Yeah, Where are those Pesky Progressive Defense Experts?

Farley is pissing me off recently:

Progressives have been excluded from even informal discussions of most questions of military doctrine and technology, but have also made themselves absent from those discussions .

Yglesias adds (Selection Bias at Work):

I think it’s pretty easy to understand why it is that people inclined toward nationalistic and militaristic political views are disproportionately likely to be the people interested in military doctrine and technology.

Look guys, the problem isn’t that progressives are not involved in defense policy debates. The problem is that established liberals and progressives are too insecure to recognize one of their own as a genuine expert. Farley and Yglesias could, for instance, do a lot for the cause. They could go ahead and link to progressive defense arguments more often, for example. Or they could at least acknowledge they exist.

There are people like me, Jason Sigger, Michael Cohen, the gang at Newshoggers, Gordon Adams who do defense policy and talk a lot about operations and doctrine. Why not at least give us a name check in this sort of post instead of just pretending that the problem is that progressives are checked out of the debate?

JasonSigger

January 5, 2011 at 12:05 pm

Amen. I have a post coming up on same issue. I think the issue isn’t progressive views on defense equipment, it’s progressive views on how defense equipment is used. Hard to quibble about technical pros and cons, cost or maturity, these are all pretty cut and dry facts.

As you say, it’s not because we’re not engaged. Maybe it’s more an issue of the “professional” progressives, the DNC politicals etc, not having an especially coherent defense platform (because they don’t invite us to the party, having ceded the defense issues to the conservatives).