Dr. Jerry Pournelle at Chaos Manor ("The Original Blog *") comments on a recent Wikileaks disclosure.
Money quote(s):
"WikiLeaks continue to show the consequences of empire by bureaucracy. They also have a consequence: it is always difficult to get ones foreign service to be candid with their bosses, and the senior State department career officials to be candid with their political masters. Now that everyone can see there is a real danger that anything they write or say can be part of a Washington Post -- or Fox News -- article for all the world to see, that becomes even more difficult. Few in Washington actually know what is going on overseas, because few in Washington and even fewer of those we send out as diplomatic officers know any history of either the world or the region to which they are sent; now they'll all learn and say less about what they find when they report. Welcome to the candid world. Open diplomacy openly arrived at."
-----
Agree with it, disagree with it; the point is still valid even if some of the criticism seems off-target. Outside of academia itself, it's hard to find a group of people so interested in the world and its history as my FSO colleagues.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment