I’ve been thinking a bit about information asymmetries. I opposed the Iraq war from the start – it seemed to me that for the invasion to make sense, almost everything had to break our way, so the invasion was akin to making a bet with a 1:1 payoff that you would win only if you rolled snake eyes. The one thing that gave me pause was the confidence George Bush and his advisers had about Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction. If Saddam had WMD, and there was an imminent danger of his using them, then it seemed to me that the cost/benefit ratio of the war was much closer. And Bush had access to information that I could not see. So a huge issue for me (and I’d bet for many others) was the magnitude and significance of the information asymmetry between me and Bush. I ended up concluding that the public case for Saddam’s WMD seemed sufficiently spotty that the information asymmetry was not huge, but of course that was just an educated guess. Only in retrospect does it seem clear that Bush may have thought that he had much more information than the rest of us did, but that information turned out to be unreliable (note to future Presidents: be wary about relying on sources codenamed “Curveball”).
When Mike Nifong stated that “there is no doubt a sexual assault took place” (and made more specific claims, like that the alleged victim “was struggling just to be able to breathe” during the alleged attack), again the information asymmetry loomed large. My assumption (like that of most people I know) was that he must have had mounds of evidence to support his confidence. Like Bush with WMD, Nifong had access to information that I could not see, and that access seemed important. It now seems that the only evidence he had for his statements was the alleged victim’s multiple (and contradictory) statements, and Nifong’s confidence (and the whole case) has become some combination of tragedy and farce.
The question that interests me is whether we can articulate any useful metrics for when we should defer to self-serving statements by those with access to more information, and when we should not. In the two instances above, the doubters were vindicated. There are other examples in this vein. LBJ had access to greater information about the Gulf of Tonkin incident than did the doubters, but the latter were right, as the Pentagon and LBJ misrepresented what happened. Indeed, the Pentagon Papers revealed repeated such instances in the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, General DeWitt emphasized his access to information as justifying the government’s Japanese internment in World War II, but we now know that DeWitt simply fabricated and lied (see Eric Muller and Peter Irons on this).
But there are counter-examples. Many people believed that Julius Rosenberg was innocent, but it is now clear the government really did have the goods on him, and that he was guilty. Same for Alger Hiss. Indeed, the airstrikes that President Clinton ordered at the height of the Lewinsky imbroglio – which were widely criticized as trumped up attempts at diverting attention, with little deference to the information asymmetry favoring the President – look quite different after September 11, 2001.
So I return to my question: are there any useful guideposts for how much (if at all) we should defer to self-serving claims that rely on superior information? Or are we left to judge each instance on an ad hoc basis?
I take exception, too, to your allegation that Curveball was the sole, primary, or even major source for claims of Iraqi WMD. I've seen no evidence that Curveball was the source of information used by British, French, or Italian intelligence services, all of whom were also strongly suspicious of WMD presence in Iraq. Are you suggesting this is merely circular reporting? It certainly might have been, but I've seen no evidence to support that outside the USG.
The question of 'information asymmetries' actually resolves to 'Who do you trust and when?" That is going to be answered by several factors including a) the bias you bring to the question; b) the trustworthiness of the source; c) prior experience in general. Thus, each situation has to be judged ad hoc. To do otherwise reduces everything to factor a).
But I added something you don't: ultimately I think the decision to go to war rests on the citizenry. Consequently, the idea that we would go to war entirely on the basis of informaiton the public does not have strikes me as wrong. I admit, the government needs to make some decisions daily the basis of which it can't disclose for security reasons. I say, however, that going to war isn't one of them. It's too important a decision to be made by our leaders without sharing their reasons with us.
That's the price we pay for democracy, but I'm comitted to it. I will never support a president going to war on the basis of information he or she refuses to share even if that information turns out to be credible.
Sometimes you just have to trust the judgement of the people in charge. That's why it's critically important to elect people who are honest and have good judgement.
(Please don't laugh...)
I take it this is a rather strained way of asking how can we tell if the President is lying and using his superior access to secret information as cover--if only you knew what we do but you don't and so you must trust us?
Well, the first guidepost I'd look at--because it's the best guidepost--is if the guy has already been caught lying to the public on a matter of public importance. If he has, then he's due no further deference. I wouldn't put lies about private life in this category--"I didn't inhale" or "I didn't have sex with that woman"--but lies about things like the Gulf of Tonkin affair and the Watergate break-in I would. I never believed Johnson again on Viet Nam after we found out about the Gulf of Tonkin although I voted for him in 1964.
Secrecy and assymetrical knowledge, as you call it, are antithetical to democracy. Democratic self-government--the consent of the governed--is dependent on the free flow of information and ideas to the people. There have to be some national security secrets, of course, but a government that continually relies on "trust us to do the right thing because only we know" is not a democratic government. And a government that has demonstrably lied on matters important to the public is no longer deserving of any trust.
No, I don't trust Bush. In fact, I tend to disbelieve him every time he opens his mouth.
It seemed to me at the time that Bush very badly wanted to go war with Iraq. If that was true then it was self-serving in the sense that it supported what he already wanted to do.
I think that self-serving claims should be very heavily discounted, possibly ignored. Remember that totally predictable information is no information at all - it adds nothing to what we already know. If we ask Cheney whether he thinks the surge is a good idea he will say yes. That does not help one bit.
The problem is in determining the degree to which the claim is self-serving. If you thought Bush was very reluctant to go after Iraq then you would not consider the WMD claim self-serving, and would give it more credit.
Ahh yes, continue with this lie and maybe someday everybody will believe it. That may have been the state of the conventional wisdom before the weapons inspectors went back into Iraq (although very few people actually believe he had reconstituted his nuclear program which Cheney was absolutely certain of). But as the inspectors as the started looking around they were finding nothing, even as Saddam was allowing them to conduct their tasks unmolested and we were telling them exactly where to look for stockpiles and facilities. Bush's claims were beginning to look ridiculous and it was becoming more and more evident that the claims that there was no ongoing production and that the stockpiles might have indeed been destroyed. Instead of letting the inspectors continue their work, the invasion went ahead.
aggression
But I added something you don't: ultimately I think the decision to go to war rests on the citizenry.
