The Belmont Club has moved to this URL: http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/.
The underlying cause of the outage was probably that the blog had gotten too
big. I finally got Blogger to publish through the expedient of deleting some
very old and forgettable posts. But I won't push my luck. Henceforward, all new
posts will be at the new site http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/
KC Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate
Center, asks whether a de facto test of political correctness is being required
of prospective teachers. In an article in
Higher-Ed Views, Johnson writes:
The program at my own institution, Brooklyn College, exemplifies how
application of NCATE�s new approach can easily be used to screen out potential
public school teachers who hold undesirable political beliefs. Brooklyn�s
education faculty, which assumes as fact that �an education centered on social
justice prepares the highest quality of future teachers,� recently launched a
pilot initiative to assess all education students on whether they are
�knowledgeable about, sensitive to and responsive to issues of diversity and
social justice as these influence curriculum and pedagogy, school culture,
relationships with colleagues and members of the school community, and
candidates� analysis of student work and behavior.�
At the undergraduate level, these high-sounding principles have been
translated into practice through a required class called �Language and
Literacy Development in Secondary Education.� According to numerous students,
the course�s instructor demanded that they recognize �white English� as the
�oppressors� language.� Without explanation, the class spent its session
before Election Day screening Michael Moore�s Fahrenheit 9/11. When several
students complained to the professor about the course�s politicized content,
they were informed that their previous education had left them �brainwashed�
on matters relating to race and social justice.
Johnson argues that a required commitment to "social justice" is sometimes
used as a proxy to require a set of political beliefs. But in a sense this
requirement only sets the seal on a long-term trend. Citing a survey "of 1,643
faculty members at 183 four-year colleges and universities" by three political
scientists, he noted that the great majority of faculty members were
self-described liberals.
Faculty members in the study were asked to place themselves on the
political spectrum, and 72 percent identified as liberal while only 15 percent
identified as conservative, with the remainder in the middle. The professors
were also asked about party affiliation, and here the breakdown was 50 percent
Democrats, 11 percent Republicans, and the rest independent and third parties.
The study also broke down the findings by academic discipline, and found that
humanities faculty members were the most likely (81 percent) to be liberal.
The liberal percentage was at its highest in English literature (88 percent),
followed by performing arts and psychology (both 84 percent), fine arts (83
percent), political science (81 percent). Other fields have more balance. The
liberal-conservative split is 61-29 in education, 55-39 in economics, 53-47 in
nursing, 51-19 in engineering, and 49-39 in business.
Some reviewers of Johnson's
work sharply disagree. One Modern Languages professor said "I have worked
with many colleagues over the years whose political and religious affiliations
remained unknown to me. When I recommended hiring candidates, I always did so
based on their academic credentials." Another basically argued that
conservativism is positively correlated with intellectual inferiority. Hence
there was no bias.
I think that a more thorough and unbiased study will reveal that far fewer
conservative Christians opt to pursue academic careers (outside of religiously
affiliated schools) than other groups. This, as I�ve noted previously, is
because scholarship in prestigious research universities IMPLIES skepticism,
questioning, challenging assumptions, revising traditions, and subverting
dominant ideologies�goals that the most conservative scholars and students
resist. ... The real dispute is whether or not this isn�t the way that it�s
supposed to be. Just as the media must remain �liberal� enough to question and
challenge political authority, universities are, in fact, one of the remaining
bastions of liberal thinking. Conservative beliefs and attitudes already
dominate the political, religious, and social spheres in America (not to
mention public school boards around the country), and it�s quite obvious that
these recent attacks on �liberal academia� are an attempt to spread that
dominant influence into our colleges and universities. So let�s be clear on
where and why the battle lines are being drawn.
Another commentator also believed that self-selection was a factor in
creating a liberal-conservative imbalance. But he did not put it down to 'smart
people choosing a smart career'. He argued that liberals and conservatives
diverged in their job choices because they valued different kinds of careers.
there also is the issue of the pool for recruitment. Why are there no
conservatives? Probably because conservatives tend to seek private sector jobs
that pay more. In every field, the liberals are those paid the least. In
physics or political science or english, teaching faculty are paid
significantly less than those finding either private sector jobs or those in
academic administration. So, the pool for junior faculty is more liberal
because conservatives get higher paying positions in the private sector.
