could stop handing out CFR and Brookings fellowships to every hack in Washington who needs a title and start having some quality control. Maybe occasionally ejecting a few for having some really catastrophically bad ideas?

I don't know enough about how these institutes are run to say whether or not he is right but I disagree that he is simply firing in the dark here. He is saying that these institutions are not discriminate with regard to whom they grant their scholarly credibility. Therefore he thinks some quality control is in order especially given the disproportional influence of these organizations on the public discourse.

If the world ran the way Atrios wanted and people got fired at think tanks the first time any foreign policy idea went wrong or became unpopular....

This seems to me to be overstating Atrios' point by quite a ways. This is not about making a relatively minor mistake or offering up a theory that turns out to be a bit overly optimistic. It is about consistently influencing the public debate over a period of years consistently in the worst possible direction for transparently bad reasons. Hilzoy made a good comment on the Democracy Arsenal thread regarding Ignatieff's mea culpa for supporting the Iraq war:

Personally, I have no reason to question Michael Ignatieff's intentions and their purity. But I have a very, very hard time understanding why we should take seriously someone whose two main reasons for his mistake, by his own account, were: (a) a failure to realize that in life, unlike academia, ideas have consequences, and (b) the fact that emotion prevented him from asking the tough questions about Iraq.

These are not minor errors. They are intellectually disqualifying, all the more so if they were made in perfectly good faith.

In essence, I think this is the same point Atrios is trying to make, albeit in a rather aggressive style. In other disciplines, finance lets say, it might be like the policy gurus who, at every opportunity, recommended growing investment in subprime based mortgage securities. At some point , the organizations that hire these people and grant them credibility need to do their own quality control because, if nothing else, it has become clear that the media has no intention of doing it for them.

Glasnost:
Chill out, chief!! Have you ever met Atrios? It sounds like you don't even get his blog(or at least his hang up with the VSP). How many anti-war people got TV face time leading up to the invasion? What Atrios is basically asking is: Why does anyone take seriously all those who advocated for the Iraq War, especially those that said it was going to be a cakewalk? The O'Hanlon's. The Pollack's. The Podhoertz's. I could go on. Why wasn't Jim Webb or Al Gore on TV in the run up to the war. Both of them were against it before it started. Both laid out very well thought out arguments why it wasn't a good idea. Not only that, but history told you it was a bad idea. It seems like a lot of the VSP forgot who Santayana was/is.

I'd also vote for Juan Cole.

And while Cordesman isn't anti-war he certainly published lots of material questioning how difficult Iraq was going to be. His writing is full of specifics and carefully qualified. Worth a look.

Robert Fisk is not an "expert" - he's a journalist, but for reminding us of the human dimension of loss that has characterised the Mid East over the past generation, you can't do better than his new book. Powerful.

Chill Glasnost, or is that redundant? Atrios is clear about his argument, which is nothing as you describe it. Try looking for the "catastrophically" portion and then work your way backwards and forwards.

Hey, glasnost: you want to ask me questions, ask questions, and I might answer 'em. You want to make one of those questions be "Didn't you... fuck up?" the answer's gonna be, "Fuck you," on general fucking principles. I won't say you gotta like it, but I will say you ought to understand why that would be the first response. If not... well, let's just say I hope nobody on our side of the fence pays you to argue with conservatives.

By the way, are you related to Ilan Goldenberg or something?

So, some answers: I don't know if Goldenberg supported the Iraq War. Given your tone, it sounds like you think he might not have, and it might even have been actual opposition instead of McCain/O'Hanlon/Pollack-style "I've been a big critic (despite having helped enable it)," for which, if that's the case, I'd admit some respect.

I don't actually care very much, though, because the issue is *not* whether one expert got something right (though it's very "expert"-like to find some random issue and try to change the subject to argue about the details of that instead), because it doesn't fucking matter very much, as much as you seem to think it should (by the way, nice stereotypical anti-DFH strawmen of (roughly) "Well, what was he supposed to do, bomb the NYT? Be a human shield?" -- I gotta warn you, you bring strawmen like that to a discussion, it makes people wonder about the rest of your arguments).

