{"id":2102,"date":"2005-05-13T19:41:11","date_gmt":"2005-05-14T02:41:11","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2005-05-13T19:41:11","modified_gmt":"2005-05-14T02:41:11","slug":"feith-in-the-new-yorker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2005\/05\/13\/feith-in-the-new-yorker\/","title":{"rendered":"Feith in the New Yorker"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Little Learning<\/a>
\nWhat Douglas Feith knew, and when he knew it.
\nby Jeffery Goldberg<\/b><\/p>\n

Wow, it turns out that Douglas J. Feith<\/a> is<\/i> indeed “the fu***ng stupidest guy on the face of the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n

One afternoon, I asked Feith what had gone wrong in Iraq.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour assumption is that everything went wrong,\u201d he replied.<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t said that, but I spoke of the loss of American lives\u2014more than fifteen hundred soldiers, most of whom died after the declared end of major combat operations. This number, I said, strikes many people as a large and terrible loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased on what?\u201d Feith asked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I like this part too. Accepting the limitations on his genius, Feith relies on his intellectual mentor for guidence and “sound judgement.” Hint: It’s not Leo Strauss.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a paradox I\u2019ve never been able to work out,\u201d he said. \u201cIt helps to be deeply knowledgeable about an area\u2014to 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked Feith if he was talking about himself, and he said, \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To any rational American, this ought to be the final explanation of why we must adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Little Learning What Douglas Feith knew, and when he knew it. by Jeffery Goldberg Wow, it turns out that Douglas J. Feith is indeed “the fu***ng stupidest guy on the face of the earth.\u201d One afternoon, I asked Feith what had gone wrong in Iraq. \u201cYour assumption is that everything went wrong,\u201d he replied. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2102"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}