Why wasn't there an infantryman on the Iraq Study Group?

Submitted by Tertium Quid (United States), Dec 19, 2006 at 11:05

Without an infantryman, the report of the Iraq Study Group is no better than the following:

The long-anticipated report of the President's Agricultural Study Group was released today.

The Agricultural Study Group is a blue-ribbon panel of economists, soil scientists, agronomists, geneticists, hydrologists, nutritionists, horticulturalists, and export specialists appointed to examine the vital question of whether America should continue to engage in agriculture.

After careful study and long deliberation, the Agricultural Study Group came to the conclusion that the United States has neither absolute nor comparative advantage in any agricultural product and therefore, as a national policy, should cease the practice of agriculture.

Moreover, the Agricultural Study Group concluded that American agricultural policy was flawed at the outset and could not be fixed without considerable risk and expense of the public treasure. Finally, the Agricultural Study Group concluded that the practice of agriculture in the United States was against national interests because of the loss of soil, persistently low commodities prices, environmental damage due to fertilizers and pesticides, the increase in overprocessed foods, and the steady decline of agriculture in the economy and culture since the end of the First World War.

The Agricultural Study Group recommended that America cease all agricultural production by 2009. To provide food and agricultural products for Americans, the Agricultural Study Group recommended diplomacy with Russia, Ukraine, Argentina, India, China, Mexico, and Canada to negotiate treaties which would guarantee food supplies for America without continuing the terrible waste of producing food in America. Moreover, an army of grief counselors and vocational specialists is to be deployed to all fifty states to mitigate the troubles of the millions of farmers and ranchers who must give up their way of life for the national interest and environmental health.

Praise of the report's wisdom has been almost universal and persuasive. Only one dissenting opinion to the report's conclusions has been published, and that dissonant note was in the obscure Peoria Gazette and Almanac, whose write-in editorialist this morning noted that of all the illustrious members of the Agricultural Study Group, not a single one was farmer or had even grown up on a farm.

http://burketokirk.blogspot.com

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".