The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Cain Seeks to Satisfy Foreign Policy Snobs

Posted on | October 25, 2011 | 66 Comments

Alex Pappas and Jamie Weinstein of the Daily Caller report:

Almost every day, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is handed a one-page briefing from his chief foreign policy adviser on news from around the world.
It’s one of several things his campaign says the former Godfather’s Pizza CEO, who has never held elective office before, is now doing to bone up on foreign policy — especially as he faces a big test in November at a GOP debate on national security issues.
“He’s really getting up to speed a lot more so than people give him credit for,” J.D. Gordon, Cain’s foreign policy and national security adviser who prepares the briefings, said in an interview with The Daily Caller on Monday.

When Alex sent me the article this morning, I replied: “Good Lord! A one-page briefing? Just read the NY Times at breakfast!” The article continues:

“I have no idea what Mr. Cain’s views are other than being generally pro-Israel,” said Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who served as a deputy national security adviser for President George W. Bush.
“He needs to say a lot more to be a serious candidate for Commander in Chief,” Abrams said. “He has been far too casual about this subject and does not seem to be taking seriously his need to explain his views.”

This is what I’ve previously described as the Cult of Experts, “a widespread attitude within the foreign policy/national security elite that expertise is essential in all such matters.” Expertise being the foreign policy specialist’s stock in trade, he esteems others insofar as they are themselves experts, or else demonstrate a seemly deference to such expertise.

But how’s that workin’ for ya? It was experts like Ken Adelman who assured us Iraq would be a “cakewalk.” And as I’ve pointed out, John McCain brought a lifetime of national-security policy expertise to his 2008 campaign, and what good did it do him, politically?

Nevertheless, the thing is what it is, and Cain must therefore spend time acquiring sufficient awareness of these issues in order not to look foolish during the Nov. 15 CNN debate at sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and AEI. Let’s hope Cain’s briefings include the latest from Vanuatu, “Linchpin of the South Pacific.”

Category: CNN, Debates, Election 2012, Herman Cain, Vanuatu

Comments

66 Responses to “Cain Seeks to Satisfy Foreign Policy Snobs”

  1. Anonymous
    October 25th, 2011 @ 10:40 pm

    Adobe,

    Yes, they rebelled because the regime offered them more of the same. That’s what lifting sanctions would reinforce and promote: It’s THEM offering you more of the same, no US imposing it on you.

    Yes, the asked if Obama was with them, and his answer was “no — I’m just like the presidents of the last 30 years, AGAINST you.”

    As far as my “unhinged” notions are concerned, it’s a simple fact that “defense” is the single largest US government expenditure category (even leaving out the parts that are hidden in other line items); that the US spends more than any nation on earth for “defense,” more than the next 20 countries combined, despite the fact that its geographic position and relations with its immediate neighbors make it one of the least beset nations on earth;  and that the only policy goal which explains US foreign and military policy since World War II is to keep it that way.

    To put it more bluntly, the primary mission of the federal government for the last 60 years or so has been to transfer as much wealth as possible, as fast and as regularly as possible, from your wallet to Lockheed-Martin’s bank account. This requires the constant manufacture of new enemies and refurbishing of old ones, whether that makes any fucking sense apart from the goal of maximizing “defense” expenditures or not.

  2. Anonymous
    October 25th, 2011 @ 11:00 pm

    I simply dispute your premise that the Mullah’s are successful in deflecting the blame for the peoples misery or for that matter that the sanctions are having that much effect on their economy in the first place.

  3. Anonymous
    October 25th, 2011 @ 11:07 pm

    You dispute my premise. You may be correct to do so. That’s why opinions are called opinions and not facts (on policy, facts are often difficult to discern).

  4. Anonymous
    October 25th, 2011 @ 11:48 pm

    There is no tenable accommodation with the Arabs who formerly lived in Israel they probably should have expelled the Arabs while that option was still tenable.

  5. Anonymous
    October 26th, 2011 @ 12:02 am

    You may be right that there’s no tenable accommodation.

    On the other hand, maybe there would have been a tenable accommodation if the US hadn’t spent the last three decades paying all sides — Israel, Egypt, the Saudis, the “Palestinian Authority” — billions of dollars per year to keep things as close as possible to, but not at, outright war.

  6. Anonymous
    October 26th, 2011 @ 12:53 am

    Nah, the Arabs simply wouldn’t accept a Jewish state, they rejected every proposal before 1948 and all of Israels neighbors attacked as soon as the British got out of the way. By the time Egypt and Jordan realized they couldn’t or wouldn’t be allowed to prevail and accepted the unpalatable status quo in their own interest, even if Syria had reached the same conclusion it was too late. The terrorist organizations were too entrenched.

  7. Anonymous
    October 26th, 2011 @ 1:14 am

    I’m well aware of the phenomenon of Arab intransigence.

    On the other hand, it’s an economic truism that when you subsidize something, you get more of it.

    As far as the terrorists are concerned, they are and always have been such an exceedingly minor threat to Israel that they’re almost completely unworthy of attention. Care to guess how many Jews were killed in Israel and pre-Israel Mandate Palestine between 1920 and 1999? Hint: Per Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, that number is lower than the casualty count in New York, Washington and Shanksville on 09/11/01.

