Obsidian Wings

All Your Single Anonymous Source Are Belong to Us

Via Kos
~~~~~~~~

Payback is being served up at the WH gaggles lately, and it's about bloody time. Apparently some members of the MSM merely misplaced their spines for a while. On Tuesday, in response to McClellan's freelance editing of Newsweek, the Press Corp actually did their jobs, apparently not missing that the White House is only too happy to hand out assignments if they'll let them:

Q [Terry Moran of ABC News]: With respect, who made you the editor of Newsweek? Do you think it's appropriate for you, at that podium, speaking with the authority of the President of the United States, to tell an American magazine what they should print?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not telling them. I'm saying that we would encourage them to help --

Q You're pressuring them. 

It gets better and the Kos diary is a wonderful smackdown on the whole thing, highlighting how poor Scottie kept digging himself a bigger and bigger hole, but this last bit is so utterly priceless, I must point it out:

Q [Ken Herman of Cox News] In context of the Newsweek situation, I think we hear the caution you're giving us about reporting things based on a single anonymous source. What, then, are we supposed to do with information that this White House gives us under the conditions that it comes from a single anonymous source?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to.

Q Frequent briefings by senior administration officials in which the ground rules are we can only identify them as a single anonymous source.

McClellan tried to deflect the issue again, but Herman went in, with surgical skill, for the kill:

Q With all due respect, though, it sounds like you're saying your single anonymous sources are okay and everyone else's aren't.

Simply glorious.

Looking Beyond Flushgate

Newsweek's false story on alleged Koran desecration at Gitmo revealed several things.  For one, when its editors said that Isikoff & Co. followed proper journalistic standards, then the logical conclusion is that Newsweek needs higher standards, especially when it comes to national security matters during a time of war.  Taking the word of someone who saw a report (rather than getting a copy of the report itself) and then "confirming" the story with two non-confirmations may be good enough for Beltway politics or covering celebrities, but it's nowhere near good enough when American lives could be put at risk.  If Newsweek wants to play gotcha, whatever, but they goddam better get their facts straight.

This is not just a blow to Newsweek but to mainstream media.  Why?  Because it reinforces notions of adversarial liberal press bias.  When you add the mountain of other obvious incidents of bias such as the Rather/CBS meltdown on Memogate, the distortions of Ken Starr's quotes on judicial nominees, the hit pieces and a whole host of other examples, conservatives are practically handed the hammer in which to bop mainstream media heads.  It once again reveals the divergence in worldviews between national media and the American public, and it displays the lack of ideological diversity which would serve as a check and balance to prevent bad stories from going out.  As that Pew poll showed nearly a year ago, the national press is not the face of America, at least ideologically so.  It's too monolithic.  Because of this, they will continue to misreport the news on a consistent basis because they don't have that token conservative in the newsroom who will say, "Hey, maybe we should spend a little more time verifying the authenticity of those memos."  They will continue to have a paranoid distrust of conservative Christians.  Why?  Because are so many non-Christians in newsrooms.  They don't get it and they're not inquisitive or open-minded enough to get it, and that's a problem.  When only 1 out of 275 employees in the newsroom is an evangelical Christian, as John McCandlish Phillips experienced, that's a problem.

The Flushgate incident (please, someone tell me a better, more descriptive name for this) is also telling about our enemies and our own soft bigotry of low expections.  Or, as Andrew McCarthy called it, the smug delusion of base expectations:

Here's an actual newsflash — and one, yet again, that should be news to no one: The reason for the carnage here was, and is, militant Islam. Nothing more.

Newsweek merely gave the crazies their excuse du jour. But they didn't need a report of Koran desecration to fly jumbo jets into skyscrapers, to blow up embassies, or to behead hostages taken for the great sin of being Americans or Jews. They didn't need a report of Koran desecration to take to the streets and blame the United States while enthusiastically taking innocent lives. This is what they do.

The outpouring of righteous indignation against Newsweek glides past a far more important point. Yes, we're all sick of media bias. But "Newsweek lied and people died" is about as worthy a slogan as the scurrilous "Bush lied and people died" that it parrots. And when we engage in this kind of mindless demagoguery, we become just another opportunistic plaintiff — no better than the people all too ready to blame the CIA because Mohammed Atta steered a hijacked civilian airliner into a big building, and to sue the Port Authority because the building had the audacity to collapse from the blow...

...There's a problem here. But it's not insensitivity, and it's not media bias. Those things are condemnable, but manageable. The real problem here is a culture that either cannot or will not rein in a hate ideology that fuels killing. When we go after Newsweek, we're giving it a pass. Again.

