A firm belief that the Soviet Union was an economic and industrial juggernaut that could only be countered by high taxes, even higher spending, and an aggressive foreign policy is much easier to hold when you haven’t been there to see the dirt roads and bread lines. Ergo, methinks that Mr. Gates was selected for that position because of his ignorance, not in spite of it.

Pollack is just neo-conservatism writ small: someone who despises “Arabs” (i.e. brown people) and refuses to learn anything about them, yet is certain they can be remade into Likud voters through acts of violence.

No British monarch or prime minister had ever been to America before the revolution either. Lacking any knowledge of a subject while remaining convinced that your plans regarding said subject will be a splendid success is clearly insanity. Apparently insanity is hereditary among nations as well.

Ah, insanity is hereditary while virtue is not. I knew there was a reason I hated genetics.

There's a lot to this. Read foreign news and the people are fed tons of info about the US. They know the government, sports, hell they even know about the serial killers. In short they know more about America than most Americans.

The flip side is most Americans couldn't name the head of state of Australia. Lithuania? Fagedaboutit.

Years ago it was impossible to defend democracy to a Russian. They understood America's political system far better than most Americans and could hone in on the chinks in its armor.

Anyone wonder why Americans are seen as ugly?

Oops forgot.

Then there's Kenneth Pollack, now an expert on the "Middle East; Military and security affairs; Persian Gulf"

Shouldn't the quotation marks be around the word "expert"?

America is being run by the most aggressively ignorant people in a country full of fantastically incurious ignoramuses. They see no need for real information because they're just making it up as they go along. Power toadies like Gates who are willing to be cook the books and provide a bit o' astonishingly flimsy cover are always rewarded. It's the old Peter Principle run completely amok.

America is being run by the most aggressively ignorant people in a country full of fantastically incurious ignoramuses. They see no need for real information because they're just making it up as they go along. Power toadies like Gates who are willing to be cook the books and provide a bit o' astonishingly flimsy cover are always rewarded. It's the old Peter Principle run completely amok.

I followed your link to Pollack's book and Search Insided for the context. At first I thought, "Well, he's suitably humble and acknowledging his deficits, and he makes a good point that visiting a country gives you mostly anecdotal evidence." He did try to visit Iran, after all, but his visa was refused three times. But after a while I decided this really was a problem, that he really wasn't completely qualified to be an "expert." But I don't totally blame him for trying to be an expert when not many of the other experts out there were well qualified either.

Eh, I don't feel like getting into an argument over this, don't bother responding to my perspective.

The flip side is most Americans couldn't name the head of state of Australia. Lithuania?

No, that's not it. It's Sydney, isn't it?

(This is supposed to be funny on 3 levels, no I am not that ignorant.)

what you dont seem to undestand, Mr Schwarz, is that this is the only way to maintain objectivity.

how do you expect a man like robert gates to maintain his objectivity about the possibility of nuking a few million russians if he actually went there and had some vodka with the locals?

and ken pollack... well, if he actually spoke farsi, that would force him to renounce America and become a hippy anti-war freak looking to mmove to canada.

Did this not date to Dulles, who barely travelled at all and was little interested in the memos sent him?

There are two distinct functions to be satisfied by the intelligence role:

1. Gather intelligence
2. Implement policy initiatives (i.e. covert action and support to foreign actors that will implement those initiatives).

Sometimes intelligence gathering doesn't matter that much if you've got your heart set on implementing a particular course of action.

My grievances as a foreigner exactly, I know more about you and your history than you do. Maybe bringing enough of us there is the only way you're ever going to change. Hell, I bet we'll do better than you in the immigration tests too.

Do people outside the US really know more than people here about our culture and history? Consuming lots of media about the US probably gives you a pretty skewed view of what it's like here, and that's the impression I get from most Europeans I've talked to.

Now, most Americans just flat don't know or care much about the outside world. (Maybe this is an indication that we're not ideally suited to run a worldwide empire.)

I guess it's really strange to me that you'd become an expert on Iran without learnign Farsi, because nobody would get away with calling themselves an expert on, say, ancient Rome, without reading Latin well enough to get at the source documents directly.

I can see not being able to go to the country because either they won't let you in, or you're afraid they'll find some reason to keep you their and beat secrets out of you. But not learning the language means permanently missing important nuances of written materials (because translations never carry all the information of the original), not being able to read anything that hasn't been translated, not being able to talk directly to people from that country unless they know your language, etc.

Perhaps this is related to the absolutely goofy idea that to be a manager, you don't need to know anything about what you're managing, just management skills?