Letters to the Editor
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The abstraction of abstraction
There is a sociopathy that you rightly note, Glenn, when we invent things like "think tanks." The Rise of the Vulcans made the case that the neocons were academics, as well. Despite the fact that none of them seem particularly intelligent, much less overwhelmingly so, the disconnect between those who consider matters as abstractions and those who consider them as realities is enormous.
O'Hanlon can be excused, like other "think tank" proponents, for looking at lives as if they were a multiple choice test in PoliSci 600. They have gotten into jobs that perpetuate the disconnect and unreality, and the original purpose of things like Rand was to provide a purely disconnected analysis to which those who could only see the real could appeal for perspective. It was never meant to be policy.
However, to this disconnection, to this sociopathic impulse, we can add the central distinction between Republican and Democrat: empathy. Those who dwell only in their own heads, own groins, or own checkbooks are liable to fall victim to the Republican appeal of egoism. If we marry the egoism of the contemporary Republican to the egoism of the think tank, we get the Iraq policy. O'Hanlon is not especially conservative or Republican, not delusional as Feith, and he is merely useless once people begin to bleed.
You can tell instantly that the disease here is the lie that academic thought carries no consequences by looking at the way that he equated the fate of a nation and the lives of thousands to a True/False quiz. Only the most hopelessly removed could conceive of such a thing, but also only the most gleefully powerless.
Some people still believe that they can be observers of history, that they can be analysts without any effect, that they can make statements like this and not be responsible for the dead. This is a lie.