More Baer

I don't want to focus too much on Ken Baer's Iran column, but since he's a professional at rhetoric rather than at foreign policy analysis, the column is a veritable font of key argumentative moves. One of the real signature ones is that Baer uses the failure of the Bush/Baer approach to the Persian Gulf region as a reason to continue the Bush/Baer approach to the Persian Gulf. In other words, instead of trying to grapple with the substantive reasons why lots of people have now reached the conclusion that preventive war is not a good approach to non-proliferation policy, he's psychoanalyzing opposition to his preferred Iran policy as based in the fact that "many progressives–so chastened by the Bush Administration’s deceptions over Iraq and the egregious mistakes that followed–are in danger of letting the past prevent them from focusing on the real threats looming ahead."

In short, the failure in Iraq is construed as putting a higher burden of proof on the doves since we now must operate under a cloud of suspicion that we're irrationally overreacting to Iraq. The hawks, meanwhile, just get to blithely move on without reexamining any aspect of their own beliefs. Instead, Iraq can just be dismissed as merely reflecting "the Bush Administration’s deceptions" and unspecified "egregious mistakes."

Comments

This whole situation is a lot like the Enron swindlers getting out of prison, and immediately announcing that they were setting up a secretive hedge fund.

They would argue that the gigantic Enron Fraud highlighted the enormous danger of financial deception in our current markets, and that they themselves were clearly the world's greatest experts in the detailed dynamics of Enron-type frauds.

Betcha David Broder would hand over his life savings for investment with them...

Posted by RKU | June 11, 2007 4:10 PM

Matt, you either need to have the tech gurus close comments on old posts, or else get rid of the "recent comments" feature altogether. Right now, it looks like this:

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Posted by Steve | June 11, 2007 4:12 PM

Likewise, the evidence he presents doesn’t really warrant his claim that the 1967 Senate Foreign Relations Committee was just expressing myopic, unnerved skepticism, ungrounded in any plausible appraisal of US capabilities & the situation in the region.

Posted by K | June 11, 2007 4:13 PM

I can't be the only one here who thinks that Matt needs a nickname for use in his ongoing war against foreign policy pundits. I'm going to start calling him "Smokey". Smokey Yglesias has a good ring to it, no?

So, way to go, Smokey. This is a good post.

Posted by strannix | June 11, 2007 4:33 PM

One thing about the column I don't understand. He seems to be putting forth congressional skepticism about the U.S. interfering in the 6 day war as a cautionary tale. But what exactly is he cautioning against? Don't let your skepticism blind you to Iran or Isreal will win a resounding victory in less than a week of combat?

Does he think that if U.S. and inetervened unilateraly the war would have lasted 4 days? Yasir Arafat would have committed suicide? I'm just confused.

Furthermore, I searched long and hard for a single policy suggestion in the entire column. I failed to find one. Even when he quotes Senator Morse as a man to be emulated, it isn't clear what policy conlusions one is to draw from:

We are skirting, what we have to face up to." Morse reminded his colleagues of the "very important moral obligation" the United States had to defend Israel: "We have to make the other free nations understand the relation of freedom in this matter because if they do get into a war, then you have got totalitarianism seeking to drive this country into oblivion."

It's as though he left out the final line:
"Therefore, we must bomb suspected Iranian nuclear fascilites".
Without something like that, his article is just completely vacuous.

Posted by WillieStyle | June 11, 2007 4:41 PM

Matt, you either need to have the tech gurus close comments on old posts, or else get rid of the "recent comments" feature altogether.

We're about to implement your proposed solution.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | June 11, 2007 4:43 PM

Reminds me of Dick Cheney's pre-Iraq War interviews. You know, the ones where he said that the fact that the inspectors found no WMDs was even more proof that Saddam had tons of them and must be removed.

These people have their beliefs, their ideologies, and their goals. They will pursue them and no amount of evidence or truth will change their minds. This is a fact they even more or less admitted to (reality based community etc. etc.).

Posted by j | June 11, 2007 4:44 PM

What is the great lesson that the US should be drawing from the Six Day War, according to Baer? I can’t, for the life of me, tell. Baer seems to be drawing an analogy between a current quagmire and potential crisis now (Iraq and Israel-Iran) and another quagmire and crisis in the past (Vietnam and Israeli-Arab tension). How can Baer construct an analogy between ’67 and ’07 about the pitfalls of a reluctant and distracted nation without specifying what US policy would have been preferable to the one actually adopted?

Does he think the US should have sent troops in 1967? Should we have sent a fleet to dislodge Egypt from the Straits of Tiran? Both of policy options had huge potential risk—involving the US in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza or triggering an escalation with the Soviets—and little in the way of upside.

Baer claims to be making an argument for militarily supporting Israel (in some unspecified way) against its enemies. But his choice of historical example hardly seems to compel his conclusion:

Weighed down by commitments in Indochina, the American foreign policy establishment of 1967 was predisposed to do nothing.

With the benefit of hindsight, it appears that doing nothing was the best course of action (for both Israel and the US).

If Ezra Klein can’t say something belligerent about Iran, he should say anything at all. QED.

Posted by the blackbird is involved | June 11, 2007 5:04 PM

I don't think Matt needs a nickname, he needs more gimmicky features. This post shows he is well-suited to do a "Bad Argument of the Day"-type column. Based on his philosophy background, it should focus on bad argumentation and not merely the author stating an opinion Matt disagrees with. I'm sure he has a Nexis account, and that means the only way he'll be lacking for material is if the Atlantic offices lose electricity or the NYT, WaPo and LAT all stop printing op-eds (I won't even mention the WSJ.)

