QOTD: Ben Carson
by digby
Oops:
In the case of Vietnam, we were trying to stop the spread of communism, which seems like a noble cause to those who hate communism. However, many people love communism, and certainly everyone should have the right to live under the system of their choosing.
That's from Carson's book "America the Beautiful". I'm thinking his fans on the far right may not have read it.
But he's actually quite the foreign policy genius. Via No More Mr. Nice Blog:
“I actually wrote President Bush a letter before the war started and I said, you know, what I would do is I would use the bully pulpit at this moment of great national unity and, very much in a Kennedy-esque type fashion, say within 10 years we’re going to become petroleum independent. And that would’ve been much more effective than going to war because, first of all, the moderate Arab states would’ve been terrified. And they would’ve handed over Osama Bin Laden and anybody else we wanted on a silver platter to keep us from doing that.”
I think the fact that he's a highly respected and accomplished brain surgeon is key to understanding why he's so incredibly dumb about politics. Brain surgeons are treated like Gods and they come to believe they're Gods and never question themselves. So he has no idea that the stuff he's saying is sophomoric and ignorant. It never occurs to him to even check. Why would he? In his mind, he's infallible.
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