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Matthew Yglesias asked what I thought about Andrew Exum’s response to his post about Nathan Hodge’s observations about think-tanker transparency. To start this off on a cautionary note, all three dudes are friends of mine, and I hope they take this post in that spirit. And just to make everyone pissed at me, I’m going to involve some other friends who aren’t part of this debate already.
To summarize quickly: Nathan noted that a lot of the people on Gen. McChrystal’s think-tanker heavy summer strategic assessment team are often asked by the press to comment on McChrystal’s doings without disclosing that affiliation. That’s bad on the press. (Full disclosure: I err on the side of calling Ex a “former adviser” or some such when I quote him, possibly enough to irritate the guy.) Yglesias made a structural critique:
Smart, honest people have smart, honest disagreements about all kinds of stuff. But if it’s easier to get funding for smart, honest ideas about the need for more activist policy than for smart, honest ideas about the need for less activist policy, then each smart, honest person who has some smart, honest ideas implying the need for more activist policy is going to find him or herself primarily working on smart, honest ideas about the need for more activist policy. Even if you assume that nobody in the system is corrupt or dishonest, the system itself contains a systematic bias in favor of military action and against counsels of restraint.
Ex, unsurprisingly, took exception:
After being accused of being a Luddite for the past three years, I must be doing something right if people are now tying me and my opinions to large defense contractors. I think you’re going to have a very tough time, though, arguing that those making the case for a fundamentally low-tech COIN campaign in Afghanistan are carrying water for Boeing, Lockheed Martin, & Co. I very much doubt big defense corporations are charmed by this researcher saying things like language and cultural training matter as much as or more than the latest and greatest piece of military hardware.
To which Nathan had a good and careful post saying that Ex was ignoring the structural point Yglesias is making. Since the guy included one of my favorite “Eastbound & Down” scenes and compared Ex to Scrooge McDuck, there’s not much I can add. I suppose I’d underscore that Ex might have acknowledged that in any institution there are incentives to toeing a line, and it’s on all of us to fight those tendencies. That includes those of us in the media, certainly. Access really is a curse. Not only is CNAS no exception, it’s in an especially privileged position as the premiere counterinsurgency think tank at a time of counterinsurgent ascendence. While the organization is diversifying as its personnel have gone into the Obama Pentagon and State Department, that fact remains its most distinguishing attribute.
But at the same time, Yglesias had a good post a few hours prior that tweaked Glenn Greenwald for suggesting in a different context that access was an unmitigated curse. (Glenn’s quote appeared in a piece about Jane. I can feel myself inspiring a diverse coalition against me, wall of death-like.) I would have liked it if Yglesias put some of that nuance into his post about the “military-industrial complex.” The mundane truth is that while there most certainly is an unhealthy confluence of interests that lead business and the military — and, we should add, the media — into a distorted view of American power, so too is there important internal diversity and counterpressures within that coalition. Not only, as Nathan notes, did Ex arrive at his perspectives long before CNAS put him on the payroll, so too does he take positions that don’t benefit that complex. His recent paper on what to do about increasing insurgency hotspot Yemen, for instance, explicitly swears off “large scale military operations as in Iraq and Afghanistan” in favor of development, diplomatic, financial and other soft-power tools. I daresay that the paper could have been published by the Center for American Progress. And I would echo Ex on the point about CNAS being possibly the least platform-enthusiastic defense think-tank around. What should people who favor the ground forces at the expense of the F-22 do, starve? (That last sentence is best read with a Yiddish accent.)
But, of course, I could just be saying that because I shill endlessly for CNAS. I’ve even RSVPd for their holiday party. So you can’t trust me on this, obviously. I look forward to discussing this further tonight when I meet up with Yglesias for beers…
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I’ve been watching this and to be honest, I’m not really sure where this got personal. My read on Yglesias’ post was that there are some pretty serious structural biases towards certain points of view that are implicit in the way that funds are dispersed. That’s not saying that Andrew is in the pocket of anyone, but that is to say that he has an outlet because there is an audience out there that wants to fund think tanky sorts of things and subscribes to that point of view. This is the same reason that there is tons of funding for HIV and Malaria focused of NGO programs and a much smaller amount available for for fistulas surgeries. This doesn’t mean that people who are interested in Malaria are on they’re in front of Bill Gates on bended knees.
