On the theory that big time politics (and by extension elite foreign policy) is Hollywood for ugly people, I think Michael Medved makes a good parallel point to yours:

From: "War Films, Hollywood and Popular Culture"
By Michael Medved, May 19, 2006
http://preview.tinyurl.com/3ahhy6

I would submit to you that what has changed is neither the American military nor the ordinary American's perception of the military. What has changed is Hollywood itself. During WWII, there was a spectacular war effort in Hollywood and a great enthusiasm among the Hollywood elite -- even the biggest stars -- for serving their country. Jimmy Stewart, the number-two rated male movie star at the time, enlisted in 1942, flew 51 bombing missions with the Army Air Corps and ended up a brigadier general. Henry Fonda rejected the proposal that he simply promote and sell war bonds, insisted on serving in combat and was wounded in the Pacific. And such behavior was considered normal. This was America, after all, and Hollywood was part of America. [...] Part of what changed -- and it was a change that was already under way before Vietnam -- was Hollywood's transformation from a mass appeal industry to an elite institution. Many of the major stars today have an Ivy League background. And a large number of them are second or third generation stars -- people who have been born into the movie business and have lived in it their whole lives. So the industry is no longer connected with the public in the way that it used to be. Certainly very few of Tinseltown's luminaries have had any experience in, or contact with, the military. All of this is reflected in the new mission that Hollywood has adopted: not to entertain, but to challenge and discomfort the public. And of course it is not simply antipathy to the military that permeates Hollywood today. There is a broader anti-Americanism -- an alienation from everything American -- that runs very, very deep there. [...] A book published in 1999, The Black Book of Communism, computed the number of corpses that communism had accumulated since the Russian Revolution in 1917. The total adds up, in the 20th century alone, to more than 100 million. The U.S. fought a life-and-death struggle against world communism between the end of WWII and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. We won that war, thank God. And Hollywood's continuing insistence on portraying the Vietnam War -- which, along with the Korean War, was an integral part of that life-and-death struggle -- as having taught us that all war is pointless is a way of ignoring the fact, not only that Hollywood did not engage in that struggle against world communism, but that most people in the entertainment elite were on the wrong side of it. I say this with respect and with caution. I am not suggesting that most people in Hollywood were active communists. But I am suggesting that the anti-anti-communism that became so typical of Hollywood during the Cold War has led to its ongoing denial that the Cold War meant anything. Can anyone think of a movie that has celebrated America's victory in the Cold War? Probably most of us will think of Miracle. Apparently Hollywood can face the fact that we beat the Soviet Union in a hockey game, but not the fact that we overcame the Soviet Union politically -- through attention to moral principles and through the maintenance of military superiority -- because the entertainment elite is terribly invested in the idea that no war ever meant anything.

Dafydd

You have named all the players in recent years who have bashed the Bush administration incessantly especially in the Plame matter. And with all the members of the Clinton administration listed (who certainly have an axe to grind) the survey is definitely skewed. Isn't it amazing how these people name their organizations with such high faluting sounding names which boiled down mean nothing.

With Bill Clinton bashing and undercutting W at all times, I wonder if Bush Sr. is still calling him "son". That whole scenario is sickening.

It seems to me that these are the people who dropped the ball to begin with. If they are such expertshow did we get to this place?

"Nonscientific survey" Isan't that code words for "entirely pointless?" or "partisan hack job meant to look somehow fair"?

This reminds me of the overwhelming consensus on global warming. Next up, anyone who thinks the surge might be working gets to be called "deniers". I can't wait.

I find it interesting that Democrats always value consensus over facts. They live in this weird twilight world where the truth is simply what the most people believe. Hard to argue with that.

For the record, yeah, the surge is working. But the surge only provides the physical and mental space for Iraqis to fix the underlying problems. Victory is (and always was) entirely dependent on the Iraqis. Unfortunately political courage is in much shorter supply than physical courage, both here and abroad. The smart move would be to give it another year, at least. But smart moves are based on facts, not consensus.

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Sure Albright is there as are Anthony Lake and Susan Rice, who was a state department official in charge of Africa during the Clinton administration who ignored the festering terror problem. But there's also Jim Woolsey the CIA director that Clinton reportedly had no time to meet with.

Jay Garner was the first head of the CPA before he was sacked (I think for being a neo-con) and replaced by Paul Bremer, another of the experts.

Dov Zakheim and Laurence Eagleburger are both staunch Republicans. The former served in the current administration for a bit. Lawrence Wilkerson was once a member of the administration too. He served under Colin Powell but has been a very vocal critic of the administration.

Ilan Berman, Robert Kagan and Daniel Pipes are all serious people.

