I read an interesting story by my favorite WashPost Journo Dafna Linzer. It's all about the young turks in the NSC. She calls it:
The NSC's Sesame Street Generation.
I kid you not. Reading the story is like reading a Maher monologue.
Linzer intones:
Understand them -- and where they came from -- and suddenly President Bush's Middle East forays, grand democratic experiments and go-it-alone strategies take on a different look. That's because nearly a dozen thirtysomething aides, breastfed on 'Sesame Street' and babysat by 'The Brady Bunch,' are now shaping those strategies in unexpected ways as senior advisers at the National Security Council, the White House's powerful inner chamber of foreign policy aides with routine access to Bush.
Take Meghan O'Sullivan, who at 36 is the deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meghan chirps:
You have to think about what are the defining features of the age we live in. For me, that's American primacy, globalization, terrorism and WMD, which is why we do what we do. This wasn't applicable during the Cold War.
Yeah, how's that American primacy going in Iran, eh?
More Meghan:
We are the first post-Vietnam generation, without the baggage of Vietnam, which doesn't mean we don't try to learn some of the lessons from there about counterinsurgency and so forth, but it's not my first frame of reference and I think that's a good thing.
Civil War, anyone?
How about 32 year old Michael Allen?
Linzer gives us a little flavor of the depth of experience in this cadre of rightwing wonks:
... when their boss, National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley, recounts his years as an arms control negotiator during the Cold War. "We're like 'Arms control, what's that?'" said Allen, Hadley's special assistant for legislative affairs.
Mkay. What about "diplomacy?" Ring a bell?
No. How 'bout "treaty?"
The youthful Allen shrugs his shoulders:
it seems, that [Congress] is lobbying the executive branch to engage. Most of the times it's isolate, how can we isolate a country even more?
Right. How's that isolationist tactic working with North Korea?
Let's turn to 38 year old John D. Rood, known as "Gramps" at the NSC.
He proudly boasts:
We had all sorts of quotes from critics that the sky would fall if we left the ABM treaty, and no one even mentions this anymore because nothing happened -- it went away with a whimper. Not being encumbered with all this baggage from the Cold War is a huge advantage.
They're called "Loose Nukes," moron.
Look into 'em.
Juan Carlos Zarate? He's 34 years old
And he was hired from the Treasurey Department to handle counterterrorism. I get the feeling that Osama gets a chuckle every time he thinks of Juan Carlos.
Feeling safer? Me too!
Linzer plod on:
Michelle Malvesti, 35, 'became a terrorism analyst on a lark that same year with the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency.'
On a lark? No shit.
Linzer includes this dark insight into the lives of these young bucks:
Michele Davis, an economist, and Frederick L. Jones II, a foreign service officer, handle communications and media for the NSC -- jobs that begin at 5 a.m. and often end after midnight.
Oh, good.
The ability to pull an all-nighter turns out to be a job skill.
A vertical move?
John Simon, 38, left a classic Gen-X job as a management consultant to become the NSC's senior director for relief, stabilization, and development.
In case your personal psychic isn't getting the job done . . . William Inboden, a 33-year-old historian is charged with planning for the future. Seriously.
Juan Carlos beams,
Maybe in 20 or 30 years, folks will look back on us and say these guys were the young pioneers, we'll be the Kissingeresque-type folks," he said. "Hopefully, if we do our jobs right.
I wouldn't count on it.