TigerHawk has a remarkable capacity for being clear-eyed and insightful one moment, boneheaded the next. He’s in phase II this morning, wringing his hands over the Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s remarkable WP piece on cronyism and nepotism in the Iraqi Proconsulship of Paul Bremer.
“It’s not nearly enough to smear the ‘neocons,’ clucks TigerHawk (channeling The Corner) in little-dog-Fala mode, “they have to get their children, too.”
The Corner hardly deserves the courtesy of a response, but TigerHawk does. So, friendly advice to TigerHawk: give this one a bye. There is plenty to complain about in the WP, but this one doesn’t pass the giggle test.
The particular bone of contention seems to be the work of Simone Ledeen: apparently she is “trilingual” with a “major MBA.” Allow me to respond by quoting myself, from the TigerHawk comments:
Simone Ledeen apparently was qualified by the standards of the time. But it wasn't why she was hired, and is nothing to do with her assignment, which was to advance her own career and the careers of her neocon cronies. Cronyism is indeed an endemic, indeed a pandemic, problem, but "the other guys do it, too," is not a defense. If TigerHawk really wants to make waves on this issue, he might want to tackle the problem of dynastic politics more generally: Clintons and Bushes and Kennedys--and Sharons and Assads, and heaven knows how many other clans and tribes where political preferment is becoming a family business.
Simone Ledeen's real problem is the problem with affirmative action hires everywhere: she's got to believe she deserved it, yet in her heart of hearts, she know that she just passed a phoney test.
Indeed, if TigerHawk is in a mood to give a second thought here, he might realize that this policiy of we-don't-want-nobody-nobody-sent policy is a longterm disaster for the neocons themselves. How many institutions can stay strong while hiring the sons and daughters of the faithful?
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