Where to begin with this tool? How about that he's being sent to the Middle East to determine whether Israel is responsible for Palestinian violence - and that his record when it comes to determining how much blame Jews should get for Muslim violence isn't exactly stellar:

A new U.N. Human Rights Council official assigned to monitor Israel is calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. On March 26, Richard Falk, Milbank professor of international law emeritus at Princeton University, was named by unanimous vote to a newly created position to report on human rights in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. While Mr. Falk's specialty is human rights and international law, since the attacks in 2001, he has devoted some of his time to challenging what he calls the "9-11 official version." ... Mr. Falk said, "It is possibly true that especially the neoconservatives thought there was a situation in the country and in the world where something had to happen to wake up the American people. Whether they are innocent about the contention that they made that something happen or not, I don't think we can answer definitively at this point. All we can say is there is a lot of grounds for suspicion"

But don't let the nudge-wink muttering about a neo-conservative cabal (read: "Jews and the Christians they've corrupted") distract you from what's really awesome about this particular foreign policy superstar. He's been at the forefront of the academic activist left for decades: from his not-exactly-regretful expert "diagnoses" of the Vietnam War to his insistence that an "objective observer" would treat President Bush like the "surviving German leaders [who] were indicted, prosecuted and punished at the Nuremberg trials". And of course, wherever you find foreign policy sophistication you're certain to find oh-so-nuanced apologism for the genocidal Iranian mullahs. This little gem comes from the pre-embassy sacking months of early 1979 - when foreign policy academics went out of their way to explain how Carter and Brzezinski's decision to lose Iran to Islamism was nothing less than geopolitical brilliance:

It’s not Falk’s first trip down Lunatic Lane, either. Falk was part of Ramsey Clark’s expedition to meet with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in early 1979 to celebrate the end of the Shah’s rule. Falk wrote in February of that year in the New York Times that Khomeini was a moderate, with progressive policies, happy to allow political dissent: The news media have defamed him in many ways, associating him with efforts to turn the clock back 1,300 years, with virulent anti-Semitism, and with a new political disorder, "theocratic fascism", about to be set loose on the world. He has also indicated that the non-religious left will be free to express its views in an Islamic republic and to participate in political life, provided only that it does not "commit treason against the country" by establishing foreign connections — a lightly-veiled reference to anxiety about Soviet interference. To suppose that Ayatollah Khomeini is dissembling seems almost beyond belief.

Falk and his foreign policy colleagues spent the next 30 years sliding from one argument to another - but always with the same advocacy. In the 1980s it was that the US should suck up to Iran because the Islamists themselves were moderate - but then they turned out to be batshit crazy. So in the 1990s it was that the US should suck up to Iran because it would bolster seemingly unpopular-but-actually-popular reformists led by Khatami - except Iran elected Ahmadinejad. So post-9/11 it was that the US should suck up to Iran because obscure internal Iranian political maneuvering was about to bring pragmatic conservatives into power at the expense of Ahmadinejad and his allies - except that turned out to be a border-line idiotic predication.

If foreign policy specialists were merely stupid you'd at least expect them to come up with the right answer some of the time. And if not, then at least some of their wrong answers should - out of sheer probability if nothing - come up as something other than "the US should suck up to intransigent anti-Western enemies." Strangely, that never happens.

References:
* Sophisticated UN Diplomat: Yup, Jews Are Pretty Much Nazis [MR]
* U.N. Official Calls for Study Of Neocons' Role in 9/11 [NY Sun]
* Resisting the global domination project [HinduOnNet]
* Who’d have guessed? New UN-HRC investigator a Truther [Hot Air]
* "Unprecedented" Power Grab By Iranian Ultra-Hardliners Casts Doubt On "Pragmatists Are Winning" Liberal Sophistication [MR]

Previously:
* Leftist Sophistication Watch: Shiites And Sunnis Do Work Together, Iran Admits Funneling Money To Hamas
* Obama's Sophistication Is Actually Kind Of Unsophisticated, Incoherent
* State Department Sophistication Very Close To Triggering All-Out African WarA