Inside the university, conservatives become administrators (and again, are
paid more).
To this way of thinking, each political persuasion creates its own ghetto by
self-selection in which a liberalism is as unlikely to be found in some settings
as conservativism in others. But while this may be the case it would be
different from formally requiring a political point of view as a pre-requisite
for entering into a career.
A number of readers (JG) and commenters have written to say that the Senate
only posts prepared statements. Therefore under those terms, Galloway will not
have submitted a statement and there is nothing unusual about it not being on
the Senate Website and I apologize for the dramatic flourish. More
interestingly, commenter
Rick Ballard suggests (I think) that the Senate OFF hearings aren't really
going anywhere. The
Belmont Club post said, "Unless the Oil for Food hearings have come to a
complete dead end, Coleman and Levin's examination of Galloway aren't the
pointless thrashings of Senators at a loss to respond to the devastating wit of
the British MP but tantalizing clues to the direction they wish the
investigations to take," to which Rick Ballard said:
I rarely disagree with your analysis but I see zero evidence that calling
Mr. Galloway in response to his taunting of the committee served any purpose
whatsoever. Look at the lead up to his appearance and you see pure spotlight
politics, if he comes the committee gets ink if he refuses, the committee gets
ink. On top of that add the leak of the minority report to the Guardian prior
to its publication but after the invitation to Galloway and all I see is
Washington politics as usual.
To anyone thinking that the minority report was "innoculation" against
charges that the Senate was ignoring American misdeeds wrt OFF I would ask -
why did the Dem staff spend the majority of 128 pages on transactions that
amounted to far less than 1% of the stolen OFF funds? Sen. Coleman may indeed
be a bright and honorable man but Carl Levin hisses when he speaks and can
slide through grass undetected. The Galloway/Pasqua report is here and the
minority report is
here. Until I see full exploration of the Strong/Desmarais/Paribas links
by this committee I'm afraid that I'm going to regard it as a smokescreen. Don
Kofi is a sottocapo figurehead being set up to take a fall for Mr. Big. The
PowerCorp/Total/Final/Elf connections are where the real trail leads - that
and the material supplier kick backs - not the oil surcharges.
Maybe they are headed for a dead end. It's entirely possible that Rick
Ballard is essentially right about the Senate Committee, that it is hunting with blanks.
In this scenario there are too many places that the Oil For Food scandal
shouldn't go; owing to the extremely sensitive nature of the connections, so
only low-hanging fruit like Kojo Annan, Zhirinovsky and George Galloway are
going to take the heat. Galloway, with a kind of perverted sense of honor, may
have felt the kind of outrage a small timer feels when being made to hold the
bag and lashed out at the Senate investigation because he knows he was low man
on the totem. It would be sad if Rick Ballard were right, though it is entirely
possible. In the case the Oil For Food scandal isn't the road to justice, but
simply a fuzzy glimpse into the corrupt world of international politics in the
last years of the 20th century.
Reader KM points out in a private email that the testimony of George Galloway
before the US Senate has gone missing. According to VUNet:
The website for the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government
Affairs has removed testimony from UK MP George Galloway from its website. All
other witness testimonies for the hearings on the Oil for Food scandal are
available on the Committee's website in PDF form. But Galloway's testimony is
the only document not on the site. ... Press representatives for the Committee
had no comment.
The Senate Committee website
itself has these terse entries, here reproduced verbatim which does not say
that the testimony has been removed but that "Mr Galloway did not submit
a statement".
