Are people with big college educations a good thing? I ask this because I have recently been thinking about a book I read in 2009. The book is Intellectuals and Society by Dr. Thomas Sowell. Sowell is a black American so that book should have carried a lot more weight than it did especially in these postmodern times. But Sowell’s work, concise, clear and relevant to our time, was treated in academic circles like a diatribe released by what actor, singer and black activist Harry Belafonte, would call an “Uncle Tom” houseslave. Personally, I was impressed by Sowell’s breathtaking intelligence and his influence on my thinking was real and lasting. I have the 2009 edition; it was revised in 2012.
The reason I bring this to light is because of something I noticed years ago that seemed weird. Does anyone remember April Glaspie? Glaspie was George H.W. Bush’s Ambassador to Iraq in 1990. Bush dispatched her to Iraq to find out why Saddam Husein was massing troops along Kuwait’s border. Glaspie had what most would call a big college education, and she used that education to secure a position as an expert in Arab affairs.
When she got there Saddam told her he was considering taking over Kuwait and he wanted to know what the US would do if he invaded. Glaspie’s highly educated response was dumbfounding. She told Hussien that that the US “has no opinion on Arab/Arab affairs”. Now Saddam was not an English speaker and Glaspie knew that or at least with all her education she should have known that.
Glaspie returned to the US and Saddam promptly invaded Kuwait on what he interpreted as an ok by the US to take over that country. I know this happened because I saw it happen. One of the major points in Sowell’s book is that intellectuals, particularly highly educated intellectuals like Glaspie, do a lot of damage to society but are never held accountable. Bush and Glaspie are not just responsible for the Gulf War but in all likelihood the Arab Spring that followed. It seemed weird that Bush the elder was pontificating about Kuwait’s invasion as something that “cannot stand” when he and Glaspie brought it about. I saw that happen and neither one of them was ever held accountable for their disastrous incompetence.
Both Bush and Glaspie should have gone to the gallows for their ineptitude because it led to the attack on the World Trade Center years later after George Bush attacked Iraq to rescue his father’s image with the false flag of weapons of mass destruction which were never found. If Saddam ever had any WMD’s he probably got them through secret channels from the US anyway because Iraq was very useful to the US as a counterbalance to Iran which took US hostages.
Now that I think about it Sowell’s book makes a lot of sense and I am going to read it again.
en.wikipedia.org