No, what I expect an expert to do is to actually get some attention for his opinions when they're relevant to issues in the public debate. Do you want me to list all the pro-war hawks of one sort or another whose names I've heard more frequently than those of any liberal/anti-war experts? Because I've heard a hell of a lot from a hell of a lot of clueless, sociopathic, stupid, mean, optimistic, conservative, and moderate people in favor of Bush's foreign policy/warmongering, and then... Ilan Goldenberg is a name I heard first within the last couple days, I think. So maybe he's got a great record, but how many people have heard of it?

The issue here is that we have a system by which a handful of people get to be heard in the media, and this system has helped us (and, since you apparently like to blur pronoun references, "us" means *America* under the Bush-Cheney Administration; not that "us" meaning "you and I" fucked up the search for OBL, lied the country into war, let the Taliban reclaim chunks of Afghanistan, and are plotting to invade Iran. Just thought I should make that clear) screw up the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, fail to secure Afghanistan, get stuck in Iraq, and get on the glide path towards Iran.

This system, of "experts" and experts, was functioning quite smoothly, until people started calling bullshit on obvious bullshit... and the reaction of much of the VSP establishment has been to deride outsiders as unserious (while largely smiling on more, and ongoing, marches to war), and to hoist their "experts" against us, deploying them on the beaches, and in the streets, and... well, on the teevee, and in op-ed pages, and on the radio, anyway. So when someone like Ilan Goldenberg defends any part of it in a way that threatens to be over-inclusive, or to give more people who don't deserve it the benefit of the doubt, or to praise people for insubstantial stands taken to little effect, some of us think we're being set up to get screwed again. Which isn't usually a big deal, but since the *last* time we got screwed, thousands of Americans got killed overseas for... um... what, exactly? And there's abundant evidence that more "experts" are being deployed to help screw us in Iran, you can imagine how we might want to avoid having that happen again.

Finally, you know why people are getting talked to like this? Because for the last 10, 20, 30, 40 years, experience has shown that it's the best -- and sometimes *only* -- way to get them to respond and do what you want (that's the general "you", not you in particular). Conservatives have spent decades screaming at liberals and the media to do what they want and see things their way (I assume you've heard this referred to as "working the refs"), and it's worked pretty well for them. Now, after the 2006 elections, it turns out that Rahm Emanuel spent the campaign screaming at people to do what he wanted and to see things his way, and it worked out pretty well for him. Now, after watching this work for a variety of people at a variety of times, we're left to wonder, "Well, hell, if that's what it takes to get what you want, maybe we should try it." Maybe it's not nice. Maybe you don't think it's fair. Maybe you even think it's wrong. But you can't say that it doesn't work, and if you *do* say that we shouldn't do it, then you should come up with some *other* method of getting reactions that's no less effective.

Say, waterboarding ;-)

What do the "experts" think about this?

The Oxfam dossier shows that four years after "liberation" by the US and Britain, more than 43 per cent of Iraqis suffer from "absolute poverty" and about half the population is unemployed. Of the four million dependant on food aid, only 60 per cent have access to the government-run distribution system, a dramatic decline from 96 per cent three years ago. A further sign of a society in disintegration, is the sheer numbers of refugees who have fled the country, and internally displaced people.

Four million Iraqis have fled homes, with half managing to escape abroad. The rest are in camps for the internally displaced which are often short of the most basic amenities. The latest figures show 32 per cent of them have no access to food rations and 51 per cent are fed intermittently.

Medical Crisis In Iraq (And More)

Well, I see that my indignation at the omission of Professor Cole from the list of credible experts is shared. Meanwhile, Anthony Cordesman has a whole hell of a lot of atoning to do before he gets out of the penalty box.

