Daniel Drezner, Stupendously Wrong

All of us bloggers goof now and then, publishing throwaway posts here and there, based on fraudulent information or underdeveloped reasoning.

But Dan Drezner, an expert in international affairs at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, who is routinely feted as one of the country's top "public intellectuals," has published a note on the Mumbai attacks - commentary that should be considered in his field of expertise - that is profoundly, stupendously wrong, to the point of ignominy even.

Here's Drezner yesterday, in his "Open Mumbai Thread":

Comment away on the terrorist attacks that have stunned Mumbai over the past 48 hours. I don’t have a lot to add, except that this doesn’t feel like a linked-with-Al Qaeda attack. While there’s been carnage, these attacks have also been sloppy and messy. Because of the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S., the timing of these attacks guaranteed a low level of American targets and a low level of Ameican attention.

The "sloppy and messy" part is particulary throwaway, considering that the emerging consensus among terror experts is that the attacks were "meticulously planned."

This additional comment about "the timing of these attacks" is also lame. One of Drezner's readers responded in the comments:

Dan,

I have been a reader for years, discovering your blog while I was a political science graduate student at the University of Mumbai in 2003. I am an Army Infantry officer who was the first Olmsted Scholar to India. I lived in Mumbai with my family from May 2003 to June 2005, including three months in the Taj Mahal hotel while I searched for a suitable apartment. Two of my children were born at Breach Candy Hospital in Bombay. My Masters degree is from the University of Mumbai. Neither my wife nor I are of South Asian extract, but we love India (warts and all) and it is in many ways our second country.

I dispute your notion that this event has received a low-level of attention. The news channels were full of coverage. However, we are, as a nation, so unaware of India as it really is. We think because we have seen CITY OF JOY and MONSOON WEDDING and enjoy curry and samosas that we “know” India. We have ceded interest to the very important, and economically influential, diaspora here. If we are smart, India could be an ally to us in the years to come akin to the British of the 20th Century. As to the attacks, they were executed with precision and the targets were well-chosen. That this is till ongoing, over 48 hours after the initial attacks, shows that the mujahideen who executed this were well-prepared and not amateurs. Imagine this type of attack taking place simultaneously in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. That is what Mumbai is to India.

Drezner currently has two brand-new published essays at the National Interest, "Oil Dependence As Virtue," and "Leading by Appointment."

I'll let readers go visits those pieces to see if Drezner's more hopefully deliberative commentaries are worth the time.