Unfortunately, there is so much questioning of allegiance in the last decade or so that its hard sometimes to disaggregate systemic critiques of ones profession from take-downs. Especially when names are involved. It would be hilarious to see a Yglesias version of “Hit ‘em Up” or “The Bridge is Over”.
You will give us a report on those beers, yes?
One only has to actually, you know, LOOK at what people are saying.
We are entitled to draw conclusions that make sense. We are not allowed to make up facts.
It is, sadly and without irony, what it is. The DC beltway villiage or whatever you want to call it wants to go to war. It almost doesn’t matter against whom. It’s just war, which is what we do.
War is awful, and needs to end.
Sorry. I have no real power. I just killed people I would rather have befriended….
mikey
Mr. Exum wrote in his Abu Muqawama blog: “I think this is another case of “they disagree with me on policy, therefore they must be intellectually dishonest. Or, hey, maybe we instead have a different set of assumptions, educations and experiences which lead us toward different conclusions.”
It would be nice if Mr. Exum would actually extend that courtesy to others. Before his short “retirement” from blogging, he has been quick to hurl ad hominum attacks instead of addressing the merits of arguments with which he disagrees. A couple of recent examples:
“He Who Shall Not Be Fact-Checked” (Nov. 9th): “My theory is that [Seymour] Hersh’s journalism is a little like a 12-gauge shotgun. He just lets it go, and something is bound to hit the target. … such is his reputation that people only remember the articles of his that actually exposed something new and none of the articles that, in retrospect, turned out to be just crazy talk.”
“On Martial Virtue … and Selling Jon Krakauer’s Crappy New Book” (Nov. 2nd): “A few months ago, I was asked to review Jon Krakauer’s new book by the Washington Post… Alas, the book was awful. I mean, it was really bad. … So Krakauer wrote a crappy book, and now he has to market it. And how is he doing that? By going after Stan McChrystal, who is probably the least culpable guy in Tillman’s chain of command for any of the stupid things that happened in the aftermath of his death. … in the eyes of Krakauer and on the fringes of the American left, soldiers are either victims of circumstance or war criminals in waiting.… Stan McChrystal is one of the finest men I have ever known, and I hope I have sons who serve under men like him.”
Previously, I’ve addressed McChrystal’s central role (as well as that of Senator Webb, NYT reporter Thom Shanker, etc.)in the aftermath of Pat Tillman’s friendly-fire death at feralfirefighter.blogspot.com. I believe Mr. Exum is either woefully ignorant of the most basic facts of the Tillman story or is awfully good at feigning self-righteous anger.
In his book review, Mr. Exum neglected to mention General McChrystal’s culpability in the Tillman case or disclose his close personal and professional ties with him (e.g. this past summer, Exum spent a month working closely with McChrystal in Afghanistan after being asked by McChrystal to join his Afghan war assessment team).
Andrew Exum is a fellow at CNAS,”Washington’s to-to think tank on military affairs.” CNAS has spearheaded the advocacy of General McChrystal’s Afghan war “surge” and has close ties with McChrystal (meets with him weekly by videoconference) and his mentor General Petraeus.
Quite possibly, Mr. Exum believes his own BS about the purity of General McChrystal. As the saying goes, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
“Not only is CNAS no exception, it’s in an especially privileged position as the premiere counterinsurgency think tank at a time of counterinsurgent ascendence.”
We’re also the premiere natural security think tank at a time of natural security ascendence…
http://grammartips.homestead.com/toetheline.html
Watching this group play ‘whose got an agenda?’ is like a synchronized swimming equivalent of dogs chasing tails. Everyone’s got agendas and everyone’s got vested interests in preserving their own ability to express an opinion.