Quote Originally Posted by Rex Brynen View Post
I agree that Tony was rather condescending in his pithiness. He also drew an excessively sharp dividing line between the IDF and the political echelons, in my view--both in 2006 and now some of the shortcomings in strategic vision have to do with apparent weaknesses in strategic assessment by the defence and intel community too.
all of that...

Cordesman is like many other would be military experts scattered about. They're annoying to me because of their penchant for stating the obvious and assuming that only they saw or see it and their tendency to state their position or view as being the only rational possibility. Those things and their propensity for judgmental statements calls both their objectivity and their expertise into question.

Everyone has a right to an opinion and to state it; their willingness to do so publicly does not accord 'expert' status so most of those folks IMO are letting their egos get wa-a-a-ay ahead of their capability. Most annoying are those with a few years service who think they've got all the answers. I've been around things militaire since I was born and I learn things every day; mostly how much I do NOT know...
That being said, I can't say that the Israeli media (parts of which are usually very good) has particularly good job in assessing what is going on right now, in large part because of the natural wartime rally-around-the-flag effect.

The Arab media has been even worse.
and that -- I've sort of given up on the media worldwide. Either they were this bad when I was much younger and I just didn't realize or they have totally fallen apart in the last forty years. Don't know which but I'm inclined to believe the latter.

The raw superficiality and ignorance they continually display is scary...