According to the website Icasualties.org, which collects information on attacks and casualties in Iraq from news accounts, 1458 Iraqi civilians were killed or discovered dead in July. Pollack and O'Hanlon don't mention this. They do say that their military minders told them that "civilian fatality rates are down a third since the surge began," an interesting statement, since the US military told me repeatedly that it doesn't routinely tabulate - or release - civilian death tolls. File a Freedom of Information Act request with US Central Command and tell me what you get...

...[a]n enormous portion of the Iraqi population is dead. The most authoritative study, by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, and published in The Lancet almost a year ago, reported that "as many as 654,965 more Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would have been expected under pre-war conditions." This is in a country of around 25 million. It works out to almost three percent of the population. Dead. Millions are displaced or gone, in Syria and Jordan, among them many of the brightest who could help rebuild Iraq - doctors, engineers, teachers.

Counterinsurgency For Chickenhawks

Recommended reading from Tom Engelhardt at alternet.org:

"...With that in mind, here is the second Tomdispatch "by the numbers" report on Iraq. Consider it an attempt to put the Iraqi quagmire-cum-nightmare -- two classic Vietnam-era words -- in perspective."
"Few numbers out of Iraq can be trusted. Counting accurately amid widespread disruption, mayhem, and bloodshed, under a failing occupation, in a land essentially lacking a central government, in a U.S. media landscape still dizzy from the endless spin of the Bush administration and its military commanders is probably next to impossible. But however approximate the figures that follow, they still offer an all-too-vivid picture of what the President's much-desired invasion let loose. No country could suffer such uprooting, destruction, death, loss, and deprivation, yet remain collectively sane..."

--at alernet.org/audits/59881/?page=1

Very detailed, ample pages --and worth comparing and contrasting
to David Petraeus' upcoming "September report."

Kevin, I don't know if this was Atrios' point, but I can't see how Goldenberg's post matters.

What are we to do with this incomplete list of Middle East regional experts? Are we to go back in time to early 2002, and somehow educate people on whose Very Serious Pontificating is based on actual knowledge, and whose isn't? And even if we did, how could we have kept the VSPs who didn't belong on this list off the teevee?

And even then, how could we have managed to get some non-VSP voices who were thinking all this through in a factual way and making solid antiwar arguments into the discussion?

I give up. These people don't want a real debate even now, and they want to dodge the responsibility for having failed to make a real debate happen back in 2002. Fuck 'em.

I think Atrios' "decoder ring" remark is pretty clear in the context of the paragraph.

The readers of the WP and NYT rely on the paper to function as a gatekeeper that will give space to credible expert analysts. Those papers are basically saying "You can trust us. You know the reputation of our institution. We can vouch for this guy; he knows what he's talking about."

Those newspapers are giving their imprimatur to the VSP, and apparently using a shoddy filter to determine who gets it.

Goldenberg's list doesn't address this issue. Atrios wasn't asking for a list of Arabists he could trust. Any smart political blog junkie could suss out who's on the level, given enough time following someone regularly.

The average NYT isn't going to spend that time, though. And the whole point of the NYT using "experts" is so their readers don't have to. The average reader isn't going to say "Hm, a quote from a think tank fellow. I should check him out on Sourcewatch, read the last 3 months of his pieces, and follow him in the future to see if I can really trust him."

That's what this is about. The prestigious papers serve as sort of credibility middlemen, directing us consumers towards approved experts. But their quality control is all out of whack, and a lot of people don't realize they're getting a shoddy product.

Atrios reminds his readers regularly that he is all about the media and its grotesque failures. The snark is directed at them, not Goldenberg.

As Evan says, Atrios doesn't need the decoder ring (and neither do we who have followed the critique of the VSPs in the blogs) but the average consumer of MSM has no clue, thanks to the MSM's willingness to continue showcasing the VSPs who have repeatedly been proven wrong.

I totally disagree that Atrios is overdoing it. How can you think it's overdone after the attention lavished on the O'Hanlon-Pollack article?

has407 wrote:

True. And that's fine if US foreign policy is considered or defined solely on a regional basis. While consideration of region- and state-specific conditions are critical, and the opinions of region- and state-specific experts are important, there are overarching principles and themes which should help guide policy, regardless of which region or state we are dealing with.

