No Expertise Necessary

Ilan Goldenberg reads Al From and Harold Ford on Iraq and comes away mighty displeased:

I gotta say that this is one of the most hollow and vapid Iraq articles I've read in a long time. It reads like a bunch of buzz words and standard lines taken out of various policy pieces with no real coherence or understanding of what it means. Is there a line in the entire article that is not an Iraq debate cliche at this point? One iota of creative thinking in all of this? Clearly the authors have no solid detailed concept of what is actually going on. And the fact that they use the term "immediate withdrawal" to describe the Democratic position is right out of the Republican play book.

I implore our readers. Do not mistake these two as member of the "very serious" foreign policy community. That's not what they are.

Indeed, though you'll find one of my favorite people listed on the staff bios page of the DLC's think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute, I'm not sure that anyone who works there is really what you'd call a specialist in these issues. The Katulis/Korb "strategic reset" plan for the Center for American Progress (which, given that it's run by John Podesta and its general Clintonite heritage, really ought to count as an adequately centrist demmy institution for anyone) remains the gold standard for Iraq plans in my view. The International Crisis Group's "After Baker-Hamilton" plan and report is getting a bit outdated, but it's still smart.