I'll join Jonah and say that whatever McCarthy is drinking, I'll have a double.

Finally, Flushgate is part of a malady that many are susceptible to.  For lack of a better turn of the phrase, I'll call it Across the Pond Syndrome.  That is, if something is said or written that is intended for domestic consumption, beware, because the rest of the world is listening.  I'm guessing that Natalie Maines was flabbergasted at the response after expressing her ashamedness of her president at a concert in London.  Madeleine Albright reserved her harshest words for the Bush administration when she was in Paris.  Eason Jordan was his most inflammatory when safely ensconced (so he might've thought) in Davos.  As for Newsweek, the enemy was listening and Isikoff and the editors were unaware.  While Albright may have preferred that what was said in Paris stayed in Paris, or that what Isikoff wrote in the US stayed in the US, or that what happens in Davos stays in Davos, the reality is that the Internet did not let it any of it stay local.

For those who think the Newsweek snafu is small potatoes, or that conservatives are making a mountain out of a molehill, consider this.  I hate doing hypotheticals, but as someone said on Hugh Hewitt yesterday, what if Rush Limbaugh reported false information that resulted in race riots that killed at least seventeen?  Would that be small potatoes?  Hardly.  The media circus would be tremendous.  Michael Jackson would be pushed to A10.  However, the flushed Newsweek story is worse.  It didn't just trigger riots resulting in deaths, but it put our country in an unjustly negative light and it endangered Americans abroad.  It's hard enough work as it is in Afghanistan and Iraq.  The last thing the Great Satan needs is more bad PR.

Looking beyond this, Flushgate should serve as a cautionary tale for the wannabe Woodward/Bernsteins out there.  Time will tell if this is taken to heart.

(cross-posted at Redstate.org)

Update:  Offering a wider perspective, Tom Friedman observes the loudness of toilet flushing and silence of the desecration of Muslim lives:

That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi Muslims in the past month - most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering to join the police.

Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of real Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia.

The Muslim world's silence about the real desecration of Iraqis, coupled with its outrage over the alleged desecration of a Koran, highlights what we are up against in trying to stabilize Iraq - as well as the only workable strategy going forward.

The challenge we face in Iraq is so steep precisely because the power shift the U.S. and its allies are trying to engineer there is so profound - in both religious and political terms.

Religiously, if you want to know how the Sunni Arab world views a Shiite's being elected leader of Iraq, for the first time ever, think about how whites in Alabama would have felt about a black governor's being installed there in 1920. Some Sunnis do not think Shiites are authentic Muslims, and are indifferent to their brutalization.

At the same time, politically speaking, some Arab regimes prefer to see the pot boiling in Iraq so the democratization process can never spread to their countries. That's why their official newspapers rarely describe the murders of civilians in Iraq as a massacre or acts of terror. Such crimes are usually sanitized as "resistance" to occupation.

Friedman offers some reasonable food for thought.

Another update:  Some folks in comments have made some statements, to paraphrase, "Aha!  Charles post directly contradicts von's earlier post about conservatives."  This is a false charge.  The damning sentence by Drum:

Short version: the only thing that matters to conservative bloggers is their continuing jihad against the liberal media. All else is subordinate.

Yes, I did criticize Newsweek, but does criticizing Newsweek mean that the only thing that matters to conservative bloggers is a "continuing jihad"? Of course not. Does criticizing Newsweek mean that "all else is subordinate"? Not even.  Note that, along with von, I cast blame on the enemies who caused the riots and used the false report for propaganda purposes.  Do I think Newsweek is blameless for the riots and resulting deaths?  No, but most of the blame goes to our enemies, the ones who fomented the riots and used Newsweek for anti-American propaganda purposes.  A couple of other things.  For the record, Newsweek explicitly retracted the Koran flushing story:

Editor's Note: On Monday afternoon, May 16, Whitaker issued the following statement: Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Qur'an abuse at Guantanamo Bay.

Also in the same Newsweek link:

The spokesman also said the Pentagon had investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them "not credible."

I agree with Anne Applebaum that the Koran flushing story is plausible, largely due to our own unfortunate actions.  However, the only prior reports of Koran flushing have come detainees who are mostly likely terrorists and most likely our enemies.  Some here may believe their stories, but I won't, not until their stories are either corroborated or denied by credible investigative authorities.  Last year, reports of female US personnel smearing fake menstrual blood and doing other unseemly acts were initially reported by detainees and were subsequently confirmed by the FBI.  The difference between then and now is that there is no confirmation of Koran flushing in the investigative reports.