But what about if you need a really informed opinion about what's going on in a particular place and how to achieve it? Some guy's counter-factual view of what he'd like the world to be, if it were possible for it to be that, which he happens not to know, does not substitute for this.

has407 wrote:

What are our core themes and principles? Democracy promotion? Human rights? Peace and stability? Protection of our domestic interests? Protection of our international/strategic interests? Free markets? When does one trump the other? You'll find plenty of debate and disagreement in the foreign policy establishment related to those questions--and those are the purvue of generalists, not regional experts.

That's all ideology. That's a political question and not the kind of expertise we're talking about here.

Godenberg's advice sounds pretty common-sense to me, analogous to the types of considerations one would use to filter out bad experts in any kind of discipline. I can't imagine why anyone would want to criticize it if your excerpt fairly represents what Goldenberg wrote.

I agree with Atrios. His leaving Juan Cole, patrick Cockburn, and every other dissident voice off the list tells me that Goldenberg is trying to rehab the conventional wisdom by throwing a few of the biggest idiots overboard and putting together a new CW team.

Why is Juan Cole off the list?

Because he's a dirty fucking hippie. He opposed the stupidity of the deserting three year old's vanity war from the getgo.

He's NOT a serious person.

May I add the names of Buddhika Jayamaha, Wesley D Smith, Jeremy Roebuck, Omar Mora, Edward Sandmeier, Yance T Gray and Jeremy A Murphy to the list - One might say they have some qualifications as "regional" experts - All have served almost 15 months with the 82nd Airborne in Iraq - All are either Specialists or NCOs - You can either read their Op-Ed over at NYT Select, or bypass, and pick up the article at Juan Cole's Informed Comment.

Trash this group, Melanie Morgan, you swine.

The absence of Juan Cole from the expert list is puzzling.

Swan, it's not about Goldenberg's rules *per* *se*, it's about the context in which he's offering his advice. Given that context, Goldenberg's post isn't only saying, "This how we choose real experts," it's also saying, "Yes, we are good at identifying experts!"

This doesn't do much to address Atrios's points, which I'd describe as: (1) You're still letting "experts" crap on your brand (expert), give you a bad name, and not kick them out of the academy (really, anyone in the RBC should continue to employ known and knowing propagandists for the Administration, by which I mean O'Hanlon/Pollack? Um, okay.), (2) You're still not doing much to address the problem of "experts" getting more air time/print space than experts, (3) You sound like you're more pissed at *US* for calling you on this than you are *THEM* for being a bunch of fakes who helped grease the skids for war, and (4) You don't want us yelling at you, even though you've shown that's what you respond to -- and if you'll acquiesce to wrong-headed policy, why won't you listen to sweet reason from your friends? You ask those questions enough times, you get enough crappy answers, and you begin to get cynical about people who call themselves experts.

*That* is how I read Atrios, and *that* is why I don't think Goldenberg's points, while logical and sensible on their own, are a sufficient and responsive counter-argument.

Goldenberg should have quit while he was ahead. It's always safe to hand out generic advice, but a list that includes Cordesman and doesn't include Juan Cole or Robert Fisk is not a list of people I would trust on the mideast.

Fisk has been on the ground so long out there that he is a welcome counterbalance to excessive scholasticism.

At the end of the day our job is not to become experts ourselves on the mideast, but to become reasonably able to detect the chairwarmers and BS artists in the thinktanks who act as enablers for demagogues and warmongers in the government. This is a job that will follow you long after your formal retirement.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/secret-british-memo-shows-bush.html

This post is a wonderful example of Juan Cole's analysis, and he certainly has my respect and admiration

I prefer to think of some of the so-called experts who appear on Russert, Hardbill and O'Arrogantone's Comedy Hour as Ex-PERT users - With their hair finally falling out due to the overuse, their minds have receded as well.

Of course Juan Cole belongs on the list. So does Gary Sick who I think is wonderful and is at Columbia. There are many others as well in academia who are excellent.

