Abu Muquama’s blog is a year old. Go take pictures while he blows out the candles.

One interesting thing that’s happened in the blogoverse in the last year or so is the rise of ‘professional’ blogs dealing with the issues of the Long War; issues that we – as interested amateurs – started blogging about some time ago.

That’s a good thing, because I’m mostly here to learn, and having resources like abu muquma and others – abu aardvark, Kings of War, the Small Wars Journal, etc. – raises the bar for discussions everywhere.

What’s the place of amateurs like us in discussing these issues, now that the pros have stepped to the stage? That’s a legitimate question, answered in part by something I wrote here a while ago:

The most important thing is actually the simplest, which is that the genius of the American system is that there certainly are experts on game theory, diplomatic history, and policy who have substantive and valuable expertise in these areas.

And they all work for guys like me. Our Congress and our President are typically business men and women, lawyers, rank amateurs when it comes to the hard games that they study so diligently at ENA (Ecole Nationale d’Administration). And that’s a good thing, in fact, it’s a damn good thing.

The broad direction of policy in this country is an amateur’s game – as it should be. But the ability to inform those amateur discussions – whether in the halls of Congress, the mainstream media, the blogs, or barrooms and living rooms – with the informed insights of professionals helps us all.

If you’re not reading those blogs and learning from them – you should be. But if you want to simply hand the keys over to the ‘experts’ – you shouldn’t. From my same post:

The French political system is built on ‘expertise’; it assumes that the intensive study that is required to get into one of these schools and the hard work that students do once there delivers not only a wide array of long-lasting personal connections (see the recent blown French effort to rescue Ingrid Betancourt, a presidential candidate one of de Villipins’ former students from FARC), but a superiority of outlook and knowledge that entitles them to rule.

The results tend to be mixed, at best. The corruption at high levels in France is almost unimaginable, even to me, and I have a good imagination. The current round of Elf-Aquitaine scandals, where the corporate and government interests collude – hidden behind a veil of ‘need to know’ and ‘secret strategy’.

The consequence is a lethargic political culture in France, and an overall disengagement between the average French citizen and their government. Policy and politics are the province of ‘the smart guys’.

In America, the presumption is that we’re all capable of being ‘smart guys’. I like that. But I temper it with a large mug of respect for people who do things for a living and who have hands-on experience in areas that I’ve only chatted with people about.