Glenn Greenwald eviscerates the Brookings/AEI foreign policy "scholar" establishment

And boy do those assholes deserve it. Essential reading, as usual. Here is a taste (but be sure to read the whole post):

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



...The Foreign Policy Community -- our establishment "scholars" -- were almost unanimously supportive of George Bush's invasion, worked themselves into a lather over Saddam's WMDs and mushroom clouds over U.S. cities, stayed silent in the face of obvious Bush abuses and excesses, embraced the most manipulative and fictitious neoconservative doctrines, and they still continuously issue all sorts of theoretical constructs to justify America's increasingly militaristic and imperial role.

There is no real dispute within it about the most fundamental foreign policy questions we face (which is why the "liberal" Brookings Institutional "scholars" are so pro-war and work so cooperatively with the neoconservative AEI). And they not only have a monopoly over deciding who is Serious and who is not, but also in declaring which issues are off-limits from real debate. The foreign policy disasters of the last six years, at least, are their doing.

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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