Unfortunately this isn't the case - the government tail can manipulate and rig things to wag the citizenry's dog. One of the polls I heard stated the 70% of the public is now against the war - I don't see any troops coming home. The founding fathers knew this, that's why they put all kinds of transparency mechanisms in the Constitution, like a public trial and being able to face your accusers, for instance. It's also why the neocons have been busy dismantling all these controls.
And the Nifong situation parallels this - the DNA testing didn't support his case and in fact nearly destroys it. So what does he do, he basically hides the evidence. It's a good thing at least the scientist that runs the lab was somewhat honest, if Nifong had gotten him to destroy the held evidence the defendants would much more at risk than they are now. (Although they are still at risk now.)
Sometimes stuff is out there (e.g. pre-existing desire to invade Iraq for reasons unrelated to WMD) but lost in that gigantic ocean of information such that only some kind of Orwellian Total Information Awareness system could enable one to factor it in at the outset rather than just with hindsight.
After that promising start, though, we seem to have bollixed things up. Iraq may or may not ultimately be a success but it doesn't really matter since we've completely lost sight of the real objective -- reforming the Moslem world. Win or lose, when the troops come home, home is where they'll stay... until a new attack in the US starts things up again.
More important to me is that the US freed people from a horrific tyrant. Would that we could do the same with North Korea, would that we could take out Mugabe, would that we could have stopped the massacre in Rwanda, etc., etc. That is truly helping others. I find the right's insistence that such an action be in the immediate "best interest" of the country un-Christian. I find the left's insistence on the inviolability of sovereign governments a convenient change from the internationalism of the past.
I realize that we cannot cure all the world's ills. But to dither about whether Sudan would let a UN force to save the people of Darfur is pitiful.
What makes it worse is that in this extremely rich country we are so concerned about, in comparison, trivialities. "Should the morning-after pill be freely dispensed" is a nothing issue next to all those actions displaying the horrors of being a woman in a strict Moslem community (e.g., honor killings).
Perhaps we could do more without soldiers if we could speak with one voice that "suicide bombers" are simply evil, that cutting peoples' heads off because they are "enemies of Allah" is flat-out wrong.
We do not so speak because we have lost our knowledge of right and wrong. And while we pat ourselves on the back for our "nuanced" approaches to this and that, innocents around the world suffer and die.
If we have stopped the rape rooms, the gas attacks against "enemies of the state", the horror of a tyrant and his family who seemed to love inflicting pain, humiliation, and death, then I, for one, am grateful.
Unfortunately this isn't the case - the government tail can manipulate and rig things to wag the citizenry's dog. One of the polls I heard stated the 70% of the public is now against the war - I don't see any troops coming home. The founding fathers knew this, that's why they put all kinds of transparency mechanisms in the Constitution, like a public trial and being able to face your accusers, for instance. It's also why the neocons have been busy dismantling all these controls.
I'm sorry, I didn't make myself clear. I meant on a theoretical level, the idea of just government inacted in America supposes that decisions like war are made by the nation as a whole. I didn't intend to make a factual claim about actual government practice in the 20th and 21st centuries.
I might have believed that for a while. But for the last three years all that Bush has done is lie, lie, lie. He has changed facts to paint himself in the best light, ignored facts that he doesn't like, or just distorted facts to suit his own needs. He is either the stupidist man on the face of the earth or is deliberately lying. I will let you choose which you think is worse.
The "nobody anticipated the breach of the levees" statement is a case in point. Now this statement was completely untrue. Lots of people anticipated a breach of the levees, it had been talked about for years and had been warned about in the specific case of Katrina since Saturday morning (the storm hit Monday morning) when it became a Cat 5 and looked like it was going to hit New Orleans head on (I live in New Orleans, from the time I woke up on Saturday morning until the breach was confirmed it was all anyone was talking about). You may say "he didn't lie" because nobody he talked to anticipated the breach of the levees. But if that is true then that displays a stunning ignorance and lack of leadership that should disqualify him from being president. Otherwise, he was simply lying. Either way, the man can not be trusted.
And Perlock, though I certainly agree with the sentiments expressed in your first paragraph, never in a million years would I have come up with your phrasing! (Whether that's good or bad is in the eye of the beholder, for sure...)
That's brilliant, invade Iraq because you think the muslims need to be beaten down some. That's great, what are you going to call it? KKK diplomacy? (obvious sarcasm)
After that promising start, though, we seem to have bollixed things up.
Oh, right. It wasn't because the theory behind it was completely ignorant, arrogant, naive, incompetent, lawless, and illegal or anything, it was because we messed up on the execution. To think that a population that primarily identifies by religion, sect, clan, and family would have immediately fallen in to western style democracy if we had only invaded them and destroyed their infrastructure the right way.
Iraq may or may not ultimately be a success but it doesn't really matter since we've completely lost sight of the real objective -- reforming the Moslem world.
Hmmm - I see. Billions of people need to be "reformed". It isn't that a tiny percentages of them have become terrorists and we need to work with the many moderates to bring them to justice or anything. We need to impose your opinions on them to "reform" them. Jeez, it makes so much sense when you put it that way.
Win or lose, when the troops come home, home is where they'll stay... until a new attack in the US starts things up again.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here, we have a major presence all over the globe.
So, in your world if we lie to get into a war and gin up reasons to enter it, its okay as long as the cause is noble. What if it backfires and more people end up dying as a result of the war than are saved by it (as is arguably the case in the Iraq war)? Does the cause then become unjust? When does it end? Are we always objectively right? Do we torture in the name of doing good (as the president is apparently willing to do his false claims notwithstanding)?
Well, DB, the best I can offer is to be guided by experience and intelligence. Or to paraphrase a great legal mind: I'll know a self-serving statement when I encounter one.
A healthy dosis of skepticism is also helpful as is a narrow assessment of the importance of the information. I.e. even if Saddam had had WMD, would that have constituted enough of a threat to warrant a war? At the time I had the impression that GWB acted like some cops do: Challenge their authority and they'll throw their power around.
Now that I've gotten that out of my system.
One metric is:
Is it probable that the speaker believes the truth will come out in a timely manner, and on the same scale as the statements made?
And I have to agree with the previous poster that going to war is just too important for a "Trust me I'm the President." And yes, I was also against Clinton sending troops to Bosnia and Kosovo. And no, I'm not against every war. We should be in Afghanistan in about double the numbers we are in Iraq, in my opinion.
