How the Brookings Institution and other "liberal" Beltway think tanks offer us a Hobson’s Choice on Iraq

Matt Yglesias at the Atlantic Online has a short writeup on how some of the most esteemed “liberal” think tanks in Washington DC are once again bending over backwards in order to narrow the debate over the Iraq War so that it doesn’t include . . . you know . . . the opinion of the majority of Americans and the majority of Iraqis who want an end to the occupation yesterday.

The key to all of this is, of course, the fact that what passes for “liberal” in Washington, or at least those pundits, politicians and organizations that choose to self-identify themselves as “liberal”, are often pretty hawkish cheerleaders for US military and economic hegemony over the Middle East, notwithstanding the fact that they don’t believe in the reality of American empire.

In his post, Yglesias describes an invitation he received to attend a panel discussion hosted by the Brookings Institution – the epitomy of what I just described as a think tank perceived by insiders to be a “liberal” organization that for the most part advocates for maintaining the status quo in US “national defense” policy (i.e. offensive US military operations).

According to Yglesias, the invite included the following two paragraphs of background:

The nation is now readying itself to assess America’s Iraq policy against the progress report General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker present to Congress. On September 13, leading Brookings experts representing a uniquely broad spectrum of views will examine the implications of a pivotal Iraq progress report. Specifically, they will review the details of the surge report card; assess if President Bush’s “surge” strategy is working; should be modified or abandoned; and provide an assessment of the way ahead in Iraq.

Participants will include Philip H. Gordon, senior fellow; Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow; Kenneth M. Pollack, senior fellow and director of research, Saban Center for Middle East Policy; Bruce Riedel, senior fellow; and Peter Rodman, senior fellow. Brookings President Strobe Talbott will provide introductory remarks. Carlos Pascual, vice president and director of Foreign Policy Studies, will moderate the panel. After the program, panelists will take audience questions.

He then notes, with a wholly-warranted level of sarcasm, that the participants don’t represent a wide range of opinion or insight into how to deal with the occupation; they are basically just different shades of foreign policy hawks whose respective ideologies probably did nothing short of reinforcing and legitimizing each other.

So even if our “liberal” pundits are wildly out-of-touch with the American people the look down on with sneering condescention, the echo-chamber effect created at an event like this might just give a visiting journalist the impression that there is a consensus expert opinion that favors staying in Iraq forever . . .

*h/t SirotaBlog.

**For an explanation of what the term “Hobson’s Choice” means, see here.

Update: More on this phenomenon from Matt Stoller at the new Open Left site in a post entitled “Brookings: Where the Very Serious People Pushing Petraeus’s PR Rollout Live”.

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