Last item.  Some have referred General Myers and his denial that the Newsweek piece caused the riots.  The truth is something different.  But even if he did say it, does it mean it's true?  No.  Not when the preponderance of press reports on the riots explicitly state that they were precipitated by the Periscope piece. Not when the Secretary of State contradicts Myers' assessment. Also, according to the WA Post:

The protests were sparked by a May 9 report in Newsweek magazine that interrogators at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had placed copies of the Koran in bathrooms and flushed one text down a toilet.

Many of the detainees at Guantanamo are Afghans, and stories of American interrogators desecrating the Koran to extract confessions have circulated since at least early 2003, when some released prisoners returned to Afghanistan. But the Newsweek report has gained currency here since being fueled by broadcasts on Taliban radio and stoked by clerics who used Friday prayer sessions to call the demonstrations justified.

Some U.S. officials and analysts said the report, which appeared as a small item in Newsweek, was being manipulated as a way to inflame passions and undercut Karzai's authority ahead of his U.S. trip.

At the Pentagon, Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that the rioting in Afghanistan could be related to domestic Afghan politics. A State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the demonstrations in Pakistan were being manipulated by al Qaeda supporters in retaliation for the arrest last week of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, identified as a senior al Qaeda leader, along with 10 other suspected terrorists.

That's a far cry from him saying the Newsweek piece had nothing to do with riots.  [Update:  Eikenberry was more direct than Myers, disputing that the Newsweek piece did not spark rioting and death.  The same logic applies:  Just because he says it, don't mean he's right.]

Latest installment in a series of increasingly inaccurately titled posts.

Well, this speech made by Professor John Lewis Gaddis at Middlebury College last month is making the rounds, and it's worth a read.  By that, I mean: go read it, and let me know what you think.  Besides, you know, that he must be a Skull-and-Bones fellow to say even one thing complimentary about Bush.  But it's not all roses:

Late in June, I had a cryptic e-mail from a former student, now working in the White House speech-writing shop: “the boss has read your book, and has told all of us to read it.”

I wasn’t quite sure which boss he meant, but soon there was a call from Condi Rice which cleared things up: “The President has read your book, and has told all of us to read it. Could you come down and brief the National Security Council staff?”

I of course said yes, but then started quickly flipping through the book to review what I’d actually said about the President and his policies. Here are some sample quotes:

I said that he had “failed miserably” in getting United Nations support for the invasion of Iraq.

I said that his solutions to complex problems tended to be “breathtakingly simple.”

I said that the phrase “axis of evil” originated “in overzealous speechwriting rather than careful thought.”

I said that the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq had “diminished, in advance, the credibility of whatever future intelligence claims Bush and Blair might make.”

I said that the so-called “coalition of the willing” there had been “more of a joke than a reality.”

I said that, “within a little more than a year and a half, the United States had exchanged its long-established reputation as the principal stabilizer of the international system for one as its chief destabilizer.”

And I said that although great grand strategists know the uses of “shock and awe,” they also know when to stop. Here I cited the example of Otto von Bismarck, who had shattered the post-1815 European state system in order to make possible the unification of Germany in 1871, but then had “replaced his destabilizing strategy with a new one aimed at consolidation and reassurance – at persuading his defeated enemies as well as nervous allies and alarmed bystanders that they would be better off living within the new system he had imposed on them than by continuing to fight or fear it.”

So I was not too sure how all of this was going to go over at the White House.

But, go read the whole thing.

That is all.  Busy.  Busy.  Busy.  Surround sound now working; video and CD audio correspondingly not.  And I'm about a dozen full tubes of PL polyurethane concrete crack filler down and still haven't even come close to filling the gaps that ants were, until a few days ago, using as access to the inside of my bedroom wall.  And I'm talking lots of ants, here.

Oh, and link courtesy of my friend and benefactor, Dodd Harris.  He'd make an excellent conservative addition here, except for he's another lawyer, and I think we've caught our limit of those.

Freedom, and its limitations

Pejman Yousefzadeh, writing in RedState, delivers a well-put rant targeting Messrs. Drum's and Sullivan's argument that (per Drum):

the only thing that matters to conservative bloggers [regarding the Koran-flushing story in Newsweek] is their continuing jihad against the liberal media. All else is subordinate.

