If Wishes Were Horses. . . William Lind | December 11, 2008
Panglissading through reality, the New York Times recently offered the sort of thoughtlessly sunny picture of the Obama administration's security policy that lulls children to sleep but leaves adults restlessly wakeful. In a front-page story on December 1, "A Handpicked Team for a Foreign Policy Shift" by David Sanger, the Times reported that the new administration's key national security policy appointees were selected in large part because they have embraced a sweeping shift of resources in the national security arena.
The shift, which would come partly out of the military's huge budget, would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the coming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states.
Whether they can make the change…"will be the great foreign policy experiment of the Obama presidency," one of his senior advisors said recently.
In the best Christmas spirit of my old friend Mr. Scrooge, I will spoil the story by spilling the ending up front. The "great foreign policy experiment" will fail.
It will fail for two reasons, one practical and one theoretical. The practical reason is that, no matter how much money you give them, our State Department and other civilian agencies cannot produce a product.
Rest of article at:
http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,180949,00.html?wh=news
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