Judge Richard A. Posner, leading candidate for the title World's Foremost Authority

Judge Richard Posner was in town for a public appearance the other night, and as he is a leading candidate for the title World's Foremost Authority, I thought I would stop by the famous old Willard Hotel to see what he had to say about the 9/11 Commission Report and its legislative by-product, the Intelligence Report Act. Supposedly the legislation improves the capacity of our intelligence community in this time of terror attacks worldwide.

Judge Posner, a federal judge and lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, writes on a broad range of public matters. He writes beautifully on issues that do not invite elegant prose and with a powerful analytical mind. Often he comes to conclusions with which I do not agree. For instance, in his book on the impeachment of President Clinton, he reviewed the law and the transgressions of the culprit, concluding that Clinton could be impeached but should not to be. Well, Judge, I was with you part of the way.

Now he was in Washington to discuss his most recent book, "Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11," which is part of a promising series of brief books that the Hoover Institution is publishing on pressing political, economic, and social issues. As usual, Judge Posner's approach puts me in mind of another brilliant, if unconventional, policy scholar, the late Edward Banfield. Banfield, a Harvard government professor of two decades back, employed vast learning and a skeptical intelligence to arrive at conclusions that ended up being commonsensical and thus to his fellow scholars, deeply disturbing.

On the 9/11 Commission's findings and the consequent legislation, Judge Posner's most optimistic judgment is that the legislation is hazy. It leaves the president and intelligence reformers much room in which to revise the commission's recommendations,

I just finished reading "Winning the Long War"

Winning the Long War: Lessons from the Cold War for Defeating Terrorism and Preserving Freedom
James Jay Carafano, Ph.D.
Paul Rosenzweig
http://www.heritage.org/Research/HomelandDefense/the-long-war-prologue.cfm

(very good book!)

Something they say on this suject
"Our assessment of the first three years is generally encouraging. In fact, we argue that much of the hard thinking has been done and done right. The fundamental concepts argued by Kennan and embedded in U.S. policies by Eisenhower have already taken root in contemporary strategy.

Lesson 1: Organize to fight for the long term. We find, generally, that the United States is developing the right strategic approach for a protracted war, neglecting neither offense nor defense, focused on promoting continued economic growth, sincere in its desire to preserve the constitutional rights of its citizens, and mindful of the nation’s responsibilities to set an example in the world.

Lesson 2: Be patient and get it right. It is also clear that the United States has tried to do more than simply throw money and the military at the problem. Efforts are underway to build long-term, sustainable security programs, measures that can protect Americans today, tomorrow, and ten years from now.

Lesson 3: Do not put off getting it right: Once innovation ends, stagnation begins. The area in which the assessments of Winning the Long War are less sanguine is on this third point. In virtually every key area of the strategy— security, the economy, civil liberties, and the war of ideas—there is more work to be done."

Judge Posner is an extraordinary intellect. He puts out about a book a year, on all manner of topics, and several often very high-quality journal articles to boot. Numerous of his writings have become legendary in law and economics, a discipline he substantially invented. He does this despite having no Ph.D. in economics. (Only a J.D., and a bachelor's in economics from Harvard.) He lectures at the University of Chicago Law School, and oh by the way is the chief judge of the federal appeals court in Chicago. I have heard that based on citation analysis he is one of the most influential of all federal jduges.

Like Gary Becker (and many Chicago economists), he has a great talent for applying core, easily understood economic principles to topics seemingly far removed. And most impressively, in his writings you can detect over time that sometimes he changes his mind, which for a scholar in the soft sciences is a fairly rare thing.

The Economics of the Jihad I - The Jihad as a Firm.

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