You mean there are some cops who don't act that way???
Yes, that is sarcasm.
That's fine for those who do trust the current leader, but I think it's incumbent upon those who are in opposition to the leader (or the one with the information) to speak louder, the more asymetrical the information distribution is.
The failure of the Democrats before the war was to not demand loudly enough to see the Bush's "secret" information. Those who make grand claims need grand evidence to support it, and "Because I said so" is never a valid reason. In such cases, it is the responsibility of doubters to demand access to information, and if the information is not forthcoming, to constantly remind the proponent's backers that their position is unsupported.
K
My view on Iraq, in late 2002, was that they probably had prohibited weapons, including chemical and biological weapons programs, but I was not convinced that they were capable of bringing about massive amounts of destruction, and I found it unlikely that they would engage in an unprovoked attack (which would have been suicidal for the regime). By March 2003, in the midst of weapons inspections and on the verge of war, I had more doubts about the extent of Iraq's military capabilities. I remember waiting for more definitive information on Iraq's weapons to emerge, and wondering what we should do once the inspectors uncovered serious prohibited weapons programs. When the weapons inspectors, presumably armed with all of the relevant information that the US government possessed, continued to come up empty-handed, that called into question the strength of the information that our government had. And it struck me as bizarre for the beginning of the war to interrupt the inspection process.
I suppose I should no longer be surprised that even lettered professors don't seem to understand the meaning of the word "imminent". Hint: it doesn't mean "likely".
If you want to sell me a war, "if you knew what I know" is at least huge red flag.
All I'd add to that is that reputation, while not a completely reliable indicator, is I can think of. Some people worry about having a good one, and act accordingly. Others don't, and instead attempt to manipulate perceptions. It is pretty easy to spot the second sort of person. That doesn't mean the first sort is "right" in a given situation, but it does help the sorting process.
Just a pick. Bush NEVER said imminent. Not EVER.
Says the "Dog"
Maybe you can develop some rough metrics. But these should be thought of as heuristics rather than as consistently reliable rules. Ultimately, as with so much in life, you ultimately have to look at the specific case carefully. And the sad truth is that often you simply will not be able to overcome information assymetries to find out the truth.
In general, the fact that many things in life must be determined by looking at the specific case in question is actually more broadly applicable to philosophy. The reason that top-down ideologies (like libertarianism) end up being incredibly flawed is that it is impossible to correctly classify all phenomenon based on a few simply rules.
So, yes, you are dependent on ad hoc analysis to overcome information assymetries. And because ad hoc analysis is actually the best thing we have in many other situations, one should likewise reject libertarianism, marxism, and other top-down ideologies in favor of pragmatism.
Since Bejnamin used the term twice, I presume it is basic to his quetsion. So the simple answer is never to undertake self-serving endeavors with government resources.
A far more interesting question is, "how much (if at all) we should defer to
self-servingclaims that rely on superior information?http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=949650
"Today, 5 years or more since September 11th, we can be clearer about the new situation we face, and clearer too about the choices for the future.
[...]
"What was unclear then but is very clear now is that what we were and are confronted with, is of a far more fundamental character than we supposed. September 11 wasn't the incredible action of an isolated group, a one-off strike masterminded by Osama Bin Laden. It was the product rather of a world-wide movement, with an ideology based on a misreading of Islam, whose roots were deep, which had been growing for years and with the ability to mount a radically different type of warfare requiring a radically different type of response. What we face is not a criminal conspiracy or even a fanatical but fringe terrorist organisation. We face something more akin to revolutionary Communism in its early and most militant phase. It is global. It has a narrative about the world and Islam's place within it that has a reach into most Muslim societies and countries. It adherents may be limited. Its sympathisers are not. It has states or at least parts of the governing apparatus of states that give it succour."
Too, from the NSC, a highly illuminating outline of the recently announced strategy changes vis-a-vis Iraq.
H/t commentor Rich at A/F
Rejecting the assertions that Saddam needed to be slapped where WMD's are in play seems more serious than slapping and finding an empty bag. A Type-I vs Type II error, as statisticians would say.
Fantasy is not history; even when that fantasy is endlessly looped and retold by the epigones and emulators of the Neil Sheehans and David Halberstams of the world, it's still not history.
For a broad ranging historical corrective covering the latter period, essentially the Creighton Abrams years from '68 and Tet and thereafter, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam.
For an online reveal of Sheehan's Bright Shining Lie and the general, ideological program Sheehan invests in, Peter Rollins (just under 10k words but highly revealing, both of Sheehan's program and the seminal influence of the small coterie of agenda driven reportage reflected in Sheehan, Halberstam, et al. at that germinal stage).
I didn't say Bush used the word. The post author used the word.
Perhaps our conclusion ought to be that, in situations where the consequences of decisions are high, the cost of eliminating the assymetry (revealing sources) must be more closely compared to the cost of making the decision. When the costs are as high as they are in the Iraq war, the costs of revealing sources and techniques seems to pale in comparison. So perhaps asymetry simply should not have been tolerated.
Or perhaps asymetric material should be somehow quantified. If Bush divulges half of the evidence for war, then perhaps he ought to quantify it as such, and be held responsible if he is shown to quantifiably have exagerated the asymetry - thus imposing a cost on abusing asymetry. Very theoretical and perhaps unworkable, but just a thought.
I guess one way to answer the question is to base one's level of trust on the magnitude of the issue.
Preventive invasion of another country, one would think, would require a pretty high evidentiary threshold, and thus a corresponding unwillingness to base our support on mere trust.
Unfortunately, the 9/11 attacks would seem to have created so much fear and childishness in America, that we threw our skeptical streak out the window.
I'm very much afraid of what will happen to our collective brains if there's another such attack (or even greater one, like a nuke in a city). But the Iraq fiasco might be the experience we need to avoid that particular stupidity's repeating itself.
--Unless, of course, enough people continue to ignore the facts, and persuade themselves that the White House acted in good faith, or that the intel agencies really did their best, or (even) that the Iraq war has gone better than not.
That is why it's important to look back ¬ "let bygones be bygones."
This is one of the central problems that I have with the Bush administration. They have been trying to assert unchecked executive power over a range of important decisions that ought to be spread among the branches of our representative democracy. These include controversial policies, like the warrantless wiretapping program and the detentions and interrogations at Guantanamo and elsewhere, as well as (I would guess) other activities that we are not even aware of.
In the Duke case, there is a process in place so that we ultimately do not have to rely on our trust of Mike Nifong, and that is precisely how our system of government was designed to work.
No offense but Bill Clinton repeatedly bombed the heck out of Iraq during his administration precisely on the issue of WMDs. Additionally nearly every single Democrat in both houses of Congress made on-the-record speeches about the connection between Saddam and WMDs.
So I frankly don't see a correlation between the two subjects.
For example, despite being misled (or purposely misleading the American public) Bush was able to use concern of changing Presidents in the middle of a war the vast majority of Americans now see as wrong in order to be re-elected. His inability to protect the American public before 9/11 has led to him having much greater power after 9/11. Similarly, Mr. Nifong may have manipulated black voters into re-electing him. If he drops or loses the case now, he is still--short of disbarment--the DA until the next election, as Bush is still--short of impeachment--still President for 2 more years.
So, given these incentives, it makes little sense to trust information assymetries in such matters. To trust them is to assume that those who can strongly benefit themselves by lying will nonetheless not lie. If Bush or Nifong had to make a public case they were not lying (that is, if punishments like disbarment or impeachment were taken more seriously), there are ways for them to level the informational playing-field.
OTOH, if the informational assymetry occurs such that the person making the decision is fully going to pay the cost of the decision--say you watch a major stock investor buy or sell something that makes no sense to you--that informational assymetry is something to take seriously. Note that I'm not claiming such people never err and should be followed blindly, merely that the incentives are much better aligned to their decisions being correct.
When Lord Grey, the Prime Minister, was moving toward a foreign war, Sydney Smith wrote the following letter to Lady Grey, in 1832: "For God's sake, do not drag me into another war! I am worn down, and worn out, with crusading and defending Europe, and protecting mankind; I must think a little of myself. I am sorry for the Spaniards - I am sorry for the Greeks - I deplore the fate of the Jews; the people of the Sandwich Islands are groaning under the most detestable tyranny; Baghdad is oppressed, I do not like the present state of the Delta; Tibet is not comfortable. Am I to fight for all these people? The world is bursting with sin and sorrow. Am I to be champion of the Decalogue, and to be eternally raising fleets and armies to make all men good and happy? We have just done saving Europe, and I am afraid the consequence will be, that we shall cut each other's throats. No war, dear Lady Grey! - No eloquence; but apathy, selfishness, common sense, arithmetic! I beseech you, secure Lord Grey's swords and pistols, as the housekeeper did Don Quixote's armour. If there is another war, life will not be worth having.
The only basis for trust is evidence of previous honorable dealings - this requires that the agent act in a way which was clearly not in its own self-interest, but acted instead to maintain a principle. There are precious few politicians that I would even consider trusting on that basis.
> Sometimes you just have to trust the judgement of the people in charge.
And much, MUCH more often, you just have to distrust them.
The whole situation reminds me of a game of Diplomacy: There were certain specific requirements for success some of which we lacked. After the beginning of the invasion, there was a different set of specific requirements for success some of which we also lacked. The most damaging of those in common between the two sets was our lack of ability to formulate and execute a plan that would actually work despite unknown opposition and poor intelligence. I never believed that President Bush could himself or through others form and execute a plan that did not require the cooperation of our enemies.
To summarize, I believe the asymmetry in knowledge about the situation was irrelevant because President Bush was not capable of formulating and executing a successful invasion and reconstruction. If our objective was actually to plunge the region into chaos then President Bush may have my apology although I wish we could have done so at lower cost.
None of this is to single out President Bush for criticism. I believe he was just the wrong person for this situation and the fact that has not succeeded in this endeavor does not mean he has not done an outstanding job in other ways.
And the sad truth is that often you simply will not be able to overcome information assymetries to find out the truth.
Not exactly. More often than not if you do the necessary legwork you can overcome a lot. I mean attorneys don't interview one party to a dispute and then go "oh, well I guess they're right" without interviewing the other party. Unless they have an agenda.
The reason that top-down ideologies (like libertarianism) end up being incredibly flawed is that it is impossible to correctly classify all phenomenon based on a few simply rules.
So, yes, you are dependent on ad hoc analysis to overcome information assymetries. And because ad hoc analysis is actually the best thing we have in many other situations, one should likewise reject libertarianism, marxism, and other top-down ideologies in favor of pragmatism.
How are you saying that libertarianism is top down? It begins with a commitment to protecting, maintaining, and preserving the rights of the individual. Calling communism, socialism, collectivism, etc. top down may be accurate - they revolve around centralized planning and the weakening of the rights of the individual to one extent or another. But libertarianism would seem to be the antithesis of "top down" in this context.
And what do you mean by pragmatism? Libertarianism would seem to be quite pragmatic.
StatingAsserting theObviousQuestionable:So I take it Sydney Smith committed suicide, then?
I also don't see hard and fast rules, but the road to improvement lies in seeing where you and the population generally have tended to be wrong, and correcting for these biases, perhaps by deliberately entertaining hypotheses you previously would have rejected out of hand.
In the political cases the poster mentioned, I'd point out that in all cases, for good or ill, the believers prevailed at the time over the doubters - in public opinion (again, at the time), in "respectable" opinion, and in influencing what actually happened. The Rosenbergs were executed; we did go to war with North Vietnam; we invaded Iraq. So the prevailing prejudice, both popular and elite, is towards belief in potentially self-interested figures of political authority, at least in one's own society. The first rule of thumb, then, is to recognize that the general bias is to insufficient mistrust and to be willing to compensate for that. For people who found themselves accepting Bush's WMD claims or his father's incubator tales, this should be accompanied by a realization that you also probably have a personal prejudice towards excessive faith in established authority, at least in cases of that nature.
Another possibility is partisan prejudice, of course. If you bought the incubator legend and all the WMD claims, but thought Clinton was just attacking Osama to wag the dog, your bias is probably partisan. OTOH, if you believe that both Kosovo and Iraq II were honestly advocated, then you probably don't have a partisan prejudice, just a bias towards believing what you're told, perhaps a "patriotic" bias.