I don't know what would raise the level of reasoning in the op-eds, but something like that couldn't hurt. I figure if Sullivan has his awards that he hands out sporadically, Matt can do something like this if he wanted to.

Posted by Mitch Schindler | June 11, 2007 5:20 PM

I like that idea, Mitch. I suspect I'm drawn to it in part because I have the vague, implausible hope that if such a feature caught on, it might increase my philosophy students' sense that their studies could conceivable be profitable in more than just a "virtue is its own reward" kind of way. But if it contributed even a little to making our public discourse a little more reasonable, that would be good enough.

Whaddya think, Matt?

Posted by Brandon Claycomb | June 11, 2007 5:55 PM

"I don't want to focus too much on Ken Baer's Iran column, but since he's a professional at rhetoric rather than at foreign policy analysis, the column is a veritable font of key argumentative moves."

Yiglesias should look into the mirror.

He is not exactly a "foreign policy expert" either. He is just another bloke with a blog.

Posted by Apter | June 11, 2007 6:24 PM

...his ongoing war against foreign policy pundits.

He does seem to be setting a rather hectic pace this week. And it's only Monday.

I don't think Matt needs a nickname, he needs more gimmicky features. This post shows he is well-suited to do a "Bad Argument of the Day"-type column. Based on his philosophy background, it should focus on bad argumentation and not merely the author stating an opinion Matt disagrees with.

I second the notion. However, he's on record as stating that Atrios' Wanker of the Day is shrill. And I don't think he meant it in a Shrillblog-esque reclaim-the-word kind of way. But I agree that the Yglesian brand could do with some more recognizable features. "The View From Your Breakfast" was just starting to catch on. Sadly, it was discontinued.

Posted by sangfroid826 | June 11, 2007 6:53 PM

In lieu of the second coming of Reagan-Christ it's my view that it may take that guy from Charles in Charge to really get this Iranian dude.

Posted by Linus | June 11, 2007 7:05 PM

Indeed Baer using a slick rhetorical strategy. Your response is substantively fine, but your rhetoric is a bit crude. I absolutely agree with the Yglesias/Ahmedinejad view that the US should not bomb or invade Iran, but I think it could be presented without your slash and Bush approach. I'm sure Baer claims that he is not just advocating the Bush approach and could respond that this Bush/Baer business is a crude rhetorical trick. I think you would have demolished Baer's credibility more thoroughly, if you had used "military" in the place of "Bush /Baer". As it is, your effort comes a distant second to Baer's own brilliant assault on his own credibility (I admit he sets a very high standard).

While on clumsy rhetoric, you might have attempted to intimidate the reader with your degree in philosophy by going on a riff on how one should respond to people's reasons not speculate on the causes of their statements, but that would be soooo 2004 (and anyway maybe the word "psychoanalyzing" does the trick all by its multisyllabic self).

Posted by Robert Waldmann | June 11, 2007 8:48 PM

Apter's comment: "He is not exactly a "foreign policy expert" either. He is just another bloke with a blog" is exactly right. We do not need another foreign policy expert. The ones we have stink. In fact, the whole labor market in foreign policy experts stink.

One of the glaring gaps in democracy theory is that mostly, populations don't know that much about countries outside of the ones they live in. This doesn't matter so much when a republic is small, and is trying to avoid foreign entanglements. It matters a lot more as the republic gets larger and more powerful. Democracy is ultimately founded on the notion that the people have access to enough good information to make reasonable decisions in electing their representatives. The people might not know all the ins and outs of, say, insurance law, but they generally have ideas about what will serve the common good. Unfortunately, they can't sample information from foreign policy experts to make similar judgments because so many of them exist as mere propaganda founts. Of the numerous experts who have been quoted about Iraq, for instance, how many of them have even the slightest sense of Iraqi culture and history? How many can speak Arabic? Those that know are mostly scholars without a public face; those that don't know are filled with passionate intensity, for which they get good bucks by various propaganda outlets, like Brookings and Heritage. Michael O'Hanlon, for instance, at Brookings is often quoted as an expert when the question of Iraq arises - and he always comes through with some hawkish nonsense. So, what is his training that would his views legitimacy? From his bio, we read this:

"His Ph.D. from Princeton is in public and international affairs; his bachelor's and master's degrees, also from Princeton, are in the physical sciences. He served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Congo/Kinshasa (the former Zaire) from 1982-1984, where he taught college and high school physics in French."

Nothing in his bio suggests that he has made any special study of Iraq, until, of course, he was paid to shill the opinion that invading Iraq would be swell, and that occupying it would be even sweller, and that things were getting better and better there which proved how benficient our occupation was, until suddenly things were getting so worse and worse which proved that we couldn't just leave.

A hack. A menace. And a typical foreign policy expert.
So much better to read just a guy with a blog.

Posted by roger | June 11, 2007 9:09 PM

oops. "So what is his training that would give his views legitimacy?"

Posted by roger | June 11, 2007 9:12 PM

Exactly, Roger. Our foreign policy "experts" are just Ivy League grads who managed to get a job in some office in DC that produces pieces of paper about foreign countries, instead of pieces of paper about the U.S. Can't speak relevant languages, never lived in the countries they are opining about, most have never even been in the military, from recent evidence they don't even have elementary knowledge of military history.

Our rising class of journalists could perform a useful public service by just hooting all of these guys out of the public sphere.

Posted by mq | June 11, 2007 10:40 PM