There's hardly a more establishmentarian journal than "Foreign Affairs," which recently gave Sen. Obama the opportunity to publish his thoughts on foreign policy at length. (Mitt Romney was published in the same number.) Read the article. Sen. Obama produces exactly zero interesting ideas, new insights, or daring anti-establishment positions. It's significant that, given such a forum, he has so little to say.

Our entire defense structure has been built up to enrich manufacturers while the resources required to actually deal with the world have been shortchanged at every opportunity. The result is there for all the world to see.

-- Paul Dirks

Look, sometimes you just gotta splurge on something that makes you feel good, even if you have to mortgage your great-great-grandchildren's future to do it.

It's not like we're having to pay for it today. And hey, they tell me things are going great in Iraq, so let's have a party!

GG:

This was vividly illustrated by the sharpest exchange from last night's debate, where both Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd excoriated Obama for his comments on Pakistan, not on the ground that Obama's statements were wrong on the merits (i.e, not that we should avoid military action inside Pakistan under those circumstances), but instead on the ground that he committed the sin of actually discussing with the American people what our foreign policy would be.

The Foreign Policy Community is more secretive than the Fight Club. They believe that all foreign policy should be formulated only by our secret "scholar"-geniuses in the think tanks and institutes comprising the Foreign Policy Community and that the American people should not and need not know anything about any of it short of the most meaningless platitudes. They are the Guardians of Seriousness. "Serious" really means the extent to which one adheres to their rules and pays homage to their decrees.

Thank you. I have been saying this same thing since the Vietnam days. How can we run a democracy (or representative republic, if how we treat the rest of the world is off the table?

We must have a national discussion on war, intervention, threats, the CIA, and a host of other issues if this country is to survive as a republic. Do we really want to be an empire?

Everybody should check out these link to the latest Gallup Poll from yesterday. It actually makes me kind of sick to my stomach how well this propaganda worked.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/gallup/2007/08/a-hint-of-more-.html

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/08/latest-poll-sho.html

The Gallup Poll states:

The proportion of those who said the additional troops [surge] "making the situation better" rose to 31% from 22%.

In the July survey, a record high of 62% had called the invasion of Iraq "a mistake." That view is now held by 57%, roughly where it's been for more than a year.

The article also stated the following:

Also, we are seeing a slight uptick in the percentage of Americans who say the “surge” in Iraq is working. That may not be a total surprise given the general tone of news out of Iraq recently, including the positive light on the situation put forth by Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack in their widely-discussed New York Times op-ed piece “A War We Just Might Win” on July 30. But it represents a change.

It’s also interesting to note that the quote “A War We Just Might Win” above is hyperlinked to the actual article on the NYT website. This Gallup poll was also the top story on the Drudge Report yesterday.

http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2007/08/07/20070807_221349.htm

The Gallup poll also states that Bush’s approval rating has raised from 29% in July to 34% as of Monday. So it looks like between the NIE, the Al-Qaeda scare and the Pollack/O'Hanlon propaganda they were able to raise Bush’s approval rating by 5 points and stop his slow steady slide to the worst president ever polled. It truly is amazing to me how well they have the MSM machine working for them.

Oh, and incase anyone missed it. The very SERIOUS reporter Robert Burns just got back from Iraq just in time for another round of propaganda. Check out his article below. Which by the way is also linked to the Drudge Report today. Again, reading this article made me sick to my stomach from all of the propaganda.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8QRMCU00&show_article=1

Remember, the majority of school children could not point out the middle east, or major countries on a map of the world. We teach feel good history, light on negatives, high on the "president signed this law" method of explaining why things happened, ignorant of class (except that everyone is in the "middle class" and can do better) and race.

If posters complain that we can't have rational discussion about foreign policy when Americans can't find themselves on a map without a GPS system with an OnStar(tm) assist, then we need to start explaining foreign policy, social trends, and economic stratification in the schools, or the next generations will be fat, dumb, and happy Americans also.

(h/t on history to James Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me)

As far as I remember, the Foreign Policy Community was for the most part opposed to the Bush doctrine of pre-emption. I bet a look back at Salon's coverage would show many, many, many intelectuals who spoke out against pre-emption, the 2nd Iraq War, etc....

Even without speculating, I can tell you that the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a major think tank on the right has spoken out repeatedly against invation.

Ironically, the problem isn't that the Foreign Policy community is addle headed like the Bushies, its that the Beltway media didn't do crap to report the real concerns many intelectuals had and the real divisions wihtout their BS caveats. The debate was portrayed as Serious People Who Want to Keep Us Safe vs. College Professors Who May or May Not Be Commies. In teh debate of Superman vs. Ward Churchill, guess who won?