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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (30618)	5/24/2002 3:28:44 PM
From: tekboy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

read FA much as I read the columnists. and that's appropriate, with one caveat. While you should certainly be somewhat skeptical about everything, there are certain issues on which some people simply know more than others, or have a broader and more informed perspective. Those people, on those issues, deserve to have a greater weight accorded to their views. I've said this before, and I'll say it again. Divide things up into facts, informed judgments, and opinions. What columnists and pundits specialize in is the third. (They may offer the first and second too, but if so they should be taken with a shakerful of salt, since they do not necessarily have any greater access to those categories than their readers or viewers.) Experts also offer the third, and when they do, their opinions deserve no greater or lesser weight than anybody else's. But their real contribution comes in categories one and two, and not taking their views seriously on such matters is a mistake, for two reasons. The first is that one's own views will be less well-informed and sensible than they should be. The second reason is that events will generally surprise you, because your mental map of the world will be incorrect. Thus, the punditocracy was all ablaze with Iraqnophobia throughout fall and winter. Iraq was clearly behind the anthrax letters and probably the 9/11 attacks too, we were told; the toppling of Saddam, we were given to understand, was not only a relatively straightforward matter but also a no-brainer, and would accordingly be undertaken with dispatch. Some of us tried to point out that the most knowledgeable and sensible experts doubted each of these claims, and lo and behold, each of them now looks dubious. Those who fell for the hype must be rather mystified by the absence of evidence linking Saddam to the fall's crimes and the abandonment of an "Afghan approach" to solving the Iraq problem; the more extremely puzzled and paranoid of them will probably attribute such developments to a shadowy conspiracy of appeasers, bureaucrats, oil companies, the smoking man, or whatever. In fact, the State Department, the CIA, the uniformed military, and many outside experts were ALL predicting just such outcomes from the beginning. So--everyone should read what they like, listen to what they like, and believe what they like: I'm no Ari Fleischer. But those who want to understand the world as it is would do well to pay close attention to where their information comes from and what bona fides and track record their sources can boast. tb@caveatlector.com