Political Science at War
Condoleezza Rice is now offering the strange claim that her status as a political scientist bolsters her feeling that invading Iraq was a good idea:
And I’m especially, as a political scientist, not as Secretary of State, not as National Security Advisor, but as somebody who knows that structurally it matters that a geostrategically important country like Iraq is not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
My colleague Ryan Powers reminds us that, in fact, many of the leading lights of the international relations subfield of political science tried to warn the country against the invasion of Iraq. There was also this interesting article that surveyed opinion among IR scholars in Foreign Policy magazine several years ago:
The American public has only recently soured on the war in Iraq, but the great majority of international relations scholars have always
opposed it. A comparison of scholarly opinion with U.S. public opinion (as reported by a Pew poll in August 2004) reveals huge gaps between the professors and the people. Nearly 80 percent of scholars opposed the U.S. decision to go to war. More than 87 percent of these scholars believe that the war in Iraq has harmed or will harm U.S. security. These numbers contrast dramatically with the beliefs of likely voters, where roughly half believed the war in Iraq was the “right choice.” left of center. But political orientation doesn’t explain everything. Conservative scholars supported the war in much lower proportions than conservative America.
One of the most annoying habits of the press and the DC conventional wisdom more generally has been a persistent habit of ignoring these facts in favor of the rhetoric of “seriousness” that casts war opponents as a much of ignorant hippies and foul-mouthed bloggers who, at best, were right about Iraq by accident or something. But the vast majority of credentialed experts in Middle East regional studies, and the vast majority of credentialed experts in international relations have always been extremely skeptical of the adventure in Iraq. The main supporters of the war have been politicians, magazine and newspaper pundits, and a smallish group of heavily politicized think tank-based experts and “experts” who, for whatever reason, are granted privileged access to the media over people in a better position to offer genuinely independent analysis. I think many political observers watching the debate unfold in 2002-2003 would have gotten the impression that most experts were more-or-less backing the president on Iraq. But while it’s certainly true that most op-ed columnist and most Brookings fellows were behind Bush, the broader group of political scientists who specialize in these issues has always taken the opposite view.
39 Responses to “Political Science at War”
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December 18th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Amen brother, especially the last paragraph.
December 18th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Credentialed experts don’t seem to have much of an impact on our dominant political-media class, since the latter believe that those experts are also a bunch of ignorant hippies, or ignorant former hippies, or other varieties of ivory tower peacenik pussy eggheads whose statistical studies and charts and book larnin’ doesn’t give them an adequate understanding of what is required to take care of business in the real world, and who have a temperamental bias in favor of contemplation and discourse over action, and an excessive faith in the power of restraint and reason to achieve results in a world governed by fear and force.
It goes without saying that this sort of persistent distrust and division between the academically trained expert class and the political-military leadership class and their media courtiers is a challenge to the cause of good government. But it’s an ancient conflict.
December 18th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
structurally it matters that a geostrategically important country like Iraq is not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Curiously, those who made a similar point in, say, 1986 were America-hating commie perverts…
December 18th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Let’s be clear about this, these “pundits” don’t just happen to get the ear of the media, this is a decades-long, well-financed, propaganda campaign by a relatively small group of plutocrats. That is: Scaife, Coors, Koch, Mars, Walton and about 20 other super wealthy families. They fund all of the rightwing think tanks which wouldn’t exist without their support. They provide a home for out-of-government pols who need someplace to roost before they swing back in when their team has control.
Most of these people have very little in the way of academic credentials which is why they don’t end up a major universities. (Although some universities, like George Mason are willing to set up academic departments paid for by these “philanthropists”.)
In addition to funding the think tanks, many of these people own major media outlets and can give a platform to their paid shills to continue their propagandizing. Even the “leftist” NY Times has become the home of some of the most unqualified rightwing spokesmen of late under the guidance of its new third generation family leadership.
That anyone would give a regular spot to such deep thinkers as Ben Stein, Bill Kristol, or Tyler Cowen is no accident.
The connection between rightwing money and political opinion is tracked as well as possible, given their level of secrecy, by SourceWatch and MediaTransparency.
I suggest putting in your favorite think tank and see which names pop out as their principal funders.
