Several days ago Gideon Rose, managing editor of the Foreign Affairs magazine likened “bloggers” – especially lefty bloggers - to the talk radio necons of years ago, in a disparaging commentary that has echoed through the internets. (Reprinted here, where it’s free.)

Just the title could set your teeth on edge. An sensible, oxygen-breathing biped could easily assemble a long list of ways the netroots – shorthand for the lefty blogosphere – are not like the neocons, so it’s worth seeing how Mr Rose defines his terms.

The lefty blogosphere, meanwhile, has gotten itself all in a tizzy over the failings of the "foreign policy community." The funny thing is...hell, I’ll just come out and say it: the netroots' attitude toward professionals isn’t that different from the neocons', both being convinced that the very concept of a foreign-policy clerisy is unjustified, anti-democratic and pernicious, and that the remedy is much tighter and more direct control by the principals over their supposed professional agents.

The charges the bloggers are making now are very similar to those that the neocons made a few years ago: mainstream foreign-policy experts are politicised careerists, biased hacks, and hide-bound traditionalists who have gotten everything wrong in the past and don’t deserve to be listened to in the future. (Take a look at pretty much any old Jim Hoagland column and you’ll see what I mean.) Back then, the neocons directed their fire primarily at the national security bureaucracies—freedom-hating mediocrities at the CIA, pin-striped wussies at the State Department, cowardly soldiers at the Pentagon.

Now, it’s true Mr Rose says lefties are “similar” and not “just like” the neocons and one might think there was some waffle room, but Mr Rose nails down his contempt for the left quite handily. His observation about neocon criticism of national security bureaucracies, etc, glibly overlooks a very momentous point:

Those neocons who, according to Mr Rose, once tarred the soldiers at the Pentagon as “cowardly” now give the soldiers their marching orders.

One would be right to make the point that continued public carping could result in those of us who have been right all along about Mr Bu$h failed foreign policy decisions and his failed ego-war could actually end up making a difference some day. Squeaky wheels, oil and all that.

Mr Rose makes an interesting comment:

the idea that there is some Chinese wall separating the professionals inside the system from those outside it is just silly: the higher ranks of the bureaucracies are filled with political appointees, many outside experts have extensive experience inside the system, and the good people in all places tend to know and respect each other.

In our system of government, political appointees invade all the departments and agencies. This is a simple fact of how the US Government operates, and to an extent is a living relic of the spoils system of patronage. The ongoing permanent professional bureaucracies are supposed to keep the system working. However the system seems to have changed since the Likudniks climbed into the driver’s seat. That Chinese wall now exists, and apparatchiki like Mr Rose consider it their sworn duty to exclude the great unwashed. In his view, we are to stand aside and admire from afar as they dance and cavort, destroying one innocent country after another in their clumsy – but oh so enlightened professionalism.

However, the real professionals – those who actually have done the work Mr Rose purports to write about – have once again rendered their own judgment of the Likudniks’ incompetence.

Who is Gideon Rose?

An academic. Apart from one year (1994-1995) spent employed as Associate Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs on the National Security Council, he hasn’t done more than occupy comfy chairs at universities, think tanks, and universities.

If Mr Rose confronted a resume like this, and it was, for instance mine – a DFH blogger - he would sniff in derision.