This is Going To Leave A Mark

I already talked about Sarah Palin's interview with Charlie Gibson, the reviews for which have not been all that positive. She made an honest but ill-considered comment about going to war with Russia over Georgia, and she blanked on the question of what is the Bush doctrine, only answering it after help, and wrongly (the issue was preventive war vs. pre-emptive war, and she just went with the latter). But this statement could be even more damaging, because it's such an obvious falsehood.

Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself. But it is widely agreed that militants allied with al-Qaeda have taken root in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion.

"America can never go back to that false sense of security that came before September 11, 2001," she said at the deployment ceremony, which drew hundreds of military families who walked from their homes on the sprawling post to the airstrip where the service was held.

I think the last thing anybody wants or needs is for a national leader to go around conflating Iraq and 9/11 again, especially on THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE 9/11 ATTACKS. It's discredited nonsense designed to whip up a patriotic fervor that can be used for all kinds of nefarious ends. And as you'll see in the video of the event, she was reading from a prepared script. This was intentional.



Now, you would think that such an astonishing ignorance of world affairs would be immediately disqualifying for higher office. But you would be wrong. In fact, Palin's lack of knowledge or even interest in foreign policy isn't a bug, says Robert Kagan, it's a feature.

Robert Kagan, a foreign policy advisor to McCain, derided criticisms of Palin as elitist.

“I don’t take this elite foreign policy view that only this anointed class knows everything about the world,” he said. “I’m not generally impressed that they are better judges of American foreign policy experience than those who have Palin’s experience.”

They really think this way. The neocons believe that those with experience of the world are eventually corrupted by it, and those pure enough to have no experience whatsoever are more receptive to their worldview. This stands to reason - only an ignorant fool would follow the logic of the group that has been wrong on foreign policy time and again for over 50 years. The value of ignorance EXPLAINS the failures of neoconservatism, and the neocon worldview cannot be ingested without a fair degree of ignorance. So it's symbiotic.

Neocons believe that on the world stage, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. No wonder they consider Sarah Palin such a darling.