OxBlog

Monday, March 03, 2003

# Posted 8:18 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

NSC SHUFFLE: Josh Marshall picks up a story from UPI (reprinted in the Washington Times), which reports that NSC Middle East director Elliott Abrams has given the boot to three NSC analysts who might have challenged his harder line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This change does matter, and Marshall is right to argue that it is evidence of an unwillingness to consider opposing views. But he goes too far when he says that the Bush administration's efforts to politicize the national security bureaucracy have reached "unprecedented levels".

W. hasn't come close to what Reagan did, cleaning out whole bureaus in the State Department and sending decorated ambassadors with thirty years experience into premature retirement. Thus, when Marshall argues that this administration's unwillingness to hear opposing views has damaged its foreign policy, his charges ring hollow. The administration has done plenty wrong, but not because it hasn't been aware of other options.
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