I was specifically trying to point to the people who are based in the Think Tanks and Washington institutions that are being bashed, but who are really thoughtful on these issues.

Did you read the whole post by Atrios?

So Ilan Goldenberg has determined the "secret decoder ring" to figure out who the experts really are. Unfortunately, I have no way of using the decoder ring while watching cnn, or reading the Washington Post, since I don't have the resumes of these people available.

What really bothers me about Atrios' approach to the VSP issue is that it is -- so typically of him and much of the left blogosphere -- both simplistic and nihilistic.

Certainly large swaths of the Foreign Policy establishment, at least as it appears on teevee, were just dead wrong about Iraq. Certainly their mistakes on that account tell heavily against the soundness of their judgment, perhaps fatally so.

But what does Atrios offer in remedy but reliance instead on the completely ignorant and partisan? How does he represent anything other than the left wing version of the Know-Nothings?

One thing people on the left seem to unwilling to acknowledge is that foreign policy is hard. Getting many predictions right is hard. Anyone who really thought that they had genuine certainty in predicting the exact outcome of the Iraq war is a fool, and untrustworthy on that account alone.

Indeed, one of the things that, in my mind, most counts against someone being a genuine expert is any high degree of certainty they profess in their predictions. A true expert knows the limits of their own knowledge, almost more basically than they know anything else. As Socrates said, they know what the don't know.

But the fact that these predictions are hard to make does not mean that there aren't people better and worse at making them. The real task for those of us who truly aspire to the label of being "reality-based" -- which, I think, does not seem to include Atrios -- is to figure out who they might be. For those of us outside the Foreign policy community, I think reliability of predictions is a pretty good initial index of who they might be. And getting just the Iraq war right hardly counts as sufficient -- more than one correct prediction seems a minimal requirement. And the correctness of reasoning behind the predicitions (even in some cases when the prediction itself is wrong) also counts.

Really, Atrios, making such a determination is a little more complicated than a decoder ring.

Godenberg's advice sounds pretty common-sense to me, analogous to the types of considerations one would use to filter out bad experts in any kind of discipline.

The point you're missing is that Goldenberg has already restricted the universe of experts to the Very Serious People club. You only get to choose which of the VSP are hacks and which VSP are only mostly hacks.

He's already excluded Juan Cole, the 82nd airborne NCOs, and riverbend. You don't get to add them to the list.

It's like a Hobson's choice.

I think Atrios said I was right. You guys should listen to me more often.

Falling into our pre-2003 ways, are we, Kevin? Maybe more penance is needed. The DLC and its stooges are largely "useful idiots." Please try to avoid the same.

"Really, Atrios, making such a determination is a little more complicated than a decoder ring."

For pete's sake, Atrios' point was that it shouldn't be up to the viewer/audience to determine who is an expert and who is an "expert". What Atrios is pissed about is not that some experts were wrong about Iraq. It's that the "experts" who were wrong about Iraq ARE STILL ON THE FRICKIN' TV ALL THE FRICKIN' TIME. None of these "experts" have seemingly lost any of their wonderful credibility despite...

A. Being spectacularly wrong.
B. Most of them trying to deny being wrong even after it became painfully obvious.
C. Continuing to dominate the discussion on Iraq as though their wrongness and denial mean nothing.

That's what's wrong, and Atrios got snarky with Goldberg because he seemed to want to gloss over those facts.

Mike

it is -- so typically of him and much of the left blogosphere -- both simplistic and nihilistic.

um, what? nihilistic?

Really, Atrios, making such a determination is a little more complicated than a decoder ring.

it really couldn't be easier. there need be only two settings on the ring.

those that have been consistently and completely wrong for the past six years or longer should no longer be considered experts.

and vice versa.

occam's secret decoder ring is the best.

um, what? nihilistic?

When you seem more than happy to throw out the credibility of the entirety of the foreign policy establishment because part of it was wrong on Iraq, or if you're willing to trash all of the body of knowledge standing behind the standard diplomatic protocols and policies of the past 50 to 100 years because of the Iraq war, well, that's what I'd call both simplistic and nihilistic.

