Excellent perspective from Jewish World Review...
SBG
Jewish World Review Feb. 5, 2009 / 11 Shevat 5769
By Jonathan Rosenblum
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |The older I get the more I see how overrated brains are," an older friend said to me recently. Even in Talmudic learning — on its face an intellectual exercise — pure intellectual firepower is an unreliable predictor of long-range achievement. So when I see the The New York Times becoming all hot and bothered by the multiplicity of Ivy League degrees in the new administration, I get nervous.
There are many good reasons for Israelis to be concerned about a shift in American policy towards Israel. One is the appointment of Harvard professor Samantha Powers, who has called for the stationing of a "mammoth [American] force" in Israel to protect Palestinians from genocide, to a senior position in the National Security Council.
A second is President Obama's Alice in Wonderland portrayal on Al Arabiya of some halcyon era of "respect and partnership" between America and the Muslim world "as recently as twenty or thirty years ago." That period includes: the seizure of the American embassy in Teheran, Hizbullah's bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, the Lockerbie bombing, and a ruinous Arab oil embargo, just for starters. No one begrudges the President a few rhetorical flourishes and outreach towards the Moslem world, as long as we know he doesn't really believe what he is saying.
But of no less concern is the misplaced confidence in their ability to solve all the world's problems of all those high IQ types in the new administration. Nobel Laureate in Economics, Professor Robert Lucas declared in 1996 that economists now possess sufficient knowledge and tools to end the threat of another worldwide depression forever — a boast that appears less and less well-founded by the day. The U.S. Congress issued the economic wizards of the Treasury a blank check to free up credit markets, but so far more than 350 billion dollars have been spent to no effect.
