The Next Progressive Foreign Policy

Number one on my list of "panels I'm bitter I wasn't invited to speak on" is the one I'm attending right now: "The Next Progressive Foreign Policy" featuring Steve Clemons, Ken Baer, and Peter Beinart, which doesn't seem like a particularly netrootsy crew. I'll be interested in what Peter has to say though, because I haven't actually read that much by him on foreign policy since his book, and the book, despite the criticism it took, entailed a substantial turn to the left.

UPDATE: See, for example, I agreed with something like 97 percent of what Beinart said in his opening presentation. The essential fact of the modern world is that the United States wants to worry about problems inside other countries (terrorists in failed states, epidemic disease in countries with bad public health systems, nuclear programs in Iran, etc.) but that to do anything about those problems in an effective way, we need to do it in a legitimate way, which means through rules and institutions that we are willing to obey.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Clemons then correctly adds a dimension that had been missing from what Beinart said about the need to move away from the super-militarized approach to the world where the US spends about half the world's total defense dollars and seems to get less-and-less in terms of beneficial outcomes in exchange.

AND ANOTHER: To be clear, Ken isn't just "on" the panel he's moderating it because he was asked to organize it.

Comments

Little Kenny Baer is on a Yearly Kos panel? That's genuinely surprising. How did that happen?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 3, 2007 11:40 AM

Why the fuck would anoyne ask you to speak on a foreign policy panel?

Posted by pimp hand strikes! | August 3, 2007 11:42 AM

God, that's a weird lineup to have for that audience. It's true that the "netroots" is more partisan than ideology-driven, but it's also been traditionally driven by anti-war sentiment... and here's a foreign policy panel composed of two liberal hawks and a realist. I would've expected at least one representative of left-liberal internationalism here - Juan Cole, Tony Karon, etc. Or are they just too "thinky" for netroots types?

Posted by Christmas | August 3, 2007 11:53 AM

don't worry, MY, your day in the sun is coming.
for that matter, you're not doing too bad already.

Posted by Count Cant | August 3, 2007 11:57 AM

You know you gotta publish that book thing you keep mentioning to be invited to panels?

Posted by kvenlander | August 3, 2007 12:00 PM

This book:

Matthew Yglesias: Liberal Foreign Policy. A very serious, thoughtful argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.

Posted by kvenlander | August 3, 2007 12:04 PM

To be clear, Ken isn't just "on" the panel he's moderating it because he was asked to organize it.

Jeebus. I'd love to know what went into the decision to ask him to organize it. That really makes no sense at all. There must be some weird candidate negotiation going on behind the scenes.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | August 3, 2007 12:06 PM

That's a progressive panel? Now I'm really going to have to stop using that word. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since the Kos community is more "Democratic Party" than anything else. (Not that there's anything wrong with that . . . )

p.s. On the bright side, it does seem like Beinart has changed his tune. Better several years late than never, I suppose.

Posted by mary | August 3, 2007 12:38 PM

"Ken Baer and Peter Beinart"
----------
1) Peter Beinard is known for (a) savagely attacking people in 2002 when they argued again the Iraq invasion and (b) showing himself to be a stupid horse's ass in Bill Moyers recently documentary --where Beinart justified his bad calls on Iraq by pointing out that his job isn't to determine the FACTS but rather to carefully read what other people say the facts are.

2) Ken Baer is known for (a) being senior advisor on the Joe Lieberman for President campaign and (b)
making a vicious slur against Nancy Pelosi --that Pelosi's refusal to make Jane Harman Chairperson of the House Intelligence Committee was due to "personal animus". That Pelosi felt "settling of scores is more important than your [America's National] security. " See http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2006/nov/14/intelligent_design

Ken ,of course, refused to see that Pelosi's opposition to Harman might lie in the fact that when Bush lied us into Iraq, he got a lot of help from Harman. Kenney, for some reason, LIKED the idea of having Intelligence overseen by someone who said that if she needed to know anything, she would ask Haim Saban's think tank. The "think Tank" that employs Kenneth Pollack.

Kenny, for some reason, LIKED a HPSCI chairperson whom TIME reported was under investigation by the FBI for applying pressure on behalf of two AIPAC officals. AIPAC officials under felony indictments for passing classified information to a foreign country. See
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1549069,00.html

3) So, I mean , FUCK ME. Why didn't they just invite Bill Kristol and Richard Perle to co-chair
the panel?

Posted by Don Williams | August 3, 2007 12:57 PM

Here's a revolutionary idea: maybe that Baer guy got all enterprising and all and called up the organizers to say he'd like to do it? Meanwhile all the whiners were sitting crying by their phones waiting for *someone* to call and ask them to a panel.

Jus'speculatin'

Posted by kvenlander | August 3, 2007 4:28 PM