Apology To Marc Lynch And Some Others

by tristero

In a previous post, I questioned the credentials of the members of the Foreign Affairs roundtable on “What to do in Iraq.” Some members of that panel clearly are qualified, eminently so, to have an opinion appear under the auspices of the journal that promotes itself, by way of a quote, as “The Bible of Foreign Policy Thinking.”

In particular, Marc Lynch of Abu Aardvark wrote to Hullabaloo: “…in addition to being a liberal blogger (www.abuaardvark.com), I do speak and read Arabic, write about al-Jazeera and the Arab media all the time, and published an op- ed opposing war with Iraq in the Christian Science Monitor in July 2002.” Marc’s clearly one of the Serious People who knows what he’s talking about when it comes to Iraq; his opinions on the mess in Iraq are invaluable. Marc, a full and complete apology. I haven’t read your blog in anthing resembling a regular fashion and that has been truly my serious loss.

And I’d like to apologize to other panel members who have garnered high-level credentials similar to Marc’s. Your comments, too, were helpful, even if I disagreed with them…no especially if I disagreed with them.

Indeed, Digby’s right: It could have been worse, much worse. And one should count one’s blessings that Gingrich wasn’t involved. As panels go, it sure beats the Sunday blarney-fests handsdown when it comes to gravitas. That said, I wonder if that says more about how alarmingly poor public serious discourse on foreign policy has become. Yes, I’m grateful that a panel under Foreign Affairs’ auspices wasn’t entirely dominated by utterly unqualified right-wing ideologues living in a fantasy-world and even had some real experts on it. And that’s rather sad, to settle for the mediocre.

I still can’t help but wonder how why there were no Muslims included in the roundtable. Imagine, for a moment, a roundtable discussion of “What to do about Israel” with, say, Prince Bandar, the editor of the Danish newspaper that printed the anti-Muslim cartoons, Cardinal Egan of New York, James Wallis, Arianna Huffington, and anyone else you can think of who might have an opinion about Israel. Except for Israelis or American Jews.

Similarly, the exclusion of women and people of color is utterly shocking, but not because of some notion of “political correctness.” Let’s be clear about this: when expertise is involved, I simply want to hear from qualified experts and if none of them are men (or women), I couldn’t care less. But genuine expertise wasn’t one of the major prerequisites for this panel. There was some other standard that trumped genuine knowledge because some of the panel members – not all – could only have reached their opinions from studying secondary sources. They’d never been to Iraq, or they couldn’t even speak the language, some had had minimal if any contact with the culture or government policies, and so on. So that does raise the question as to what was the standard for choosing roundtablers. And being white, being male, and not being Muslim – those criteria suddenly seem to loom very large in how Foreign Affairs came to make their choice.

As I mentioned in the original post, I’m not saying the people on the panel were stupid. I’m sure that even the least expert member follows the news from Iraq more than the average lay reader. But if I am to learn something I don’t already know about Iraq, and I mean really learn something, then I need to hear from an entire panel of experts. Period. As good as some of the panelists were, as great as some others were, that’s not good enough by half. We’re living through a rather difficult time, after all; simply being smart, verbal or having your heart in the right place should not qualify you for inclusion at such a level.

Which brings up one further point. I would be the last person to claim that I have unique expertise in any aspect of foreign policy. I’m smart, I read a lot, I’ve talked to a lot of people who are experts, but I don’t. Here’s the thing: my lack of genuine knowledge wouldn’t prevent me from participating in the next Foreign Affairs roundtable on, say, “What To Do In Tuva.” Why not? I like throat-singing quite a bit and I can find Tuva on a map. I’m sure I could read enough in a month to know whatever I’d need to perform admirably in a roundtable. That may be good enough for Tuvan/American relations – although I doubt it. That’s not good enough for Iraq.

So I fully apologize to the experts on the Foreign Affairs panel. At the same time, I cannot urge Foreign Affairs and other similar institutions to provide the rest of us not merely with intelligent people, but with knowledgeable people, and only deeply knowledgeable people, who can help the rest of us understand an extremely complex world situation. A situation that – partly because of the lack of expertise in high places – seems poised on the edge of a precipice.