Panel 1
Mark L. Greenblatt [View PDF] , Counsel , U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
Steven A. Groves [View PDF] , Counsel , U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
Dan M. Berkovitz [View PDF] , Counsel to the Minority , U. S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
Panel 2
George Galloway , Member of Parliament for Bethnal Green and Bow , Great Britain
Mr Galloway did not submit a statement
Panel 3
Thomas A. Schweich [View PDF] , Chief of Staff, U.S. Mission to the United Nations , U. S. Department of State
Robert W. Werner [View PDF] , Director, Office of Foreign Assets Control , U. S. Department of the Treasury
Peter Reddaway [View PDF] , Professor Emeritus of Political Science and International Affairs , George Washington University
The declaration that "Mr Galloway did not submit a statement" is
curious given the fact that he spoke for 47 minutes before the Senate, a
performance which Christopher
Hitchens, no admirer of Galloway, believed was a rhetorical
"humiliation" of the Senate. A verbatim transcript of Galloway's
testimony, together with a video record of the proceedings can be found at the Information
Clearing House. To account for the discrepancy between the factual existence
of Galloway's testimony and its nonappearance in the Senate website raises the
possibility that Mr. Galloway's oral testimony is considered distinct from a
written statement by the Senate rules or it has been expunged from the record
because it puts the Senators in a bad light. But there is a third
possibility.
The really striking thing about the Galloway's testimony as transcribed by
the Information Clearing House is how the Senators and the Member of Parliament
for Bethnal Green and Bow were pursuing a non-collision course. Galloway had
come to score press and public relations points at which, by all accounts, he
was successful at doing. But Senator Coleman and Levin seemed totally
uninterested in responding to Galloway's sharp political jibes. It was almost as
if the Senators were deaf to his political posturing. Instead, they focused
exclusively and repeatedly on two things: Galloway's relationship with Fawaz
Zureikat and Tariq Aziz. Zureikat was a board member of Galloway's Mariam
foundation who is also implicated in the Oil For Food deals. Tariq Aziz was
Saddam's vice president.
SEN. COLEMAN: If I can get back to Mr. Zureikat one more time. Do you
recall a time when he specifically -- when you had a conversation with him
about oil dealings in Iraq?
GALLOWAY: I have already answered that question. I can assure you, Mr.
Zureikat never gave me a penny from an oil deal, from a cake deal, from a
bread deal, or from any deal. He donated money to our campaign, which we
publicly brandished on all of our literature, along with the other donors to
the campaign.
SEN. COLEMAN: Again, Mr. Galloway, a simple question. I'm looking for
either a yes or no. Did you ever have a conversation with Mr. Zureikat where
he informed you that he had oil dealings with Iraq, yes or no?
GALLOWAY: Not before this Daily Telegraph report, no. ...
SEN. CARL LEVIN (D): Thank you, Mr. Galloway.
Mr. Galloway, could you take a look at the Exhibit Number 12...
GALLOWAY: Yes.
SEN. LEVIN: ... where your name is in parenthesis after Mr. Zureikat's?--
GALLOWAY: Before Mr. Zureikat's, if I'm looking at the right exhibit--
SEN. LEVIN: I'm sorry. I was going to finish my sentence -- my question,
though. My question was, where your name is in parenthesis after Mr.
Zureikat's company.
GALLOWAY: I apologize, Senator.
SEN. LEVIN: That's all right. Now, that document--assuming it's an accurate
translation of the document underneath it--would you... you're not alleging
here today that the document is a forgery, I gather?
GALLOWAY: Well, I have no idea, Senator, if it's a forgery or not.
SEN. LEVIN: But you're not alleging.
GALLOWAY: I'm saying that the information insofar as it relates to me is
fake.
SEN. LEVIN: I -- is wrong?
GALLOWAY: It's wrong.
SEN. LEVIN: But you're not alleging that the document...
GALLOWAY: Well, I have no way of knowing, Senator.
SEN. LEVIN: That's fine. So you're not alleging?
GALLOWAY: No, I have no way -- I have no way of knowing. This is the first
time...
SEN. LEVIN: Is it fair to say since you don't know, you're not alleging?
GALLOWAY: Well, it would have been nice to have seen it before today.
SEN. LEVIN: Is it fair to say, though, that either because you've not seen
it before or because -- otherwise, you don't know. You're not alleging the
document's a fake. Is that fair to say?