How different are the left wing Know-Nothings here from their right wing counterparts?

Where, exactly, is the "reality-base" in this, or the much touted respect for nuance that the left wing blogosphere so much prides itself on?

When you seem more than happy to throw out the credibility of the entirety of the foreign policy establishment because part of it was wrong on Iraq, or if you're willing to trash all of the body of knowledge standing behind the standard diplomatic protocols and policies of the past 50 to 100 years because of the Iraq war, well, that's what I'd call both simplistic and nihilistic.

Finally, a wise voice returns us to focus on the Bush/Cheney administration and the lackeys who followed/enabled them.

For pete's sake, Atrios' point was that it shouldn't be up to the viewer/audience to determine who is an expert and who is an "expert". What Atrios is pissed about is not that some experts were wrong about Iraq. It's that the "experts" who were wrong about Iraq ARE STILL ON THE FRICKIN' TV ALL THE FRICKIN' TIME. None of these "experts" have seemingly lost any of their wonderful credibility despite...

A. Being spectacularly wrong.
B. Most of them trying to deny being wrong even after it became painfully obvious.
C. Continuing to dominate the discussion on Iraq as though their wrongness and denial mean nothing.

That's what's wrong, and Atrios got snarky with Goldberg because he seemed to want to gloss over those facts.

Well said Mike.

This is pretty good too from Chris:

This doesn't do much to address Atrios's points, which I'd describe as: (1) You're still letting "experts" crap on your brand (expert), give you a bad name, and not kick them out of the academy (really, anyone in the RBC should continue to employ known and knowing propagandists for the Administration, by which I mean O'Hanlon/Pollack? Um, okay.), (2) You're still not doing much to address the problem of "experts" getting more air time/print space than experts, (3) You sound like you're more pissed at *US* for calling you on this than you are *THEM* for being a bunch of fakes who helped grease the skids for war, and (4) You don't want us yelling at you, even though you've shown that's what you respond to -- and if you'll acquiesce to wrong-headed policy, why won't you listen to sweet reason from your friends? You ask those questions enough times, you get enough crappy answers, and you begin to get cynical about people who call themselves experts.

There is seemingly no accountability or merit in this pundit/think tank game. None.

This more than anything also points to why we need to fight against centralized media ownership, the freedom of information, and societal support of distributed media and net neutrality.

Oops, of course I mean "for" the freedom of information, net neutrality, and the overall societal encouragement of grassroots and distributed media, along with renewed attention to the standards and certification of those who are granted the public airwaves in larger scale.

Noone is going to hand this to us, as it is not in the business interests of those who have bought the system. It will take sustained grassroots and civic pressure, and for progressives initially and primarily on the Democratic and other progressive candidates (i.e. "prove it").

Get your free decoder ring here!

http://www.mediatransparency.com/conservativephilanthropy.php?conservativePhilanthropyPageID=3

Jimm,

Ever hear about the guy who threw the baby out with the bathwater?

I didn't think so.

Too much nuance, I guess.

FWI belatedly W, I found myself reacting much like Kevin after linking over to that piece from Eschaton. Seemed like he was just offering a rule of thumb that was actually fairly useful. It's significance was pretty circumscribed compared to the larger point of the VSP discussion, but it seemed like a positive contribution. The comment thread over there was surprisingly negative and I couldn't quite grasp why. He wasn't apologizing for the foreign polciy hacks; he was pointing out some of their objective identifying features.

The difference between the left and the right (I really thing we shoud replace those terms with 'moonbat' and 'wingnut' as better and less-laden metaphors) is that when the wingnuts attack the experts, what they want is their seats at the table--while when the moonbats attack, they want to bust up the table.

This is why the Establishment VSP are far more upset with the moonbat blogosphere.

That's also why they respond with unfortunate protestations that they deserve their status, and wail that the moonbat Atrios wants to destroy everything and have the DFsans-culottes sit waving their filthy liberty caps in the Estates General.

