Neocon Intel

Yglesias does a nice job cleaning up the latest vomitous mass left by David Brooks. Sure, feeling-type intel would be great, especially if it were, you know, accurate.

The problem with relying on analyses that focus on the “history” and “elite ethos” of our foes rather than on actual identifiable data is that history and elite ethos are contested terms. Team B in the 1970s KNEW that the Soviet history and the Soviet leadership ethos was direly anti-American and anti-capitalist, and knew that the leaders of the Soviet Union would stop at nothing to construct a massive military machine capable of destroying America. These brave souls ignored the actual data coming out of the Soviet Union, which showed moderate military expenditures, a failing economy, and a lethargic, paranoid, defense-minded elite. Similarly, the neocons in 2002 KNEW that Saddam Hussein must have had WMD and that he must have been about to give these WMD to Al Qaeda because, well, he was bad, and bad people do bad things.

I’m hardly an advocate for hard statistical methods in the social sciences, but attempting to derive capabilities from intentions (which is what this critique is about) is a bloody terrible way of doing intelligence. The CIA estimates on Soviet capabilities in the 1970s and on Iraqi capabilities in 2003 were MORE accurate than those of its most vicious critics. But, then, for many of these people, intelligence is less about providing an accurate picture of the world than providing political ammunition for particular policy preferences.