His Majesty's Review
(I'm a couple days late to this, but better late than never.)
My esteemed royal colleague, the King of Zembla, has a marvelous post up about his experience hearing former amabssador and husband to the most well-known former undercover CIA operative to date, Joseph Wilson, speak at San Francisco State University (an institute of learning that this blog's author once attended with some regularity many eons ago) earlier this week, and if you haven't read it yet, it is well worth a look. Here are a few choice excerpts from the notes the King took of Mr. Wilson's presentation:
In the current administration there are, according to Wilson, three schools of thought regarding foreign policy. The Whack-a-Mole school, epitomized by Rumsfeld and Cheney, likes to hit anything and hit everything, and goes looking for new threats when it has nothing left to hit. The Jodhpurs-and-Pith-Helmet school (Perle, Bolton, Wolfowitz on his saner days) argues that America, as the lone remaining superpower, should embrace its imperial destiny and take any actions necessary to maintain global hegemony for generations to come. The God's-Gift-of-Freedom school (Bush, possibly Rice, Wolfowitz on his less sane days) believes, stupidly, that it is part of America's great mission to spread democracy by military force.
Wilson openly mocks the view that a new, Democratized Middle East can arise from chaos we are currently spreading. Columnists like Thomas Friedman make the mistake of assuming that educated, liberal Arabs -- the Westernized types Friedman hangs out with, whom Wilson characterizes as "Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants, and Golfers" -- will naturally rise in influence as the region reconfigures itself. Big mistake, says Wilson: the DLAG class benefits primarily from incremental change, from slow evolution toward modernity. Revolution, on the other hand, favors revolutionaries. Professionals and intellectuals are being driven out of Iraq because they have been targeted for murder by the militias.
There's much more. Check it out for yourselves.
My esteemed royal colleague, the King of Zembla, has a marvelous post up about his experience hearing former amabssador and husband to the most well-known former undercover CIA operative to date, Joseph Wilson, speak at San Francisco State University (an institute of learning that this blog's author once attended with some regularity many eons ago) earlier this week, and if you haven't read it yet, it is well worth a look. Here are a few choice excerpts from the notes the King took of Mr. Wilson's presentation:
In the current administration there are, according to Wilson, three schools of thought regarding foreign policy. The Whack-a-Mole school, epitomized by Rumsfeld and Cheney, likes to hit anything and hit everything, and goes looking for new threats when it has nothing left to hit. The Jodhpurs-and-Pith-Helmet school (Perle, Bolton, Wolfowitz on his saner days) argues that America, as the lone remaining superpower, should embrace its imperial destiny and take any actions necessary to maintain global hegemony for generations to come. The God's-Gift-of-Freedom school (Bush, possibly Rice, Wolfowitz on his less sane days) believes, stupidly, that it is part of America's great mission to spread democracy by military force.
Wilson openly mocks the view that a new, Democratized Middle East can arise from chaos we are currently spreading. Columnists like Thomas Friedman make the mistake of assuming that educated, liberal Arabs -- the Westernized types Friedman hangs out with, whom Wilson characterizes as "Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants, and Golfers" -- will naturally rise in influence as the region reconfigures itself. Big mistake, says Wilson: the DLAG class benefits primarily from incremental change, from slow evolution toward modernity. Revolution, on the other hand, favors revolutionaries. Professionals and intellectuals are being driven out of Iraq because they have been targeted for murder by the militias.
There's much more. Check it out for yourselves.
posted by Generik at 6:19 PM
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