Deling with the Right was easy--just let them in. The problem was that while the externals were preserved, the core had been corrupted--because the folks they let in were a) not all that accomplished and b)not interested in the truth.

And that's the point. Academic institutions and 'Expert' foundations are supposed to provide not one thing but two: in addition to expertise, they're supposed to provide discourse. Differing opinions and insights are supposed to be discussed, and through public conversation things beyond personal opinion are supposed to arise.

It's a simple criticism, that they were wrong about everything, and, if moonbats were wingnuts, we'd just ask that digby, the Rude Pudit, and Margaret Cho be made Brookings fellows.

But the problem with the whole run-up to the war was not just a) bad experts, but b) no public discourse. In a better America, the when Bill Kristol or Charles Krauthammer makes a prediction, the experts who disagreed with him would step into the public forum and make the counteer points, andengage the debate over the question.

But none of that hapopened. Media consolidation had done its work: instead of fierce roundtables of discussion on Iraq, we had a full-court propaganda press. And to this day we still have false-to-fact statements bruited about in foreign policy debate--which should be the most basic function of a scholarly institution to dispel.

And because the experts would not come forth and raise their voices, and if the CFR's and Brookingses of the Republic would not provide the discourse, raise the debate, challenge the nonsense, then DFH bloggers stood in their places.

The experts are right to say, in general terms, that ex-economic professors and ex-comic-book-writers shouldn't be leading foreign policy discourse. But the moonbats say "You're right. That's your job. Why weren't you doing it. Why was there an empty chair next to Bill Kristol?" and raise the proposition that, if these august institutions fail to do their essential and vital job, maybe it's time to knock out those rotted joists and replace them with some functional supports.

frankly, I suggest you stop missing Atrios' nuance before accusing me of missing the nuance in your rebuttals of Atrios (based upon your nuance-free reading)

DrBB, never go to Eschaton's comments for guidance on Atrios' arguments or anything other than snark piled on snark.

Several posters have explained clearly in this thread the gist of what Atrios was getting at, and Atrios made the point clearly himself if you read it in the context of what he's been writing, and that it wasn't really a smackdown of Ilan per se, but again what common Joe or Jane has the time to source check what they see on TV or read in a respected newspaper or magazine?

Isn't that the job of the editors? I've long advocated that every single op/ed published in a major newspaper, magazine, or prepared statements made on TV should be sourced by documentation, not for the opinion statements but for any truth claims that are made, and obviously these don't have to be published but should be available to the editor(s) as well as concerned readers who request the "footnotes" (easily published on the web in this age too).

Such an establishment would go a long way to fixing the problem, but there would be still be instances when people just need to be fired or merely let go for quality and performance reasons.

Obviously, there would still be the issue of anonymous sources too, so a creative propagandist could probably still come up with very shoddy work that might pass the editors' quality-assurance source documentation standards, but it would also be a lot more transparent if it consistently was found to be BS.

After listening to many, my conclusion is that the Middle East is so Byzantine that nobody really grasps all the competing interests and plots.

As in science, however, theories of experts must withstand testing. Take Paul Wolfowitz, for example....

Atrios' nuance

Oh yeah, when I want nuanced thought embodied in careful distinctions and precisely conditioned principles, I always click right over to Eschaton.

There one may find the full subtlety of the universe in splendid display.

Thanks, Jimm -- and that's a great point about the accuracy/veracity of op-ed pieces. Somewhere along the line, it apparently became acceptable journalistic practice to publish lies that are obviously motivated by partisan political prejudice (Charles Krauthammer would be the poster boy for this, though there's dozens more nipping at his heels)...

You just don't get it frankly0, so I can't help you. To say that Atrios lacks nuance is frankly ridiculous.

Oh yeah, when I want nuanced thought embodied in careful distinctions and precisely conditioned principles, I always click right over to Eschaton.

Of course not frankly0, for that you’d turn to the very serious Tom Friedman. Am I right?

The restaurant up the street from my house "specializes" in Greek, Mexican, and American food, according to the sign.