GALLOWAY: I haven't had it in my possession long enough to form a view
about that.
SEN. LEVIN: All right. Would you let the subcommittee know after you've had
it in your possession long enough whether you consider the document a fake.
GALLOWAY: Yes, although there is a -- there is an academic quality about
it, Senator Levin, because you have already found me guilty before you --
before you actually allowed me to come here and speak for myself.
SEN. LEVIN: Well, in order to attempt to clear your name, would you...
GALLOWAY: Well, let's be clear about something.
SEN. LEVIN: Well, let me finish my question. Let me be clear about that,
first of all. Would you submit to the subcommittee after you've had a chance
to review this document whether or not, in your judgment, it is a forgery?
Will you do that?
GALLOWAY: Well, if you will give me the original. I mean, this is not --
presumably, you wrote this English translation.
SEN. LEVIN: Yes, and there's a copy underneath it of the...
GALLOWAY: Well, yes, there is a copy of a gray blur. If you'll give me --
if you'll give me the original ...
SEN. LEVIN: The copy of the original.
(CROSSTALK)
GALLOWAY: Give me the original in a decipherable way, then of course
I'll...
SEN. LEVIN: That would be fine. We appreciate that.
GALLOWAY: Yes.
It is clear that Coleman and Levin were attempting to pin Galloway down on
what he knew and when he knew it. They were also attempting to get him to
categorically declare himself on the veracity of the Zureikat document. In the
end, Galloway denied talking to Zureikat about oil deals with Saddam before it
became a public issue. He also undertook to evaluate the veracity of the
document which named him -- in parenthesis admittedly -- in one a document
related to Oil for Food.
SEN. LEVIN: ... I wanted just to ask you about Tariq Aziz.
GALLOWAY: Yeah.
SEN. LEVIN: Tariq Aziz. You've indicated you, you--who you didn't talk to
and who you did talk to. Did you have conversations with Tariq Aziz about the
award of oil allocations? That's my question.
GALLOWAY: Never.
SEN. LEVIN: Thank you. I'm done. Thank you.
SEN. COLEMAN: Just one follow-up on the Tariq Aziz question. How often did
you uh ... Can you describe the relation with Tariq Aziz?
GALLOWAY: Friendly.
SEN. COLEMAN: How often did you meet him?
GALLOWAY: Many times.
SEN. COLEMAN: Can you give an estimate of that?
GALLOWAY: No. Many times.
SEN. COLEMAN: Is it more than five?
GALLOWAY: Yes, sir.
SEN. COLEMAN: More than ten?
GALLOWAY: Yes.
SEN. COLEMAN: Fifteen? Around fifteen?
GALLOWAY: Well, we're getting nearer, but I haven't counted. But many
times. I'm saying to you "Many times," and I'm saying to you that I
was friendly with him.
SEN. COLEMAN: And you describe him as "a very dear friend"?
GALLOWAY: I think you've quoted me as saying "a dear, dear
friend." I don't often use the double adjective, but--
SEN. COLEMAN: --I was looking into your heart on that.--
GALLOWAY: --but "friend" I have no problem with. Senator, just
before you go on--I do hope that you'll avail yourself of this dossier that I
have produced. And I am really speaking through you to Senator Levin. This is
what I have said about Saddam Hussein.
SEN. COLEMAN: Well, we'll enter that into the record without objection. I
have no further questions of the witness. You're excused, Mr. Galloway.
GALLOWAY: Thank you very much.
In the exchange above it is abundantly clear that both Coleman and Levin
simply wanted to enter Galloway's denial of having discussed Oil for Food
business with Tariq Aziz in the record. Levin immediately ends his questioning
after eliciting Galloway's "Never". Coleman is content to merely
establish that Aziz and Galloway were
"friends" who had met "many times" before saying "I
have no further questions of the witness".