Here’s a typical example:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Koch_Family_Foundations
December 18th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
Seems to me that part and parcel of Reaganism was the marriage of anti-intellectualism and anti-DFWism. Or maybe it goes back to Nixon and Agnew. Anyway–it reached its apotheosis after 9/11 and led this country straight into an Ozymandian ditch of delusion and self-destructive behavior that future historians (not to mention political scientists) will behold with a kind of fearful awe.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
“it matters that a geostrategically important country like Iraq is not Saddam Hussein’s Iraq”…but rather Ahmadinejad’s and Hezbollah’s Iraq?
Ah, this must be cunning “strategery” at its most subtle.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Re “The main supporters of the war have been politicians, magazine and newspaper pundits, and a smallish group of heavily politicized think tank-based experts and “experts” who, for whatever reason, are granted privileged access to the media over people in a better position to offer genuinely independent analysis”
—————–
In other words, the Whores whore. And avoid getting within 1000 miles of an active battlefield.
Some might respond “so what else is new?”. But what is new is that these whores are harming America , have cost us over $1 Trillion, have caused over 4000 soldiers to die and have casued thousands more soldiers to be crippled –some for life.
Our leaders have shown that they exist solely to steal from and to betray us. Our news media has shown that they exist solely to lie to us.
These elites deserves our relentless hatred — they are a bigger enemy than Al Qaeda could ever hope to be.
They must be destroyed. The only way I see to do it is to drastically change the Constitution.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
“But while it’s certainly true that most op-ed columnist and most Brookings fellows were behind Bush, the broader group of political scientists who specialize in these issues has always taken the opposite view.”
Of course, Matt didn’t belong to that “broader group” in 2003.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
The statement about “most Brookings fellows” is nonsense. Ken Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon were outliers.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:20 pm
Re robertfeinman’s comment “this is a decades-long, well-financed, propaganda campaign by a relatively small group of plutocrats. That is: Scaife, Coors, Koch, Mars, Walton and about 20 other super wealthy families. They fund all of the rightwing think tanks which wouldn’t exist without their support.”
————-
I partially agree — certainly there are very malign patrons of the right wing.
But there is also a faction within the Democratic Party — the Clintons etc — who enable and collaborate with the right wing operatives. Because they also whore for wealthy patrons — maybe not the same billionaires as Cheney serves but billionaires nonetheless.
That is WHY no one in the Democratic Party pointed out that George W Bush was LYING to the country when he said that Sept 11 occurred “because they hate out freedom”.
Some Democrats were desperate to cover up Bin Laden’s citation of US past support for Israel as Reason number One. Just as Big Oil Republicans were desperate to cover up Bin Laden’s citation of past US support for the Saudi dictatorship –and its malign effects on the common Saudi citizen — as Reason number 2.
Bush could not have passed his $2 Trillion tax cut for the rich if 12 Democratic Senators had not supported him.
Democrat pawns of the Israel Lobby like Hillary Clinton and Jane Harman went out of their way to avoid questioning Bush’s rationale for the Iraq War — even though Nancy Pelosi and Bob Graham on the Intel Committees told them the evidence was not there.
And you will notice that our Democratic Leaders are keeping damm quiet re how Wall Street was able to cripple our economy and force the taxpayer to pay for a $2 Trillion bailout. There are good reasons why the Democrats don’t want to point fingers at George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the Republicans in Congress.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
kafka: you miss the point. A person who feels that he has been conned tends to be more vehement about slapping down the conmen than those who weren’t taken in, because they made him look a fool — and especially vehement about how those who were taken in and still pretend they were right all along have benefitted from the fact.
It’s close to being the pundit equivalent of a Ponzi scheme.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
One of the most annoying habits of the press and the DC conventional wisdom more generally has been a persistent habit of ignoring these facts in favor of the rhetoric of “seriousness” that casts war opponents as a much of ignorant hippies and foul-mouthed bloggers who, at best, were right about Iraq by accident or something.
In The Village, Tom Friedman > Juan Cole; all day, every day.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Re gordonminor’s comment “The statement about “most Brookings fellows” is nonsense. Ken Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon were outliers. ”
——————
What about Marty Indyk? heh heh
See http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2002/1219iraq_indyk.aspx
Want to take a guess re who funded Marty’s “Saban Center for Middle East Policy” at Brookings?
