A year back Noam Chomsky wrote about Samantha Power. She'd just reviewed a book of his, and here he talks about her as being an establishment type. Chomsky's so smart, it's really worth looking at. Though I don't share his blanket-left political take, his analysis helps explain why Obama's dependence on Harvard and Yale types is so dispiriting:
herself — as a harsh critic of US foreign policy. The reason is that
she excoriates Washington for not paying enough attention to the crimes
of others. It's informative to look through her best-seller Problem
from Hell to see what is said about US crimes. There are a few scant
mentions: e.g., that the US looked away from the genocidal Indonesian
aggression in East Timor. In fact, as has long been indisputable, the
US looked right there and acted decisively to expedite the slaughters….
I don't think, incidentally, that it would be fair to criticize Power
for her extraordinary services to state violence and terror. I am sure
she is a decent and honorable person, and sincerely believes that she
really is condemning the US leadership and political culture. From a
desk at the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Kennedy School at
Harvard, that's doubtless how it looks. Insufficient attention has been
paid to Orwell's observations on how in free England, unpopular ideas
can be suppressed without the use of force. One factor, he proposed, is
a good education. When you have been through the best schools, finally
Oxford and Cambridge, you simply have instilled into you the
understanding that there are certain things "it wouldn't do to say" –
and we may add, even to think.
His insight is quite real, and important. These cases are a good illustration, hardly unique.
Obama said something like this himself in his first book. Education at fancy schools is training, it's not education.
The narrator of "Shooting an Elephant" says that his abysmal education [at Eton] slowed his understanding of the evils of Empire:
"Theoretically – and secretly, of course – I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos – all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East."
26 pp. of recycled neocon lite rubbish from Richard Haas and Martin Indyk, under the imprimatur of the Brookings Inst.:
link to brookings.edu
A sample of their snotty attitude: Russia has become an even greater challenge since its use of force in Georgia in August 2008. Moscow could revert to its cold war approach of backing destabilizing actors in the Middle East (such as Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah) with supplies of offensive weapons systems and diplomatic protection in the UN Security Council. Preventing Russia from playing this spoiler role may not in the end be possible, but it is at least worth testing whether Moscow is willing to join a constructive partnership in the Middle East. It may even be possible that Russia’s leaders will welcome that invitation as a way of overcoming the negative repercussions of their Georgian adventure…
Israel is understandably nervous about the failure of the international community to head off Iran’s nuclear program. Its national security establishment is quietly perturbed by the Bush administration’s handling of the issue, particularly its failure to recruit Russia to support a more effective sanctions regime and its release of its National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which undermined the efforts to achieve an international consensus at a critical moment. The Israelis prefer to support an effective diplomatic effort to prevent Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold because they are well aware of the drawbacks of a preventive military strike, especially if they have to do it on their own. They too see the advantage of peacemaking, especially with Syria, as a means of acquiring leverage over Iran and seem willing to do their part. Nevertheless, Israel’s tolerance for engagement with Iran is more limited than America’s because of the simple reality that the United States, with its thousands of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, has a readyfallback to a posture of nuclear deterrence while it works to curb Iran’s nuclear capabilities. (To cite one example, the United States continues to tolerate a North Korean nuclear capability while it uses sanctions and diplomacy to reduce North Korea’s capacities in this realm.) Israel has never been prepared to accept another nuclear power in its neighborhood, especially not one that directly threatens its existence, because a first strike of any scale would have devastating consequences for the Jewish state given its small size and concentrated population. Therefore, at least to synchronize the American and Israeli clocks, and to give more time for a strategy of diplomatic engagement to work, the United States will want to persuade Israel not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities while U.S.-led diplomatic efforts unfold. This will require the next president to enhance Israel’s deterrent and defensive capabilities by offering it a nuclear guarantee and providing it with additional layers of ballistic missile defenses and early warning systems. The United States and Israel will need to reassess their options should it become clear that diplomacy has failed…
Phil,
What did you find meaningful in your Harvard education?
Even Obama's team should be able to see through this disingenuous remark by Haas & Indyk:
Indeed, after eight years of negotiations,most of the substantive issues between Israel and Syria were resolved by
early 2000 under the Clinton administration, when all that separated the
parties from an agreement was a 200-meter strip of land around the northeastern section of Lake Kinneret (Sea of Galilee).
– heart Syria's Riparian Rights, much?
It's interesting because Haas if I recall correctly is the pivotal figure at the supposedly 'moderate', 'liberal', 'centrist' CFR. Here is their footnote on the NIE:
The National Intelligence Estimate’s principal judgments were released in November 2007 at the height of the Bush administration’s efforts to step up pressure on Iran. The NIE judged that Iran had stopped its efforts to develop a bomb-making capability in 2003. It went on to argue that Iran was still developing capabilities that could be used for producing nuclear weapons, but its headline created the impression that Iran was no longer seeking nuclear weapons. (www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_
release.pdf).
– That is masterly obfuscation – its headline created the impression that Iran was no longer seeking nuclear weapons is an invidious way of saying that the NIE stated "with a high degree of confidence" that "Iran was no longer seeking nuclear weapons."
Consider Jacques Ellul on propaganda: he said it was common for "informed" people to think of propaganda as something that worked on the uneducated and uninformed, when in fact the educated and informed got the highest doses of propaganda and were most affected by it.
Of course, after a point that's not true. One would like to think that educated people learn how to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources, valid and invalid conclusions.
But there is something in his idea. Continued reliance on a few sources of information or on one collection of authorities may give on less of a handle on the truth than a neophyte can garner. The "stamp" that an elite education gives may be something to avoid more than to seek.
Yeah, Logan's got a good point, especially when one considers
objective truth in the political sphere does not garner fame, power, and material security for one's family, etc. Synthesis is never favored by the powers on either side of the dialectic.
I thought it was this blog that put me on to William Deresiewicz's essay 'The Disadvantages of an Elite Education':
http://www.theamericanscholar.org/su08/elite-deresiewicz.html
'elite colleges relentlessly encourage their students to flatter themselves for being there, and for what being there can do for them. The advantages of an elite education are indeed undeniable. You learn to think, at least in certain ways, and you make the contacts needed to launch yourself into a life rich in all of society’s most cherished rewards. To consider that while some opportunities are being created, others are being cancelled and that while some abilities are being developed, others are being crippled is, within this context, not only outrageous, but inconceivable.'
By the way, apologies for staying on topic. That's my not-so-elite education coming thru.