I also think that often, in politics, at least, it's possible to come up with a range of what are the reasonable or likely alternative motives that could be in play for the assymetrical possessor of information based on their interests, ideology, etc., and if one of those alternative explanations fits the facts better than the articulated one, I tend not to believe the non-disclosing party unless more (convincing) information is revealed.
If we simply look at the 4 cases mentioned, it becomes rapidly clear that this must be a factor in any decision. The 2 cases about the spies, there were really no consequences from being wrong. Of course, there are spies, and these people may have been spies. What are the consequences in these cases? Essentially nothing. The drawings provided by the Rs were of napkin quality. Before the treason of Hiss was known, the malta agreements were widely lauded as very good for the US. However, even worst case scenarios of these are simply not that bad.
However, in the case of war, we have discovered that the consequences are horrible, both in the loss of lives, and US reputation. We should demand almost full disclosure in these cases. We essentially protected the identity and reputation of a few people so we could kill thousands and place the reputation of the US on the line. This is stupid.
For WWII, we had indisputable proof that we we must take action. For Iraq, we didn't. Take any, take all of the reasons given, take any combination, and they simply do not add up to a sufficient reason to go to war.
We had more backing after 9/11 than we remember. And we've spent it all and more on a stupid war that we lost.
To people other than Parker and Messing (that is, to people with some sense of historical understanding) the Smith quote tells us several things: almost 200 years ago, Baghdad was oppressed, and the "state of the Jews" was not sterling. There are always problems in the world that power-hungry politicans can use to whip up ignorant crowds (pay attention KP) into giving up civil liberties and federal surpluses in order to gain an illusory safety, for the moment.
There are now cries for a renewed draft and the Middle East hates this country far more than it did on September 10, 2001. It would not be unreasonable to refer to such a state of affairs as having made life less worth living. But because almost 200 years ago a similar comment made by Smith, one of the best rhetoricians of his age (no, of course Parker doesn't know that) had a tad of hyperboly in it, KP thinks he's made some rather clever retort. Very sad.
In the Duke case, on the other hand, there were problems, of course, but I think that for the general public, we should still defer to the conclusions reached by those with superior knowledge. They may be corrupt, as they seem to have been in this instance, but they have the knowledge, and we don't. And there was only limited reason, a priori, to distrust Nifong (although reasons emerged soon enough). The exception here, I think, would be the faculty at Duke, who disgraced themselves by betraying their students in the press, in that letter they signed in their capacity as faculty members. I think a corporation ought to be biased in favour of the innocence of its own employees, a man in favour of his neighbours, a parent in favour of his child, and a member of an academic institution in favour of his students. At least when he himself is in possession of no evidence whatsoever indicating guilt.
I think that, assuming that one has reached one's political beliefs after mature reflection and holds them with real conviction, the question one should ask oneself is the following: counterfactually, if I had evidence E*, would I believe that X is not an appropriate action? In evaluating this, one should look at two things: 1) to what degree can I expect my beliefs in E to track my beliefs in E* and 2) to what degree can I expect the official's beliefs in E* evidential situation to track my beliefs in E*.
The first is answered by looking at relevantly similar cases of information asymmetry in the past and doing the counterfactuals -- i.e., asking oneself, "Would what I would have believed on the basis of public plus secret evidence be the same as what I would have believed on the basis of public evidence alone?" So, if one knows a fair amount of history and has come to the conclusion that, in general, the addition of subsequently revealed secret evidence doesn't change the way one would have viewed certain government actions relative to the decisions one would have made only on the basis of information publicly available at the time, this is good inductive support for a non-deference in the present case.
The second question should be investigated by looking at cases in the past where the public official in question shares one's evidence and seeing whether the official's beliefs track one's own beliefs -- but, in large part, this will just be a measure of political and ideological affinity. It might be *restricted* political and ideological affinity -- you might think that belief-matching vis-a-vis abortion isn't a terribly good predictor of belief-matching vis-a-vis foreign policy. But it's still some kind of political viewpoint-based affinity, which is entirely unsurprising since the beliefs in question are not merely beliefs about what follows from what logically, but beliefs about what the appropriate *actions* are. If someone shares my political ideology, this will mean that in most cases we make the same judgments about political matters on the same evidence; this gives me grounds to believe that, in cases where we don't share the same evidence, his beliefs and judgments track the ones I would have had (counterfactually) given his evidence. So, if one shares a political ideology with the official, then one has reasons for deference which one does not have when the official differs on political views.
Upshot: in general, Democrats may have better reasons to defer to Democratic leaders in cases of information asymmetry than to Republicans, and Republicans may have better reasons to defer to Republicans than to Democrats. This isn't "partisanship" in the sense of putting party loyalty above one's considered views of the best course of action, but rather a perfectly reasonable response to information asymmetries involved in evaluating what the best course of action is.
Is it possible that GWB had strategic and tactical reasons for resuming the war with IRAQ (look at map) that he didn't want to mention?
Not all war justifications are expicitly stated (see Vietnam) but they can usually be figured out by the literate (see Vietnam). The illiterate have problems in any case.
Looking at a map makes it even more baffling. The U.S. was in the process of removing the Taliban, a Sunni thorn in Iran's eastern side. We then invaded Iran's Sunni enemy on the western border. Looking at a map, one might reasonably conclude that our goal was to strengthen and stabilize the government of Iran. Certainly, the Iraq war served their interests more than ours.
If that was Bush's strategic and tactical reasons, then yes, you may be right that he didn't want to mention them.
Like the prosecutors we have been lambasting in recent blog posts, he, for you, put on the case with the evidence he had.
That's the thing - Nifong didn't have any good evidence. What he had was all either contradictory or exculpatory. Then when more damaging exculpatory evidence came in - the DNA - he went about conspiring with the head of the laboratory to hide it. (As an aside - I wonder whether that constitutes evidence tampering?) So as far as putting on the case "for us" I don't think that was the case, since most people don't believe in wasting the taxpayers' money to dishonestly and needlessly ruin the lives of innocent people.
