The thinkers behind foreign policy

Re “Bright and wrong,” Current, May 14

We now might note it was also since the end of World War II that the former Soviet Union’s successive Politburos “repeatedly brought in intellectuals and scholars to provide thoughtful moral and theoretical underpinnings for foreign policy decisions.” Indeed, Bruce Kuklick’s description of our intellectuals as those who “articulated ideas designed to exculpate policymakers -- or themselves -- or to provide politicians with the fictions that could be used to give meaning to policies for the public” is nearly the same description these intellectuals he speaks of gave to their counterparts in the former Soviet Union: “They fabricated an acceptable vocabulary and grammar in which the participants formulated decisions.”

So the description of these particular individuals is the same: theirs were “commissars” and ours were -- and still are -- “intellectuals.” And by now it should be clear that in both countries, their function has never been to be either bright or right.

TOM WILDE

Santa Monica

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To make the point Kuklick tries to make even more evident, one has only to realize that the Bush doctrine, the war in Iraq and the idea of forcefully democratizing the Middle East were hatched at, of all places, Johns Hopkins University -- by leading scholars at one of our great academic institutions renowned the world over for its outstanding advanced-studies program in international affairs.

Yes, truly, imagine what a black eye it is for such a university and for American academia to be almost directly responsible for such an outrageous, un-American, failed, costly and bloody scheme.

CARL MATTIOLI

Newtonville, Mass.