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

To: Don Hurst who wrote (217584)	2/10/2007 5:37:34 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 281500

Sam, your above comment is something I have wondered about. Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami, supposedly very knowledgeable ME scholars and historians, were advisors to the Bush Administration before the Iraq invasion and Lewis, I believe, even had personal meetings with Bush. What were they telling the Bushies? You know, Don, I've wondered exactly the same thing! I don't know what they were telling Bush. I do know that they run in neocon circles. As someone who has studied Strauss with various people who could be described as "neoconservatives," I know that they are very bright, even sometimes brilliant, people, but they take shortcuts and risks in their thinking, all the while believing that they are the "elite" of the world who can afford to do this. In a word, they have hubris. But of course, they would deny that--in their view, they've studied, talked and thought enough that their views combined with the right power will prevail. They were seduced by the military might of the US, but didn't make the connection that all that might doesn't really matter if you aren't actually willing to use it--as Rome was. Even though theoretically we have more military might relative to other countries right now than Rome did relative the countries that existed then, it is, in important ways, a mirage. They (Rome) were willing to use everything they had, kill anyone and everyone who stood in their way. We aren't willing to actually use the full force of our military might. The physicists who thought to themselves that unleashing nuclear power would mean that there would be no more war were politically naive in important ways, but our current set of leaders are naive in an analogous way. They are all brilliant people in their own way, but they were, in a way, "stupified" by the very power of nuclear weapons. All JMHO of course. And not intended to be the "final" word--intended to be only the first word, and VERY open to correction, revision, amendation.