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In reply to the discussion: Your Ignorance is not as Good; Or, You Don't Know Fuck-All About Syria [View all]alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)You are, no doubt, correct on that, which is what leads to the supposed "contradiction" in my OP: that I believe intervention is wrong at this point, even if expert observers say it is not (and I don't know that they do). I'm making a modest claim : people who study something for a living know better than people who started reading about X 3 days ago, or 30, or 300. We don't like to hear that in a democracy, but it's certainly true. Now, there were also plenty of experts on Vietnam, on Central America, and on Iraq who said "This will be a monumental cluserfuck. That's the point of Halberstam's "The Best and the brightest," of Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Liem," of Fitzgerald's "Fire in the Lake, " of Rick's "Fiasco," and of countless other works in the same vein: yes, you had "experts" who advocated intervention. But you had ground level people throughout - career soldiers and civil servants and similar experts who said "hold on now." And the difference was almost always that between expertise and ideology.
Expertise. Ideology.
That's the important difference.
It is likely that there is little value in mentioning that X group of experts know more than Y group on non-experts, if it's all driven by pre-established policy anyway. Maybe so. But I'd suggest we remain attentive to the difference between expertise and ideology, however that cashes out. It's rather modest point, really.