When expertise and knowledge are no longer important

May 9, 2005

The New Yorker has an excellent article this month on Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, which I strongly recommend reading.

Feith is, to be sure, a fascinating character. It was Feith, for example, who led the Pentagon’s Orwellian Office of Strategic Influence, which was responsible for planting false stories in the foreign press and running other covert activities to manipulate public opinion. Indeed, it’s quite a record he’s developed. Feith was the one who pushed the White House to make WMD the principal rationale for the war in Iraq; it was his office that was in charge of Iraq’s military prisons (you know, the ones where innocent Iraqis were raped, tortured, and killed); it was Feith who encouraged the administration to abandon the Geneva Conventions; and it was Feith who was meeting regularly with Ahmed Chalabi. (My personal favorite was when Feith developed a plan to attack South America after 9/11 because Afghanistan lacked attractive military targets.)

Regardless, the New Yorker piece included an intriguing quote from Feith about his philosophy — for lack of a better word — about empiricism.

“There’s a paradox I’ve never been able to work out,” [Feith] said. “It helps to be deeply knowledgeable about an area — to know the people, to know the language, to know the history, the culture, the literature. But it is not a guarantee that you will have the right strategy or policy as a matter of statecraft for dealing with that area. You see, the great experts in certain areas sometimes get it fundamentally wrong.”

I asked Feith if he was talking about himself, and he said, “I am talking about myself in the following sense: expertise is a very good thing, but it is not the same thing as sound judgment regarding strategy and policy. George W. Bush has more insight, because of his knowledge of human beings and his sense of history, about the motive force, the craving for freedom and participation in self-rule, than do many of the language experts and history experts and culture experts.”

It’s one of the stranger remarks I’ve seen in a while. In fact, I’ve read it repeatedly and I’m struggling to understand what Feith is getting at. It sure sounds like he’s disparaging those whom Republicans dismiss as “book smart” and insisting that Bush is better than experts because his gut feelings are more reliable than actual information.

It’s quotes like these that capture the anti-intellectualism that pervades the Bush White House’s approach to nearly everything. People who know what they’re talking about are nice, they tell us, but it’s better to have an uninformed and inexperienced chief executive who can bring his unique “insight” to executing a global war.

I feel safer already.

i had the same reaction, along with bewilderment that anyone would attempt to claim that george bush – shallow, ill-informed, enabled all his life – has either a “knowledge of human beings” or a “sense of history.”

After all, exactly what sense of history did his idiot remarks on Yalta convey?

  • This is right up their with David Brooks calling for more political intrusion into intelligence gathering because “scientism” is unable to predict the mania of religious zealots like terrorists. Nevermind it was those immersed in “scientism” who were ten times closer to assessing the actual situation than those political game theorists he adores.

    I can think of no greater example of anti-empiricism than to cite facts that completely undermine your position as proof anti-empricism is a superior philosophy. It’s like saying the arsonist has a better ability to put out fires because the fire department’s training doused his gut appreciation for the flame. The logic lulls you, until the reality-based part of your brain says: wait, the fire department has a better track record in this area, right? How many fires has the arsonist’s “gut” instinct put out? Doesn’t the fire department put out fires every day?

  • There was a time when another ‘Leader’ felt that his personal insights were more valuable than professional assessments. He overrode his commanders with orders that went far in pulling defeat from the jaws of victory at a crucial moment in history. And ended up committing suicide in a Berlin bunker amid the ruins of his crumbling country.

    Isn’t history fun?

  • CB — this is pretty clearly a reference to State Department Arabists. Pretty standard neoconservative critique, actually.

  • Hmm, was Feith the source for the “we are History’s Actors, we make our own reality” quote, I wonder?

  • Your analysis is sound. If you want to understand Bush’s mindset, read (or re-read) Richard Hofstadter’s “Anti-intellectualism in American Life.” It was published in 1962 and won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize in Non-Fiction, but it could have been written last year. Bush and his ilk leap off every page. For them, sense and feelings (sincerely held feelings, of course) trump pointy-headed expertise every time.

  • I think, what Feith is getting at is that a suit case full of cash or an arms shipment can buy off a countries leadership or the services of an assasin. Ask Mushariff(sp?). What’s the name of that ex-economic hit man who wrote a book last year or so? The word snakeoil splungs to mind.

  • Jack, your mention of feelings brings to mind how often Bush’s underlings and various Corporate types use their feelings to justify their actions. Such as, the State Department not releasing information about Jon Bolton to Democrats because because the State Deparment feels that it has already given all the relevent material on Bolton. It drives me nuts to think that Adults actually do that, expecially in high places.

  • Me too — I had the same reaction to Feith’s comments. But I also had the feeling that he is quite, quite mad. And yes, the Hofstadter book goes a long way to explaining much of this. But not the madness. Please look at the connection between the deification of feeling/instinct in the Bush administration and in the cultural icons of the ’60’s.

  • It dovetails nicely with the predilictions of the Talibornagain wing of the party — from a by Mark Noll, the author of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind:

    right now, a populism that confuses winning supporters with mastering actually existing situations, an anti-traditionalism that privileges one’s own current judgments on biblical, theological, and ethical issues (however hastily formed) over insight from the past (however hard won and carefully stated), and a nearly gnostic dualism that rushes to spiritualize all manner of bodily, terrestrial, physical, and material realities (despite the origin and providential maintenance of these realities in God). In addition, we evangelicals as a rule still prefer to put our money into programs offering immediate results, whether evangelistic or humanitarian, instead of into institutions promoting intellectual development over the long term.”

  • This reminds me of what “they” used to say some years back: “Better to be red than expert.”

    At least, that’s what “they” said during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

    Gideon’s gonna make a killing on Little Red Bibles.

  • George W. Bush has more insight, because of his knowledge of human beings and his sense of history, about the motive force, the craving for freedom and participation in self-rule, than do many of the language experts and history experts and culture experts.

    His knowledge of human beings = everyone has their price and if they don’t, we can kill them.

    His sense of history = oil is power.

    the motive force = if we bomb them back to Hanoi, they’ll be putty in our hands.

  • and if you can’t say anything nice about the boss, don’t say anything at all. what other compliment could he have concocted?

    but he’s spot on about one thing: george w. bush DOES understand
    “the craving for .. participation in self-rule” … enough to help deny it for Democratic voters in key states.

    is this pea-brained jackass’s tour more annoying because of the hyprocrisy of his “democracy” remarks … or because of the reality of his own chicken shit draft-dodging set against the backdrop of courage and heroism ? tell me ..

  • “If I don’t have any direct knowledge or experience, then I won’t have any preconceptions, which makes my contributions more valuable than if did have any knowledge or experience.”

    The last time I heard this argument was from a highly egotistical and extremely conservative MBA student who was about to start a new job in an industry he knew nothing about. Looking for the silver lining in his ignorance quickly moved into touting it for its brilliance.

  • LET THERE BE MARKETS (The Evangelical Roots of economics) Gordon Bigelow in Harper’s Magazine, May 2005:

    If you keep seeing history repeat itself, you know that Iraq is today’s Vietnam, and MLK and Malcom X speaches give you a virtual flashback, then strap yourself to an immovable object and read that article. Evangelicalism and Free Market Poop grew up together amd got married in the 1800’s in America AND England. It was a major player in the cause of the Irish Potatoe Famine. A group of France’s best Economics students are rebeling against it.

  • If ya think they screwed ya, ya gotta kill ’em. That’s what the whole damn mob’s all about dammit. There’s nothing “inilectual” about these things. Like I always say: “If ya think they screwed ya, ya gotta kill ’em.” Nothing inilectual about that, ya know.

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