Fawaz Gerges, Shibley Telhami, James Zogby and John Esposito are all apologists for Arab extremism.

And of course Stephen Walt has been against the war. Rand Beers, I believe, became John Kerry's maian foreign policy advsisor. Andrew Bacevich used to be somewhat conservative and turned against the war and became even more bitter after his son was killed in the war. Paul Pillar's been examined at PowerLine.

In short, this is a mixed crowd. You're probably right that Scheuer and Johnson would consider themselves conservatives, but given this context the term is really irrelevant.

This is a mixed crowd, but I'm not sure it's as skewed as you think.

Soccerdad:

I believe it is skewed; but I'm not saying it's skewed to the "left." (Actually, it was; but they weighted it so that "liberals" = "conservatives.")

I'm looking solely at those who called themselves conservatives -- and I wish they had told us how each "expert" rating himself; that would be illuminating. I believe most of the "conservatives" are unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the new paradigm of Islamist terrorism: They don't really accept Salafists or Twelvers as "enemies" worthy of the name... instead, they're looking for the next Soviet Union, like the Pentagon officials that Thomas P.M. Barnett classifies as "Cold Worriers."

If one is a Cold Worrier, then the Iraq war resembles at best a distraction from the "real danger" (China, North Korea, maybe a resurgent Russian SSR), and at worst a fatal attempt at "nation building" when we should be forming a new "Grand Coalition" to counter the "growing neo-Communist menace."

My friend and occasional contributer to Big Lizards, Brad Linaweaver, admits he more or less falls into this category. For a time after 9/11, Brad saw rampaging Moslems as a real threat; but eventually, he appeared to be overcome with indignation at the barbaric, third-world nature of those who attack us.

In short, he seems to have dismissed the Islamist threat as an imposition and a presumption, not rising to the high civilizational standard of enemy (Nazis, Stalinists) that America expects and deserves. Why are we mucking about with near troglodytes?

I see this as a fatal flaw, a shibboleth that separates those living in a post-9/11 world from September 10th thinkers.

The old paradigm was cutting edge and appropriate in its time; Brad was an enthusiastic Reaganite who absolutely believed that the Evil Empire could be defeated, not just accomodated and contained, by a united America.

Reagan, Buckley, and Brad were right, both in the urgency of fighting the Cold War and in their belief that it could be won. But the latter two are shortsighted today to dismiss the current threat merely because most of its attackers are what the British, back in the days of the empire, would have called "Fuzzy Wuzzies" or "Hottentots." (Reagan never took Islamists seriously, either; but he had enough on his plate.)

With WMDs small enough for individuals to carry and deploy, with transportation cheap enough for even cavemen to get wherever they need to be, and especially with resources like the internet, allowing virtual coordination, communication, and strategic planning across continents, even Hottentots may strike horrific blows against the most powerful and civilized nations on the planet... as we found out.

I wonder how many of the self-described conservatives in this study could answer a simple question: "Why did we invade Iraq, and why do we stay on, trying to make it democratic, even after toppling Saddam Hussein?"

I'll bet that most would give either a rambling non-answer, a snide attack instead of an answer, or would claim we had no reason whatsoever. How can a person hope to be able to tell whether a particular strategy during a war is helping -- when he doesn't even understand the purpose of the war in the first place?

If one understands why we went into Iraq and what we need to do -- by the reasoning of the new paradigm, whether one agrees with it or not -- then one also understands why it wouldn't have worked to go in under the Powell Doctrine, why a small footprint was necessary, why we stay beyond the expulsion of the Baathists, why the Petraeus/Kagen/Keane/Galula strategy is working, what the victory conditions look like, and why the war is winnable.

If one doesn't understand why we went into Iraq in the first place... then everything looks mysterious, inexplicable, and catastrophic. Hey, the next Soviet Union could be just around the corner, and here we are "tied down" in irrelevant Iraq!

Dafydd

Dafydd,

I read what you wrote about the "hottentots" and "fuzzy wuzzies", and about how these former "lesser includeds" have now become a serious strategic threat, and wondered whether you have read John Robb's book, Brave New War.

Colin:

Nope; never even heard of it. But I'll go out on a limb here and guess that you brought it up because you think it's well worth reading... <g>

Dafydd

Dafydd,

Sure did. If you liked The Pentagon's New Map, you'll probably like Brave New War. Barnett talks about the promise of his "future worth creating", while Robb talks about the dangers of networked bad guys, and how they all learn from each other in previously unimaginable ways. Someone (it might have been Michael Tanji of Haft of the Spear and The Weekly Standard) said that "if Thomas Barnett is Pooh-Bear, that makes John Robb Eeyore", and I think that's a pretty apt description.

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