Hint: It was the person who was the Democratic Party’s biggest donor in 2000-2002. The person that Terry McAuliffe said “saved the Democratic Party”.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/798292.html
December 18th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Sounds like she’s positioning herself as a scholar rather than a Bush hack and dear personal friend, a bit like the image she misleadingly had going into the administration. It could be a matter of self-respect, but it’s likely to have career motives, too. Any number of likely future positions, not necessarily in academica, will like the pretense of authority. Hey, it worked for Kissinger. In contrast, discovering a conscience, as with Powell, doesn’t appear to be wise in career terms.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Hint 2: Marty’s benefactor was also one of Hillary’s biggest funders:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haim_Saban#Hillary_Clinton_presidential_campaign
Hint 3: Also , he was one of Wild Bill’s biggest financial backers since Bill left the Presidency:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/19/us/politics/w19clinton.html?_r=1&hp
December 18th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Trust me - everybody who programs in any language is a monkey. Have you actually used any software lately? It all sucks rocks - even most of the OSS stuff. but you see for home http://www.liginmaclari.blogcu.com
December 18th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
I’m one of those political scientists (certainly not anyone you would have heard of) who argued against the war. That I’m not a big name speaks to how obvious what would happen in Iraq was to anyone who studied the region. There is this view, however, that political scientists really don’t know much. As I tried to explain what was likely to happen in Iraq to my extended family based both on the ethnic breakdown in Iraq and the history of such interventions, I got blank stares, follwed by, “we just need to go in an get rid of Hussein before he nukes us.” When I explained that Iraq lacked a delivery vehicle to get a weapon here, still blank stares.
So it’s not just politicians, even our families ignore us often times.
December 18th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I’m also one of those political scientists, certainly no one you’ve ever heard of. I’d just like to point out how poor Rice’s analysis is, as a political scientist.
She claims that “structurally” it matters that Iraq is not Saddam’s Iraq. This claim is highly dubious and a point of significant theoretical contention within the discipline. Moreover, Rice’s claim that it matters goes against the theory she has espoused and advanced as a political scientist.
Namely, Realism, the still dominant theory in the field, says it doesn’t matter a lick what the government of a state looks like. Structurally, the pressures of the balance of power operate the same on states as they formulate their geostrategic interests. It doesn’t matter what kind of government they have, it matters what power they have and what power position they are in.
The opposite contention, that governments and identities do matter–that it makes a difference that Saddam is no longer in charge of Iraq–is a liberal (government type) or constructivist (identity) argument. Rice, however, has been rather hostile to the rest of the tenets of these lines of reasoning in her work and in her policy positions, so I wouldn’t think she’d be comfortable in either camp as a “political scientist.”
Which means, given her analysis, she’s a rather poor political scientist at this point.
December 18th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Once she’s out of office, Rice could make a lot of money leasing out images of her eyes to makers of weird science fiction movies. Imagine her eyes behind the faceplate of the robot in “Day the Earth Stood Still”!!
December 18th, 2008 at 5:15 pm
Stanford must really be looking forward to having this intellectually dishonest incompetent back.
December 19th, 2008 at 12:37 am
This is a routine problem for the foreign policy hawks. By the late 1960s, the academics had become less useful in justifying their wars against Indochina. In the 1980s, academics were hugely against Reagan’s wars of slaughter against Central American and Southern African civilians.
So, they go with the kind of pseudo-intellectual institutions they know they can buy more uniformly. Makes sense.
December 19th, 2008 at 5:26 am
Don: “Our leaders have shown that they exist solely to steal from and to betray us. Our news media has shown that they exist solely to lie to us.”
You’re late to the game - I knew this in the 1970’s consciously and unconsciously in the 1960’s - being in the military during Vietnam will do that to you.
“They must be destroyed. The only way I see to do it is to drastically change the Constitution.”
Right - replace one piece of paper with another. As long as nobody in this country is prepared to do that - and then SUPPORT THAT - it’s a complete waste of time. Paper is paper - it’s worthless without comprehension in the brain of the idea.
Nanotechnology.
You see the scene at the end of “The Day The Earth Stood Still”?
That’s what’s needed. And that’s what you’re going to get.
(Although that wasn’t nanotech Gort used, it was merely microbots. Nanotech would be even more devastating - and you could target it more precisely.)
Monkey-ass statists and Christians and Muslims and Zionists are all going to be reduced to their component chemicals and recycled.
Have a nice day.
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