Owen R. Cote, Jr., associate director of MIT’s Security Studies Program and a coeditor of the journal International Security, has written a powerful indictment of the Bush administration’s approach to dealing with WMDs: Weapons of mass confusion. He points out that nuclear weapons on the one hand, and chemical/biological weapons on the other hand, are distinctly different problems. By pursuing policies that treat them as one and the same, Bush & Co. are hampering their own effectiveness and exposing us to horrible dangers.

Cote’s arguments sound solid to me. See, this is why we have experts. Because to really smart people who have specialized knowledge and lots of experience in particular fields, thorny problems are significantly easier to break down into their component parts and solve. Listening to experts doesn’t always mean the resulting policies will succeed, but routinely ignoring them is a pretty sure prescription for failure.

Which is what we have with George Bush. He doesn’t trust experts. He trusts his gut. As a result, decisions on matters ranging from defense against terrorists to invasion of other countries to dealing with global climate change are being made by a man who is notoriously uninterested in critical thinking, and who instead substitutes the dimly understood urgings of his own psyche and the advice of a tight circle of ideologues and political tacticians.

So, do you feel safer?

Thanks to Janus/onan for the link.

This entry was posted by jbc on Saturday, June 21st, 2003 at 10:14 am and is filed under george_w_bush, war. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.