Why did Nifong do it? There are a number of possible motivations: Winning votes by claiming that he's "making the community safer"; Maybe he's a liberal that wanted the stereotypical accusations to be true, even if they weren't, like many of the academics and activists involved; He certainly seemed to stage a lot of theatrics for the media, apparently the attention was at least a partial motivator. But in any none of this was justification for ruining the lives of innocent people, and it certainly wasn't "for us".
As a lot of points in this thread has shown, nearly all the information that would have indicated Iraq was a bad idea was out there for the gathering.
And another aspect of this issue is transparency. The founding fathers were very concerned with this, which is why they made public trials and things like habeas corpus part of the Constitution. Yes, sometimes government secrecy is necessary. But that's not the case in a large amount of the situations in which it is being used today. Government secrecy has come to be used as a tactic to conceal all kinds of government misconduct and criminality.
And no, I wasn't unaware that Sydney Smith was using hyperbole--but it didn't get him his World Peace™, either, did it? Which was my point...
Taeyoung, nice catch! It is kind of self-refuting, isn't it?
Sure, and a lot of people were publicly and loudly pointing it out.
But what do you do when the actors on the stage simply and adamantly refuse to listen, turn and twist, withold and disseminate the information as suits their purpose? If that doesn't do it, then those who don't agree are labeled "unpatriotic" or "aiding and abetting the enemy". Isn't that exactly the way it was?
If I'm told Saddaam would never work with a theocrat, what arcane knowledge am I required to believe without any evidence?
If I'm told Saddaam doesn't want any [more] foreign wars and is no threat, why am I to believe the speaker knows Saddaam's mind?
If I am told Saddaam has no WMD, how do I know it isn't merely a matter of clever hiding?
If I am told Saddaam won't start the WMD program after the sanctions (eeeevillll sanctions) are lifted and the inspectors gone, what secret information whose source cannot be revealed am I to trust?
There's a planted axiom here, at least once we got going on Iraq, that there is only one assymetry.
Anybody can be bullshitting and claiming special knowledge. Even those suffering from BDS.
Well, seems to me "the Middle East" (whoever that is) hated this country just fine on September 11, 2001.
Oddly, despite their now vastly increased hate, "the Middle East" hasn't had a lot of luck taking out any more buildings or citizens on American soil. In fact, in the last 6.5 years, the United States has had immense success keeping Muslim terrorists from striking the mainland US while killing them in the thousands on their home turf. This suggests to me that yes, maybe Bush does have access to information that people posting comments on the internet do not.
As was a lot of information that indicated the opposite. Forget to mention that, did we?
Ah, so we are supposed to ignore Bush's so-called "self-serving" claims and instead listen to the self-serving claims of the democrats. Gee, what an intellectual basis you have there, buddy!
Exactly.
Well, perhaps looking at a map while assuming that Bush is incompetant/evil/Hitler may cause confusion... although I'd think that getting out of bed without strangling oneself in the bedsheets might be a more complex task.
But looking at the map with an open mind reveals more. Notice that three extremist-fanancing states (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria) not only can be entered from Iraq, but also have the easiest land route to coordinate with each other taken away from them.
Its pretty clear that geographically it reinforces the same implicit threat that the Iraq invasion did: Get too far out of line, and nasty things can happen. And although it means that those three countries can do their best to influence Iraq, it also means that Iraq can influence them, if it succeeds.
A success that democrats seek to stop just as surely as they've made a mockery of the aforementioned threat.
No, that's fairly obvious. But if you had the right information it didn't take much to point out the flaws in the justification for invading Iraq.
But looking at the map with an open mind reveals more. Notice that three extremist-fanancing states (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria) not only can be entered from Iraq, but also have the easiest land route to coordinate with each other taken away from them.
Oh right, it's not like we're broke and beleaguered or anything. Sure - start up another front. And why don't we touch off that powderkeg in North Korea while we're at it. Come to think of it, it's winter. Why don't we invade Russia and take on the Russian winter - then we'll have officially made every blunder in the book.
To follow your simplistic analysis, as if individual position was neatly divided by partisan affiliation.
How about doing the intellectual exercise and think a small step further:
Believing Bush's self-serving claims: - going to war.
Believing the Democrats' self-serving claims - not going to war
War or no war, quite an even choice to you?
What the hell, just a little war, far, far away, where it won't impact your little world, right?
Problem is, they were for it--Clinton and the dems made regime change in Iraq official US policy--before they were against it. They were against the war for partisan political reasons, not a good idea.
And they will have to pay the price--along with the rest of us--if they manage to sabotage the effort.
So it's not like one side wanted to do bad and the other side wanted to do good.
Both choices have a price and the war side figured the price for war there and now was lower than waiting.
Of course, once the price for no war has been foreclosed, it's easy to say it wouldn't have happened. But those who say that will know they're lying, as will everybody else.
Floor Speech of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
on S.J. Res. 45, A Resolution to Authorize the Use of
United States Armed Forces Against Iraq. You can find it on her Senate website.
I cannot believe that Sen. Clinton, who, it seems to me, had pretty good access to information during the Clinton Presidency, somehow permitted George W. Bush to dupe her into making the statements in that speech or voting as she did.
Also, if you read the reports of Hans Blix as delivered to the U.N., it is fairly clear that SOMETHING was going on in Iraq in 2003 that had to do with WMD.
Are you, Mr. Drake, the redliner Drake?
Satchmo Armstrong was asked to define jazz.
His response was, "Cat gotta ask ain't never gonna know."
So runs the story, anyway.
Personally, I have always felt the proffered justification for entry was slim - but my elected representatives of all stripes to a wide margin felt otherwise, and authorized action on the part of the Executive.
I also beleive that the current terrible situation regarding sectarian conflict in Iraq was so easily anticipated that it is quite possible that this was calculated into the risk / reward assesment of the operation - and it was considered an "upside".
From a cynical perspective, it makes sense to consider the active fighting between the two extremes of the Islamist movement something other than defeat for the side of the west in the war on terrorism. Even if a stable Iraq is not left behind, the situation has been forced. The reality is that the Sunni Saudi axis must now face an fundamentalist Shia Iran plus proxies, directly. Given past examples, enormously costly infighting should result.
It's hard not to feel awful for the civilians whose deaths are the cost of the expected sectarian war, however.
