{"id":16673,"date":"2022-03-28T06:30:21","date_gmt":"2022-03-28T04:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/?p=16673"},"modified":"2022-03-28T06:34:14","modified_gmt":"2022-03-28T04:34:14","slug":"30-year-old-punks-who-come-from-privileged-backgrounds-claiming-theyre-experts-in-policy-when-they-actually-do-not-have-the-basic-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/?p=16673","title":{"rendered":"30-year-old punks who come from privileged backgrounds, claiming they\u2019re experts in policy when they actually do not have the basic knowledge"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Postol<\/a>:<\/p>\n

My grave concern is I know some of these characters who worked for Obama, and who now work for Biden. And I\u2019m sorry to say it\u2014I know it will be considered arrogant to say this\u2014but they are ignorant. Let me be very clear: this is not an accidental statement on my part. They are outright ignorant. And they\u2019re a bunch of\u2014<\/span>you know, they trained at these elite schools; they don\u2019t know anything, but they think they know things.<\/p>\n

I have taught at Stanford; I have taught at MIT; I have taught at Princeton and at Harvard. So I know what a lot of these people are, because they are very privileged\u2014<\/span>this is of course a generalization; there are certainly some extremely intelligent and thoughtful people among these. But a great bulk of these people are just completely in love with themselves; they are convinced that they know a lot more than they do; they will not listen, they\u2019re not interested in learning\u2014I mean, you try to present facts to them, they sort of walk away from you laughing.<\/p>\n

And they are not experts. And it\u2019s not a problem\u2014it\u2019s no problem at all that they are not experts. The problem is that they\u2019re not interested in learning. So, you know, I had this character, a guy named Colin Kahl, he\u2019s the deputy assistant secretary now for policy at the Pentagon. He doesn\u2019t know anything. He was at Stanford, they made him a co-director of the center there. Rude beyond belief. And you know, he tells me at one point, I\u2019m trying to discuss something with him\u2014discuss something\u2014<\/span>he turns around and he says, I\u2019ve got a job, I\u2019ve got a real job, I don\u2019t have time for this. This is a guy who\u2019s at the Department of Defense, top levels now, possibly advising Biden.<\/p>\n

This is the danger. And if we look at the Obama administration, we saw similar dangers. There\u2019s a very interesting\u00a0Atlantic Monthly\u00a0<\/em>article<\/a> written by a guy named Ben Rhodes. Rhodes was the national security advisor for communications in the White House, and he wrote a totally fraudulent, supposedly government intelligence report that was released to the public about the nerve agent attack that occurred in Damascus in August of 2013.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s very interesting; I would suggest your readers go read that\u00a0Atlantic Monthly<\/em>\u00a0article. Because in his attempt to show everybody what a smart guy he is, he\u2019s revealing that his main objective with Obama, with the president, was to get him to make a decision which would have been a disaster for the United States, but he [Rhodes] didn\u2019t know it. But to attack Syria, before the public outrage from the misinformation people had about that nerve agent attack died down. In other words, he didn\u2019t want the public outrage to die down before he forced or tricked or got Obama to make a momentous decision that would have been a disaster for the United States. A total disaster. [Ironically, it was Russian President Putin who pulled Obama\u2019s chestnuts out of that fire.]<\/p>\n

So Rhodes is bragging about in this article about the role he played. That\u2019s a real window that people ought to use to look into the mindset of an individual who basically, through privilege and accident [check out\u00a0Collegiate School<\/em>\u00a0in Manhattan, where he spent his formative years], became a national security advisor with no real knowledge of what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n

So we\u2019re in a dangerous situation. We have a lot of\u2014I\u2019m sorry, because I\u2019m so disturbed by this\u2014we have a bunch of punks, you know, 30-year-old punks who come from privileged backgrounds, claiming they\u2019re experts in policy when they actually do not have the basic knowledge. And they\u2019re advising presidents. And this is not a good professional system. we need to do something about it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ted Postol: My grave concern is I know some of these characters who worked for Obama, and who now work for Biden. And I\u2019m sorry to say it\u2014I know it will be considered arrogant to say this\u2014but they are ignorant. … Weiterlesen →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mwehle.eu\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}