I don't eat there.

Kevin,

"Experts" are supposed to have a solid grasp of knowledge and data in the area of their "expertise." And, their conclusions need to connect with a broader common understanding of the problems their "expertise" is expected to address.

As long as the supposed "experts" continue to use metrics that frame the Iraqi people as second-class citizens they will have no credibility.

Look at the Brookings Institute study for yourself and tell me how you think anyone can conclude that things in Iraq are better.

- 66% of Iraqis polled believed things are going quite bad or very bad.
- 59% thinks the US government controls their country.
- 78% opposed the US presence in their country.
- 42% believe Iraq is in a civil war.
- 58% don't believe their government is willing to make the compromises necessary to achieve peace and security.
- 53% believed security will improve once the US leaves.
- 15% have had family members leave the country because of security.
- 9% have had to leave their homes because of security.
(That's a displacement rate of 24% of the population.)
- 26% have had a family member or relative murdered in the last three years.
- a majority of Iraqis approve of attacks on US-led forces.
- 59% rate the economy as poor.
- 75% rate security as poor.
- 87% approve of seetting a timeline for US withdrawal from Iraq.

Al Qaeda in Iraq didn't exist before the US invaded. If we don't want Al Qaeda here why do you think Iraqis would want them there? So, given those metrics what "expert" would say things are better in Iraq?

"Experts" have lost credibility with everyone but themselves. Leaving the rest of us wishing you would stop calling yourselves "experts" because you're not. When you keep getting things wrong, you are not an "expert."

The restaurant up the street from my house "specializes" in Greek, Mexican, and American food, according to the sign.

I don't eat there.

Which underscores a different problem...preconceptions causing one never to try or taste something close at hand. With competing pitches from other fine food establishments, I could understand it, but that Greek/Mexican/American joint might be the best in town and you don't even know it.

preconceptions causing one never to try or taste something close at hand.

Didn't say I never tried it. I only said I don't eat there. Does that underscore a different problem or does the "preconceptions" one fit here too?

If you've gone there and didn't like the food, what they specialize in would be irrelevant. Just say the food is no good and that's why you don't go.

"Regional experts generally tend to be more well informed than functional experts because of their narrower focus." If you want to learn about the Middle East, listen to Arabic-speaking Middle East experts, not generic terrorism experts or nonproliferation experts or whatnot.

Regional experts may be more well-informed than functional experts, but if so the explanation here is exactly the opposite of the one presented. They are more well-informed, if at all, not because their focus is narrower (region-specific), but because it is broader (not limited to a specific aspect of foreign affairs).

But, even so, its a useless rule: while there may be a tendency in this direction, the variation between individuals is greater than the variation between the groups, so it is, practically speaking, a useless guideline.

"There is an inverse correlation between the number of areas of expertise listed in your bio and your actual expertise." Genuine experts have a limited number of areas on which they claim genuine expertise, and those areas are usually related. Conversely, a long, jumbled laundry list of areas may be a warning sign of someone who's spread too thin to have deep expertise in any single field.

For the same reason as above, this is a useless guideline. There are plenty of people who claim expertise in a fairly narrow field that are hacks, and there are experts whose expertise is broader than average while no less deep. While, certainly, if there were no other differences between people, you'd expect a broader expertise to be correspondingly less deep, and that may well be the case in general, it doesn't do much to sort real from falsely-acclaimed experts in real, specific cases. Further, there may be times when a broader but less deep expertise is more useful in understanding a real-world issue which crosses many boundaries: being an world-class expert on one aspect of the problem and an ignoramus when it comes to another aspect may give you less of an understanding of the overall picture than someone who is merely basically familiar with both relevant areas.

The restaurant up the street from my house "specializes" in Greek, Mexican, and American food, according to the sign.

We had a restaurant that "specialized" in Mexican, Chinese and Thai food. Because the cook was Mexican, everybody ordered Mexican food. It was bad, the Chinese was bad, the Thai food was by far the best in town. The guy had worked long in one of the country's best Thai restaurants.