Would you like to have gone public with the "anticipation" that the good citizens of Iraq were likely to slaughter each other wholesale just because that's the kind of people they are?
You'd have been hounded as a racist.
Our society generates a Tim McVeigh and an Eric Rudolph about every five or ten years. Iraq generates ten times that every week.
Who'd want to say they're an effed up society which needs a strong hand like Saddaam to keep the animals in their cages?
In fact, you can't even say that when it's happening. Saying it months or years in advance would surely have been impossible.
As to historical examples of sectarian wolves being barely held at bay by a the strong dictator of a centralized state, well I have a globe sitting next to me that shows a country called "Yugoslavia" that used to stretch from Italy to Greece. In the process of contracting its' borders, there were a few unplesant incidents if I recall correctly.
That example is so clear, and the analogies between those parts of the world seem so evident (to a lay person such as myself), that the actual result we are seeing seems like it should have been the expected one. Any other result was was somewhere between best-case (a functioning central government) and wishful thinking (a burgeoning pluralistic liberal democracy devoid of slavish obediance to islamic ideals).
I grew up with a couple of kids whose parents had come from Yugoslavia. For one kid, it was grandparents. Her mother came from the Croatian community in Detroit and her father from the Serbian community. Nobody thought it would work out. There weren't many at the wedding, which is probably why nobody got killed.
When her father was captured in the Bulge, he mother's side thought it was just dandy.
Decades ago, Analog Sci Fi mag had a serial about a trained assassin from a Balkan clan going out among the stars to complete a blood feud. It was supposed to take place a thousandn years from now. All kinds of adventures. The thing is, the editor thought the premise of Balkan feuds still going on after a thousand MORE years of progress was legitimate.
You're probably right, but who'd have wanted to say so, publicly.
Interesting article in the Feb 2000 Car &Driver about driving the uparmored Humvee in Bosnia. It's not all that much about the vehicle. It's about the people and you have to wonder.
Still, the Kuwait example, as P. J. O'Rourke said, may have misled us.
Both choices have a price and the war side figured the price for war there and now was lower than waiting.
Of course, once the price for no war has been foreclosed, it's easy to say it wouldn't have happened. But those who say that will know they're lying, as will everybody else.
No, you don't have to lie to say that you were fairly certain beforehand that the war was going to be a horrible mistake. Or that Sadam, after years of crippling sanctions, without access to much of his own country due to the no-fly zones, sleeping in a different location every night for fear of assassination, without the means to deliver WMDs effectively even if he had them, etc... - wasn't much of a credible threat to the US.
I suppose it could be a fairly clever scheme cooked up by the Neocons to pit the Sunnis versus the Shia, but there's a lot of contrary evidence.
- All the PNAC crap theorized that they were going to start a democratic "domino effect" in the Middle East by turning Iraq into a democracy overnight.
- Why are we still there? Once the heavy sectarian violence picked up you'd expect them to leave. I guess you could suggest that they were sociopaths that didn't give a crap about soldiers' lives, and I guess you could be right.
- Regardless of whether it achieves the desired goal of sectarian strife, its still a horrendous negative for the country. We've created many more enemies of all sects and political philosophies. We've wasted lives and countless amounts of money. (Though much of it was poured into the pockets of crony defense contractors.) So even if it was Machiavellian manuevering, it was still a horrible failure for the country as a whole. (Although certain citizens benefitted immensely.)
What would Saddaam have done if left alone with no sanctions, no inspectors, and boatloads of oil money? Remember, the first two were due to end and the third was due to start.
Would you like to have gone public with the "anticipation" that the good citizens of Iraq were likely to slaughter each other wholesale just because that's the kind of people they are?
You could have predicted that from a perspective other than a racist one. (Although certain hysterical PC types cannot or refuse to be convinced of this.) The people there identify by religion, sect, tribe, and clan - you don't have to be racist to know there was going to be trouble. To a large extent this is the colonial powers' fault anyway. When they imposed this country on the area they lumped people that had little in common with each other together willy-nilly.
What would Saddaam have done if left alone with no sanctions, no inspectors, and boatloads of oil money? Remember, the first two were due to end and the third was due to start.
Basically, he would have acted like the other knucklehead dictators out there. And wasn't he writing some bad fiction as well? Maybe he would have written the Great Iraqi novel. But in any case I don't think he would have done much - he may have started up with the Kurds again because I believe they became somewhat autonomous during the sanctions and no-fly zones.
I don't think he would have been stupid enough to become directly involved in terrorist operations against the US, in that case if it was proven retaliatory action against the regime might be justified. (Lasting about a month - go in, depose, leave.) In any case it wasn't anything that more blather and hamstringing by the UN couldn't pretty much put a lid on. So no, in my opinion Sadam was no more a priority than the two dozen plus other dictators out there.
It is interesting that if Iraq had the extensive WMD program that Libya did (and which was ended solely by Libya fearing that the US would do to them what was done to Iraq), we would not be having this discussion.
In response to your points:
Unfortunately, I would place this in the "best case", relitively unlikely, class of possible outcomes. The Iraq situation has always seemed to me like a lanced carbuncle for which we did not adequately select an antibiotic before letting the nasty out.
I understand the anger, but I believe that this comment betrays a lack of appreciation of the gravity of starting a war - once in, it is always much harder to decide to get out. In general, this is for a good reason.
I would not have said "desired" as you did, just as I would not have said of the administration that "they were sociopaths". There is a terrible calculus to waging war, and very few of us in private life think in those terms.
I would ask you: why is the sectarian battling of a particlar concern to you? Is that you feel responsible for setting loose the monsters in Iraqi society that would do these things?
If so, your concern is misplaced. The monsters weren't only loose before, they had the run of the place.
If your concern is for our soldiers, then I can applaud the sentiment, but only to a degree.
The people identify by religion, clan and tribe. We know this. But so do the Scots and they haven't had a clan feud in centuries. The Brits used to say civilization stopped at the Rhine and the Danube, that being as far as the Romans got. So what happened in Yugoslavia didn't really "count". What counted was, say, the Thirty Years War, and that was better than three centuries ago.