  8. Garymrosen
    October 26th, 2011 @ 1:26 am

    I don’t think you have to be a foreign policy “expert”, but you have to know enough not to make any embarrassing gaffes.  Remember Ford and Poland?

  9. Anonymous
    October 26th, 2011 @ 2:09 am

    The hatred of Jews in general and Israel in particular is the Arabs single most defining characteristic. It trumps economics and gives the Arab government the scapegoat they need to cover their own incompetence. When Arab nationalism and anti-imperialism were the dominant ideologies before they were displaced by militant islamism their hatred of Israel was the single most important thing that united them. Even if countries like Saudi Arabia were willing to accept their existence they can’t because their governments would be over thrown. There would always be an Iran or a Syria willing to fund support the terrorists for some national or ideological advantage over their neighbors. If you replaced the Israelis with Frenchmen, Finns or the lost tribe of Israel Native Americans it would be the same.

    The 2500 Israelis represent a rather larger number expressed as a percentage of their population.
     If your reference to subsidising  something results in more is supposed to imply that if we hadn’t subsidized Israel they might have been more amendable to accommodation. I submit it would have only led to their destruction. 
    If the reference is asserting that we subsidise both side to enrich “the war machine” save that pitch for someone who’s buying.

  10. Anonymous
    October 26th, 2011 @ 2:59 am

    “The hatred of Jews in general and Israel in particular is the Arabs single most defining characteristic.”

    In your imagination, perhaps. In reality, most Arabs are pretty much just like other people. I’ve known them here in America, and I’ve known them in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

    The “Islamism is an existential threat” charlatans have apparently rode you hard and put you away wet, though, so I’ll give up on that for now — I’m not big on sloppy seconds.

    “The 2500 Israelis represent a rather larger number expressed as a percentage of their population.”

    That’s 2500 in 80 years. Expressed as a percentage of mean population over the course of that 80 years, it would have a decimal point and several zeroes in front of it.

    “If your reference to subsidising  something results in more is supposed to imply that if we hadn’t subsidized Israel they might have been more amendable to accommodation. I submit it would have only led to their destruction.”

    My reference isn’t just to the subsidies to Israel, it’s to the subsidies to Israel, to Egypt, to Saudi Arabia, to Jordan, to the “Palestinian Authority” and to every other interested party with a hand out. If they keep the skeer up, the checks keep coming. If they say “oh, yeah, we’ve got this under control,” the checks stop coming. The effect of US intervention in the region is to make absolutely, positively, beyond a shadow of a doubt certain that nobody gives an inch and that the guns get brandished on a rotating basis.

    “If the reference is asserting that we subsidise both side to enrich ‘the war machine’ save that pitch for someone who’s buying.”

    It’s not so much an intentional policy as it is a self-reinforcing set of incentives. Politicians buy weapons; weapons-makers buy politicians who will buy more weapons, rinse and repeat. It was probably already beyond stopping by the time Eisenhower took public notice of it, and it will probably keep running until it’s exhausted itself (and America with it).

    James Burnham had it right in The Managerial Revolution, and had convinced himself it was a good thing — or at least inevitable and therefore to be thrown in with rather than opposed — by the time he co-founded National Review on the footing of William F. Buckley’s “conservative” call for “a totalitarian instrumentality within our shores, for the duration [of a war he never expected to end].”

  11. Richard Miniter On Why Hermain Can Win | My Blog
    October 26th, 2011 @ 5:48 am

    […] McCain has some positive news on that front: Cain Seeks to Satisfy Foreign Policy Snobs (not that it’s really snobby for voters to expect their candidate have a passing knowledge of the […]

  12. Bob Belvedere
    October 26th, 2011 @ 9:39 am

    ‘Ms. McCain grazing at OWS.’

    There…fixed that for ya.

  13. Bob Belvedere
    October 26th, 2011 @ 9:44 am

    Joe, he’s an expert.

  14. Bob Belvedere
    October 26th, 2011 @ 9:51 am

    I think the key is you have to care, to have an interest in these issues because they effect you.

  15. Richard Miniter On Why Herman Cain Can Win | My Blog
    October 26th, 2011 @ 7:18 pm

    […] McCain has some positive news on that front: Cain Seeks to Satisfy Foreign Policy Snobs (not that it’s really snobby for voters to expect their candidate have a passing knowledge of the […]

  16. Anonymous
    October 28th, 2011 @ 8:24 pm

    Right now, I can only view this site via http://anonymouse.org.

    I guess it was something I said above; that RSM’s commitment to Cain does not appear to be rationally grounded.  Perhaps I’m so inured to the quality in debate on the Internet that a personal remark didn’t seem out of bounds.  But it didn’t seem so personal or vicious or crazy to be out of bounds.  A little dig, or so I thought.

    Or maybe there’s some other explanation to why my browser can only make theothermccain.com appear via anonymouse.org.

    From here on in, no more comments from me.  I am wounded, but I see a slow path to recovery.  I shall simply visit, IP address concealed, much like Hillel the Elder, who so much loved learning that when he couldn’t afford to pay the yeshiva, nearly froze to death listening to the lesson from the skylight above.  That’s pretty much me.