Friday, April 20, 2007

Failing

Yglesias:

This is probably the single largest foreign policy-related failing among American politicians and members of the policy and media elites: A failure to make a serious effort to ask how things look from the perspective of other countries.


My favorite manifestation of this is the Friedmanesque obsession with "conspiracy theories on the Arab Street." Compare this to conspiracy theories by our president and his people about Saddam Hussein being connected to 9/11, let alone the conspiracy theories by our entire media and government elite about his weapons of mass destruction.

People in the Middle East can read batshit crazy and incredible hostile stuff coming from our politicians and pundit elite all the time.