Unless the Oil for Food hearings have come to a complete dead end, Coleman
and Levin's examination of Galloway aren't the pointless thrashings of Senators
at a loss to respond to the devastating wit of the British MP but
tantalizing clues to the direction they wish the investigations to take. The
question that must have been in Galloway's mind -- and which is uppermost in
mine -- is what else did the Senators know? The persons named by the Senate investigation so far -- Zhirinovsky, Pasqua and Galloway -- reads less like a list of principals than a list of fixers. The truly remarkable thing about Galloway's many meetings with Tariq Aziz was how much time the Iraqi was willing to devote to an obscure British backbencher with no official power. The unspoken question is why Saddam should take the trouble to bribe Galloway, if it were Galloway who was being bribed. The Senators were building a causal bridge to something, but to what? I am in no position to say, but will guess that Galloway's testimony and its disappearance from the Senate website can only be understood in the context of what Coleman and Levin were trying to achieve. My own sense is that the investigations are cautiously nearing far bigger game than George Galloway; but that his evidence or his refusal to give it is somehow crucial to achieving this larger goal. Other pieces of the puzzle may exist but there are two the public know about which may cast an interesting light in hindsight on Galloway's words. The first is contained in the Volcker Commission files which investigator Robert Parton turned over to the Senate Committee and the second is the forthcoming trial of Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz. George Galloway may have appeared in the Senate but even he must be uncertain, until
the missing pieces are played on the board, what he really said.
Glenn
Reynolds notes that the New York Times coverage of prisoner abuse in
Afghanistan may not really be about prisoner abuse or even Afghanistan, but
about maintaining the prestige of Newsweek. He calls it "circling
the wagons", the idea being to teach press critics an object lesson in how
expensive it is to humiliate the mass media by catching them at sloppy reporting
by flooding the zone with stories similar to the one which was discredited .
That may or may not be the case, but it is nearly undeniable that the effect of
the media's coverage of American misdeeds has been to make the slightest
infraction against enemy combatants ruinously expensive. Not only the treatment
of the enemy combatants themselves, but their articles of religious worship have
become the subject of such scrutiny that Korans must handled with actual gloves
in a ceremonial fashion, a fact that must be triumph for the jihadi cause
in and of itself. While nothing is wrong with ensuring the proper treatment of
enemy prisoners, the implicit moral superiority that has been accorded America's
enemy and his effects recalls Rudyard Kipling's The
Grave of the Hundred Dead.
Kipling described how the 19th century Indian Army maintained the myth of the
Raj and upheld his prestige to compensate for their small numbers and military
weakness. When a Subaltern of the First Shikaris is slain in a jungle ambush,
his men know that they must teach the Burmans, first and foremost, how blasphemous
it was to hurt one of the elect. For the sake of their masters and themselves
the Shikaris raid the home village of the foe and slay them to the last man.
"And Sniders squibbed no more; for the Burmans said that a white man's
head must be paid for with heads five-score". Kipling's verse finds its
modern analogue not in punitive visitations against "insurgent"
strongholds in Afghanistan or Iraq -- which would be eagerly reported by the
press if they could at all find them -- but in calls for the arrest of the
American President or the dismissal of the the Secretary of Defense for a
handful of cases of prisoner abuse gleaned from a global battlefield.
For example,
a court in The Hague turned down a demand by a dozen plaintiffs who wanted to
force the Dutch government to arrest US President George W Bush when he visits
the Netherlands. Donald Rumsfeld has been repeatedly asked to resign over
'widespread prison' abuse in Abu Ghraib. The point of these calls for lopsided
retribution is to drive home just how dangerous it is to trifle with sacred
person and belief system of the enemy. It aims to paralyze anyone who even
contemplates such an act of lese majeste. The modern "grave of a hundred
dead" isn't a pyramid of skulls over the tomb of British Subaltern: it's an
American Secretary of Defense's head on a stake over a photograph of a jihadi
wearing a pair of panties as a hat. It is front-page calls for an abject
American apology for flushing a Koran down a toilet even if it was never
flushed down a toilet at all, except on the pages of Newsweek. It is
calls for an admission of guilt if only the mere possibility of guilt existed.
And if that were not psychological domination at par with the worst the British
Empire could offer in its heyday then nothing is. There are Empires today of a
different sort, but they maintain the power by much the same means.
