The Test

Whenever I read many liberals' take on things like foreign policy and defense, I grit my teeth and fume; "Someone should make these people take a test on foreign policy and defense before allowing them to vote for candidates for Federal office."

And I realize - if I don't design this test, who will?

So here it is: The Mean World Awareness Test, soon to be required for all liberals (and too many big-L Libertarians as well).

THE BIG MEAN WORLD AWARENESS TEST

Keep track of your answers. The answer key is at the bottom. No cheating.

That means you too, Mr. Gore.

Pre-Emptive Defense - what do you think about the doctrine of pre-emptive defense?
a) We have to be very careful about pre-emptive defense. We weren't.
b) Pre-emptive defense is wrong.
c) It's inappropriate for the US to pre-emptively defend itself, since we are the world's worst aggressors.
d) After a year of butting heads against the corrupt French and Russians in the UN, the invasion almost doesn't qualify as "pre-emptive" at all.

WMDs - We haven't found any WMDs in Iraq yet. This means:
a) The invasion was done under dubious pretenses.
b) The Administration was wrong to invade Iraq.
c) This proves it was all about oil!
d) Nothing. The only difference between a barrel of insecticide and a barrel of Sarin is a notebook full of instructions, some cached equipment and some time. How much time? How many lives do you want to risk in finding out?

Was Hussein a Threat?
a) Not directly. He had no long-range missiles, and no documented link to Al Quaeda.
b) We need to be searching for Bin Laden! Just Bin Laden!
c) Hah. Unlike Bush, he was elected!
d) In a world where terror groups cross international boundaries with daunting ease, and connections can be hidden within a single innocuous courier trip, and WMDs are supremely portable, and any plane or ship or truck can be a "delivery mechanism", Cold War-era measures of threat (that focus on things like missiles and submarines) are dangerously obsolete. Hussein was as much of a threat as he wanted to be, and could arm himself (or his surrogates) wit not only his own WMDs, but anything he could buy from others.

The UN
a) Getting approval from the UN for a military action would have been a nice backup for our diplomatic efforts.
b) Without UN approval, any action against another nation is illegitimate
c) The UN should have right of first refusal over all US military actions, even in self-defense
d) When it comes to military crises, the only UN actions that have ever worked - Korea, East Timor, Sierra Leone - are the ones where competent military powers (the US, Australia and the UK, respectively) kept the UN within strict limits. Otherwise, UN involvement in military crises ranges, historically, from comical to disastrous.

The Military: The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq show us that:
a) I honestly dont' know. I haven't read enough about military history and the art of war to have a cogent opinion.
b) The Clinton Military saved the day!
c) The US is the greatest threat to peace in the world.
d) After a decade of post-Cold-War contraction, and eight years of Clinton-era underfunding, organizational contempt and use as a social-services laboratory, we were damned lucky the military still has the Reagan-era legacy of excellence - and Bush II-era funding increases.

The War on Terror - in prosecuting the war on terror, we need to:
a) Focus on catching Bin Laden and Al Quaeda.
b) A law-enforcement issue - something we should tackle with the cooperation of Interpol.
c) Realize that it's we who are the real terrorists.
d) Treat this like the war it is.

Informational Baselines: Josh Marshall and the Daily Kos are:
a) Solidly credible blogs.
b) Not as accurate as Hesiod.
c) Not as accurate as Democratic Underground
d) A couple of liberals with an anti-Bush agenda much more powerful than their extremely limited knowledge of military and foreign-policy matters. They should stick to (in Kos' case) folding, spindling and mutilating polling data, and (for Marshall) analyzing press spin with Yeshiva-like obsessiveness - both of their strong suits.

Scoring
Now that you're done, assign yourself points as follows:

• For every A - 2 points.
• For every B - 1 point.
• For every C - 0 points.
• For every D - 5 points.

Add up your total score, and compare it to the following scale:

• 0-5 points: You're too deluded even to work on the Kucinich campaign. Consider being an ego-bearer for Noam Chomsky. I'm not going to question your patriotism - but I'm not going to interfere with anyone else doing it.
• 6-12 points: Step away from the keyboard. You'll do this nation less damage if you drink a twelve-pack and go driving.
• 13-20 points: You should preface any remarks about the War on Terror by saying "Everything I need to know about foreign policy and defense, I learned from Josh Bartlett...". You would have been a great guest on "Politically Incorrect".
• 21-28 points: You have the right to an opinion. Your comments are welcome.

Let us know how you did.

Amazingly enough, I got a 28.

Posted by Mitch at January 29, 2004 06:50 AM