Americans needs nonpartisan experts Re: “The revolt against the experts helps Herman Cain,” Oct. 26
Michael Barone seems almost to support a revolt against experts, saying that confidence in leaders and respect for expertise has fallen since the Vietnam War. As evidence he cites the 2003 Iraq War, where he mentions Gens. John Abizaid and George W. Casey Jr. were well qualified yet failed to produce a winning strategy.
Yet Barone fails to mention examples of good military leaders’ ideas that were shot down by Bush administration political leaders, ideas that might have enabled strategic success and fewer casualties. The star example is Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki’s testimony to Congress that the Iraq War would require at least 300,000 troops, and the rebuke by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz who called that “way too high”. If the United States had placed double the 140,000 troops in Iraq that it began the invasion with, we may have had the manpower to end the insurgency and quell the civil war that cost more than 50,000 Iraqi lives and thousands of Americans.
When Mr. Barone gently cites a failed Iraq strategy and mentions only the military, and never President Bush or Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfield, he is unfair to our soldiers and generals. He also gives a free pass to the Bush administration political officials who advocated so strongly for the need to invade Iraq, with the limited troop strategy. Americans may be suspicious of experts now, but that distrust was hardened by the failures they saw in Iraq that are attributed to the Bush administration’s terrible planning. Democrats who did not oppose the war deserve part of the blame too but they did not run the war as the Republican president did.
Barone is not really supporting a revolt against experts per se, just a continuing criticism of those experts he disagrees with. What we need in America is more experts that provide nonpartisan advice, like Shinseki did. Recognize that most Americans are not against expertise, just frustrated that even experts sometimes get it wrong. It is ill-informed to suggest that Americans do not want workers, businesses, leaders, even pundits, who strive to achieve expertise that can withstand, or improve, with scrutiny and peer review: people we are experts working smartly to solve America’s problems.
Peter Boyle
Arlington
Malcolm’s words are true today
Re: “Obama’s policies matter most to blacks,” From Readers, Oct. 24
“You put the Democrats first and the Democrats put you last.”
This was Malcolm X’s blunt message to black America during his 1964 “The Ballot or the Bullet” speech. He was baffled why black voters kept loyally voting for Democrats and getting nothing in return. As Malcolm argued in his “ballot” speech, black people would enjoy far more political clout if they voted according to principles, not party. This would cause the Democrats and the Republicans to compete for black voters, whose concerns would be taken seriously instead of being regularly dismissed.
Thus, Marvin E. Adams is wrong that Cal Thomas insults blacks by pointing out how the Democrats have failed their most loyal voting bloc. (“Vote for Obama because he’s black?,” Oct. 20) Thomas merely echoes the words of Malcolm X, who was black last I checked
I suspect some blacks are angry because Thomas gave voice to their doubts about the Democrats, especially Barack Obama. It’s a cruel irony that the first black president best demonstrates how Democrats still take blacks for granted 50 years after Malcolm X’s warning.
Hopefully, it will not take another 50 years for black voters to finally wake up and vote for their principles.
Frederick D. Weaver
Washington
Obama beats republicans on Social Security
Most Republican candidates for the presidency want to privatize Social Security. You might as well give it to the crooks on Wall Street right now, if that comes to fruition. It is bad enough they decimated the workers’ 401ks in 2008. As the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” No matter what they say about President Obama, he is definitely the lesser of two evils by a very wide margin.
Jack Donner
Alexandria