There'll be some who say that toppling Saddam was meant to be an object lesson to the Arab world. If so, it has sent mixed messages because it was never prosecuted with the kind of frightening brutality that some have advocated. The image of the US after OIF is one of a giant afraid to hurt or even give offense to its enemies. Even in the battles of the First and Second Fallujah there were always extraordinary efforts to preserve mosques and similar places, probably to the glee and wonderment of the enemy. If the Kevin Sites incident and the subsequent investigation proved
anything it was that the Marines were no Shikaris.
But if the US has been at pains to avoid the image of ruthlessness, the enemy by contrast has made a special effort to magnify his brutality by attacking mosques, beheading women, mutilating children, etc. often on camera. And the really disappointing thing it is that the intended intimidation works. If George Galloway's standard response to his critics is a lawsuit and radical Islam's first recourse is a
fatwa then terror's first answer to insult is always the Grave of a Hundred Dead. Intimidation brings them respect from the very people who style themselves immune to intimidation.
It is plain to the lowliest stringer from the most obscure tabloid
that to insult America is cheap but to insult the local 'militants' very, very expensive. Kipling's cynical dictum is proven again and the lesson not forgotten.
We live in a strange world where the Beslan story vanishes in weeks while Abu Ghraib lives on for years. Maybe it reflects the inherent importance of the stories but it more probably demonstrates the media's ability to prolong the life of some stories while ignoring others. I hope it is not impertinent to observe that the media's demeanor towards terrorism bears more than a passing resemblance to cheap cowardice; but though outwardly similar it really springs from a high-minded idealism, deep courage and profound learning. Or so I hope.
The Grave of a Hundred Dead | |
| There's a widow in sleepy Chester Who weeps for her only son; There's a grave on the Pabeng River, A grave that the Burmans shun; And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri Who tells how the work was done. A Snider squibbed in the jungle- Subadar Prag Tewarri, They buried the boy by the river, For they swore by the Holy Water, The men of the First Shikaris Subadar Prag Tewarri, The men of the First Shikaris | Long was the morn of slaughter, Long was the list of slain, Five score heads were taken, Five score heads and twain; And the men of the First Shikaris Went back to their grave again, Each man bearing a basket They made a pile of their trophies Subadar Prag Tewarri Thus the samadh was perfect, Then a silence came to the river,
|
The drama surrounding attempts by Canadian PM Paul Martin to hang on to power
by ignoring a no confidence vote and then offering a Conservative oppositionist
a Cabinet post to switch sides has taken an dramatic turn. Conservative
Canadian MP Gurmant Grewal tape recorded an attempt by the Prime Minister's
chief of staff, Tim Murphy to bribe him to change his vote. Andrew
Coyne highlights some snippets of the recorded conversation which are best
heard against the background of squeezebox music playing 'Speak softly, love, so no one hears us but the sky.
...'
Murphy: "if anybody is asked the question, 'Well is there a deal?' and
you say, 'No.' Well you want that to be the truth. ... So you didn't
approach. We didn't approach."
A recent Belmont
Club post noted that 'victories' won by the Left with these tactics were
more properly understood as acts of desperation by those who feared their long
term decline, as if in slipping from the pinnacle, they despaired of ever
regaining it again.
The survival of Paul Martin's government, shaken by scandal after scandal,
has been bought at the price of violating the spirit of the Westminister
system by ignoring what was effectively a vote of no-confidence until
they could bribe someone to cross the aisle to square the count. Martin
survived but only by bending the rulebook. A Canadian conservative victory
without Martin's shennanigans would have been an unremarkable and narrow
electoral triumph. But the Liberal Party of Canada's actions now mean that the
issues dividing political factions in the Great White North are fundamental.
By demonstrating a determination to hold on to power at all costs Martin is
increasing the likelihood of a radical, rather than an incremental solution to
the Canadian crisis.