As I said before, someplace, the west is, generally, kind of "nice". They do pretty well slaughtering in war, but in between, they're congenial. To expect, without serious thought, much of it off limits due to the possibility of being a racist, that the sectarian violence in Iraq would be likely would be to expect the folks not to be "nice". And, in addition to PCness and the unconscious projection of niceness, we also presume that anybody who's a victim is innocent and nice. It doesn't occur to us that somebody who's a victim is somebody who wasn't paying attention or who was outgunned. When the circs change, maybe they'll be doing the slaughtering, but we don't actually think that. Victim=innocent, and that's the way it is. Iraqis were victims. Thus, they were innocent.
Unfortunately, there really are some innocents in Iraq, some honest, committed people. but once you get a single scruple, the terrs have an advantage. Because they will flat kill your grandkids in some horrid way and send you the tape so you can enjoy it. That's how they win hearts and minds. We use candy and volleyballs, and we're leaving, sooner or later.
It is interesting that if Iraq had the extensive WMD program that Libya did (and which was ended solely by Libya fearing that the US would do to them what was done to Iraq), we would not be having this discussion.
No, we would still be having this discussion because even if he had an extensive WMD program he still didn't have the capability to deliver them effectively over long ranges. And if WMDs and regime change were the real reason why we were there, the troops would have been home years ago.
American Psikhushka, I would urge you to consider more than a single dimension when evaluating any aspect of the situation in Iraq - whether the ostensible rationales that led us there or the metrics used to declare victory, defeat (or even to measure if the battle is over).
I wouldn't consider my evaluation one-sided, the invasion and occupation is wrong for a number of reasons, and I have mentioned several of them in this thread alone.
Unfortunately, I would place this in the "best case", relitively unlikely, class of possible outcomes. The Iraq situation has always seemed to me like a lanced carbuncle for which we did not adequately select an antibiotic before letting the nasty out.
I would place this in the "pipe dream" class of outcomes. If you place the carbuncle on a rabid stray dog that we didn't need to mess with in the first place your analogy may be more accurate.
I understand the anger, but I believe that this comment betrays a lack of appreciation of the gravity of starting a war - once in, it is always much harder to decide to get out. In general, this is for a good reason.
This was me commenting on Richard Aubrey's theory, but the needless loss of life does make me angry. And there comes a time when you just have to cut your losses and pull out.
I would not have said "desired" as you did, just as I would not have said of the administration that "they were sociopaths". There is a terrible calculus to waging war, and very few of us in private life think in those terms.
Again, the theory that one of the unstated goals of the invasion and occupation was to trigger sectarian strife was Richard Aubrey's. Then I asked him why, if that was the goal, we were still there. If that was their goal then keeping the troops there after that has been accomplished shows a disregard of their well-being that is cold in the extreme, bordering on sociopathy.
I would ask you: why is the sectarian battling of a particlar concern to you? Is that you feel responsible for setting loose the monsters in Iraqi society that would do these things?
If so, your concern is misplaced. The monsters weren't only loose before, they had the run of the place.
If your concern is for our soldiers, then I can applaud the sentiment, but only to a degree.
Why does the sectarian strife concern me? Because its caused a lot of bloodshed and misery on all sides. Yes, some monsters had the run of the place before, but putting an end to that is pretty much the responsibility of the people who live there, not us. If we had to fight tyranny everywhere we would be broke and unable to accomplish anything else.
The people identify by religion, clan and tribe. We know this. But so do the Scots and they haven't had a clan feud in centuries.
That's because the Scots haven't been that clannish in centuries. The Iraqis still are. (And that isn't a value judgment, its a statement of fact.)
Now what you say about some of the terrorist Iraqis is true. But that's exactly why it was such a stupid idea to attack them and create more enemies for no good reason. There was no connection to 9/11. Our resources and lives should have been conserved. The real focus should have been on hunting down those responsible for 9/11 - not on opening an unnecessary front, getting bogged down there, and creating more enemies.
Do you know any metric for quantifying clannishness?
We are not in this whole thing to find and bring to justice the perps of 9-11. With the exception of OBL and a couple of his lieutenants, and a few operatives currently unnamed--at least publicly--we got them already. And when we get the rest...? Does everything get nice and cozy?
Remember, we got the perps of the 1993 attack on the WTC and it didn't do us much good.
This is a war against Islamofascism when it's mixed with various ME issues such as the desire to destroy Israel.
It is a constant of a certain view that we are always "creating" more enemies, and picking a date certain before which, by implication, we had fewer or even none. Israel's troubles are always said to date from 1967, as if the arguers think we have forgotten the wars against Israel prior to that.
The goal, as has been explained until even you ought to have heard it, is to transform the tyrannies and feckless economies until they stop breeding terrorists. The problem is that this may not work. After all, there are about 1.2 billion Muslims, a tiny minority of whom (say, 5%) want to destroy us. So that's more than the population of Japan or Germany at the beginning of WW II, with the resources and background noise of their coreligionists who seem uninterested in stopping them. They are multi-state, non-state and we cannot threaten any particular state with devastation in retaliation for some massive terror act, since no particular state will have been responsible.
We have a problem and we didn't start it.
But we must finish it. One way or another.
Additionally, the people who say we should put more resources into whatever it is we aren't doing usually complain loudly when we do. Their point is not that we need more resources someplace else--that being an excuse--but that we need fewer resources in Iraq, and the hell with wherever we put the ones we withdraw.
How about all those "more troops" folks now that we have more troops. Are they celebrating? No. Just in case you haven't been paying attention.
No, we would still be having this discussion because even if he had an extensive WMD program he still didn't have the capability to deliver them effectively over long ranges.
Once the sanctions had been ended, it would have been a matter of months before more SCUDs had been purchased from Syria &North Korea. With the Baathists removed from power, this threat was eliminated before it became imminent. Plus, how hard is it to ship a kilo of anthrax into the US to some jihadist? Harder than shipping in a kilo of cocaine?
And if WMDs and regime change were the real reason why we were there, the troops would have been home years ago.
As many here have already noted, concern over the proliferation of WMDs was one stated reason, among several, but not the "real reason" or even the primary reason. But it is the one reason fixated upon by opponents of Bush, since only 700 chemical weapons and a surprisingly advanced but small scale biological weapons research program was found, instead of the thousands or tens of thousands of weapons thought to be there. Again, once the sanctions had been ended, it would be a relatively t