I saw your comment after posting mine. Are we on the same wavelength? A think tank for unaffiliated PhDs (and others), called the Velvet Monkeywrench Society? Certainly, you would be more than qualified to start something like that.

Looks like Samantha Power got hired by I.Time:

http://time-blog.com/swampland/2007/08/more_on_yearlykos_columnists_r.html

An interesting development -- I do hope they identify her as an advisor to the Obama campaign, however.

...is almost always the opposite of actual wisdom. One can relate conventional, quite easily, to popular. Here's some other popular American tidbits:

MacDonalds is a very popular food.

More people vote for the American Idol, than their President.

Hansen had a hit single, they were very popular.

Television News is very popular

Coke and Pepsi are popularly regarded as "thirst quenching".

Bush still appeals to over 100,000,000 people in this country.

This is NOT an exhaustive list.

It's possible that getting rid of a few establishment foreign policy wonks might improve the situation with respect to Pakistan. There is certainly a lot that can be done before military might gets used, but it will require dumping our current notions about Pakistan, about Iran, about India, and a few other places, together with convincing some other establishments to do likewise. All the more reason to get all the assumptions and unspoken truths and promises out in the open for discussion.

And before we can do that, we need to recognize that the Middle East is not the center of the universe, so we can pay enough attention to South/Central Asia to do a good job on it. Actually, scratch that. If we can't keep two religious sects and one Holy Land straight, no way we're gonna understand something really complicated.

WT -- 4000 years old? Is that why it's so hot there? God isn't finished cooking yet?

A great idea! May not bring down the walls, but we'd teach them a few things ... and we'd probably have the coolest-looking t-shirts in the DC softball league (and we could beat Brookings no problem).

Not mine. It's the title of a book by John Muir (a guy from the '60s not the guy that started the National Parks).

http://tinyurl.com/2vtuwa

It came out a long time ago, and I read it then. Sorry for the commercial reference (Amazon) but it's hard to track down. It used to have a better looking cover.

The fable most resonant of America in our time is The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Wise old greybeards at the Washington Court herald a nude Bush administration while innocents (beneath courtly contempt) stand around astounded. The truth is as strange as the fiction.

So how do the courtiers get it so wrong? Although it has become more absurd lately, it didn’t start with Bush.

Probably it’s something to do with all that gravity and power found at the Center Of The Universe, where everyone gets to touch and play with Great Things. In such heady circumstances, one doesn’t like to bungle but unfortunately one does, and the easiest way to fix a problem is to get together with like-minded colleagues and spin the evidence out beyond the pale. Then, when naysayers make trouble and lean unhelpfully on reality for support, one can always trust one’s colleagues to roll out the big tongues and blast away, until elegance has been restored.

It would be difficult to find a lamer algorithm with which to undertake the messy business of this world than faith in a defensive, power-corrupted groupthink. Yet fawning all over themselves, the courtiers endure.

“Serious” is the perfect word to flay them. These jackasses actually use it to flatter their pals, and seriousness is the quality they most want observers to marvel at in themselves. From Cheney’s lopsided grimace as he spills another pseudo fact, to all the talking heads who frown with gravitas so we will forget about those times when they got down and naked with the President, to the arrogant and misguided wielding of “pottery barn rules” when rationalizing the continuing destruction of an already hard-pressed nation...at the very least it’s time these fools get the mockery they so richly deserve.

“Serious” is the puffery of these stuffed shirts.

"Maybe we're working with such lowered expectations that Power's piece looks like something much better than what it really is."

Nah, it's perfect. We're so dumb and deaf that all we really need is someone repeatedly shouting, "Obama new! Good! Hilary old! Bad!"

But really, apart from the metacommentary, the idea itself--that of invading Pakistan or surgically striking al Qaeda-leaning Pakistani tribes or whatever the hell Obama was advocating--is remarkably stupid. Have we learned nothing, indeed.

Should our country be a republic or an empire?

I think the rest of the world really wants to know the answer to that question. Right now, clearly leaning towards empire, which is the wrong answer for everybody, I think.

Especially good post today, Glenn. That concerted response among the Democratic candidates to Obama's comments on Pakistan -- "there are some things you shouldn't talk about" -- really unnerved me. When did we as a country decide that the citizenry wasn't to play any role in making foreign policy (except for those "accountability moments" every four years . . . and it eludes me how it's possible to hold someone "accountable" for things you're not even allowed to learn about).

Keep chipping away at this language -- "serious," "scholar." It's all a mask for something profoundly undemocratic.

"It's possible that getting rid of a few establishment foreign policy wonks might improve the situation with respect to Pakistan. "

I'm game. Why not? I suppose it depends on which wonks are being rid. All of them? Are we considering wonkicide?

Look--I agree that foreign policy should be discussed openly and publicly. I agree and celebrate the idea that the american people deserve this debate and should openly participate in it.

But replace the mandarins (good term WT) with something better than this: a woman who is the founding director of The Carr Center for Human Rights Policy advocating military force (but wait! this is better! It's "highly targeted"!) against the tribal areas.

If Obama