Mark Steyn has more in his article A
Constitutional Coup
In the forthcoming Western Standard , I make the point that �the big flaw
at the heart of the Westminster system is that in order to function as
intended � by codes and conventions � it depends on a certain modesty and
circumspection from the political class.� Perhaps it was always a long shot
to expect a man as hollow as Paul Martin to understand that. ... But the fact
remains: by any understanding of our system of government, if the effect of
�an extra week�s delay� is to maintain themselves in power by one vote
they otherwise would not have had, it�s hard to see this as anything other
than a constitutional coup. Like Robert Mugabe, Paul Martin has simply
declared that the constitution is whatever he says it is.
What characterizes much of the Left today as exemplified by behavior from
George Galloway to Paul Martin is the increasing necessity to maintain their
position By Any Means Necessary. While that is dangerous and infuriating, it is
a reliable indicator that they have lost control of the system. Things just
aren't working the way they used to. And that, despite everything, is cause for
hope.
Two factors that are normally considered in evaluating the outcome of a
contemplated action are encapsulated in the notion of an expected value.
An expected value is calculated from two independent components: the probability
of an outcome and the 'payoff' of that outcome, where a 'payoff' can be
negative: that is, a loss. But into the mathematics comes the human factor,
expressed in our risk/return profile. People can choose between two
mathematically equal expected values depending on their degree of risk aversion.
For example, in making a wager, one might be willing to accept a large risk of
losing a small amount and but be unwilling to take a small risk of losing a very
large amount, even though they may have the same expected value. That's why few
people are willing to play Russian roulette even for large sums of money.
In relation to the Newsweek Koran story fiasco, the existence of a
wartime situation distorts the editorial process to the degree that it increases
the consequences of a mistake. The probability of making an editorial mistake
may be the same as it was ten years ago, given the same standards of news
confirmation, but the consequences of an error may have drastically increased in
a post-September 11 world where news is disseminated to distant combat zones in
the blink of an eye. Newspapers are not alone in facing drastically changed
payoff profiles for traditionally accepted practices. By the standards of World
War 2 the modern US military has objectively reduced the probability of
civilian casualties, prisoner abuse, etc to a degree that General Eisenhower or
MacArthur would never have dreamed possible. Unfortunately, the political
consequences of those events have grown to such an extent that their increase
dominates the reduction in probability in the final product -- the expected
value.
All of this is common sense, but it is easy to forget when one is blamed for
doing what has always been done. The consequential difference between Woodward's
'Deep Throat' and Isikoff's 'anonymous source' is not necessarily the character
or competence of one over the other; nor even the veracity of their informants.
It's the thirty years between their stories: it's the fact that there's a war
on. In the world of probability times payoff, good intentions are not a factor.
Whether one means well or acts maliciously is irrelevant to changing the
practical outcome of an event. Thus, the US military has learned it is not
enough not to desire reducing collateral damage, it is important to
create systems and procedures to achieve this. The
small diameter bomb, special targeting software to reduce the footprint of
blasts, training, and many other programs costing billions are a more serous
proof that avoiding civilian casualties is a priority than any number of
heartfelt declarations, however sincere. Because if the size of the payoff has
grown, one had better damn well lower the probability to keep the expected value
constant.
So when Newsweek went to press with the Koran story on the basis of an
anonymous informant and no confirmation (other one denial from an official and
the absence of a denial from another) it was not really doing anything
untraditional, but it had failed to take into account the changed nature of the
world. The US Air Force could well have argued that sending massed formations of
heavy bombers to carpet-bomb the Muslim world was not any different from what
Curtis Le May and Air Marshall Arthur Harris did during the 'Good War'; but that
would have been absurd. The amazing thing is how long it took to understand how
the times had changed for the Press as well. That may be in part because the Press is spared the immediate and terrible
feedback of combat, to which the military is continuously subjected. The
military effort to reduce collateral damage is driven largely by self-interest:
the need to avoid unnecessary hostility from civilians in combat zones and to
maintain political acceptability for its assigned missions. The requirements of
survival have forced the military to evolve. But the Press in holding itself
above responsibility has escaped into a kind of Lost World which is even now
being shaken by a cataclysm.