This is an idiotic statement -- and it does not become less idiotic merely because it's being made by my "favorite liberal blogger."  As Pejman puts it:

I probably shouldn't even bother to write this because life is short, but it appears to be important to point out to Andrew Sullivan and his snide and newfound fan that in all likelihood, the reason "conservative bloggers" are upset and angry about the Newsweek screwup is that it cost lives in the Middle East and it could have cost a lot more lives as well. In addition--and this is a somewhat important point, so please pay attention Political Animals and New Republic senior editors--it harmed our country's prestige and standing on the basis of a story that was entirely false. It is the kind of story that can fan rather vicious flames, and if you want to fan flames, you damn well better make sure that you have your facts right. If you do, feel free to publish the story. If you don't and you publish the story anyway and people die as a result and your country ends up suffering diplomatically . . . well . . . it ain't a good day at the office, now is it?

.... And here's a news flash: I have this belief--call me naïve, but I hope that you would be wrong in doing so--that bloggers on the other side of the ideological and partisan divide have the exact same wish. That's difficult to do, of course, when a prime blogger on the other side of the ideological and partisan divide decides to put forth his own little spin hinting at dark and malevolent plans on the part of "conservative bloggers." Maybe, just maybe, we might actually have some noble and upstanding motives in expressing our concerns.

Pejman is, frankly, spot on.  But there's an important point that both sides in this "debate" seem to be losing sight of.  A poorly-sourced sentence in a paragraph-sized blurb in an American newsmagazine did not, in and by itself, cause this explosion of violence.  It was the match, to be sure.  But the powder was already present, prepared, and primed.   

The real story -- missed among the partisan bickering -- is the fact that there was so much powder lying around that a relatively small mistake could ignite it.  Indeed, what the jihadist explosions demonstrate more than anything is that we are not even close to winning in the war in Afghanistan (and let's not even begin with our putative allies, the alternatively fascist and jihadist Pakistanis).  One small slip (and it was small, despite the hype) is all that's needed to set the bomb off -- and maybe set us and our allies back on our heels.

Blast Newsweek, sure.  Blast Messrs. Drum and Sullivan for their conspiracy theories, absolutely.  But don't overstate the case, and don't take your eye off the ball.  Newsweek didn't kill anyone; the folks in Afghanistan and Pakistan did.  All Newsweek is guilty of is making the kind of mistake that can occur only where there is a free press and free society.  In fact, such mistakes will inevitably occur where people are free.  The central aim of a republic is not, contrary to popular belief, message control -- and that remains true even while we are at war.   

And that, from a certain way of thinking, is a good thing.

Going Nuclear

by hilzoy

Tomorrow morning, the Senate is scheduled to begin the debate that could lead to the Republicans invoking the 'nuclear option'. I think that invoking the nuclear option would be a terrible mistake. I do not say this because of my views on the filibuster itself. I have tried to step back from current controversies and consider the filibuster dispassionately, and when I do, I find that I am much more strongly in favor of it in the case of judicial nominations than in other cases, both because, while legislation can generally be undone, judicial appointments are for life, and because what's at issue in judicial appointments is the constitution of a separate branch of government. For this reason, I would oppose removing the possibility of filibustering judicial nominations in any case.

For me, the biggest problem with the nuclear option is not that it would prevent Senators from filibustering judicial nominations, but that it would require breaking the Senate's own rules. And this is not just a problem for liberals. Here's what Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute has to say about it:

The Senate is on the verge of meltdown over the nuclear option, an unprecedented step that would shatter 200 years of precedent over rules changes and open up a Pandora’s box of problems in the years ahead. The shaky bipartisanship that holds the Senate together--in a way that is virtually absent in the House--could be erased. Major policy problems could be caught up in the conflict. The Senate itself would never be the same.

Let us put aside for now the puerile arguments over whether judicial filibusters are unprecedented: They clearly, flatly, are not. Instead, let’s look at the means used to achieve the goal of altering Senate procedures to block filibusters on judicial nominations.

Without getting into the parliamentary minutiae--the options are dizzying, including whether points of order are “nested”--one reality is clear. To get to a point where the Senate decides by majority that judicial filibusters are dilatory and/or unconstitutional, the Senate will have to do something it has never done before.

Richard Beth of the Congressional Research Service, in a detailed report on the options for changing Senate procedures, refers to it with typical understatement as “an extraordinary proceeding at variance with established procedure.”

To make this happen, the Senate will have to get around the clear rules and precedents, set and regularly reaffirmed over 200 years, that allow debate on questions of constitutional interpretation--debate which itself can be filibustered. It will have to do this in a peremptory fashion, ignoring or overruling the Parliamentarian. And it will establish, beyond question, a new precedent. Namely, that whatever the Senate rules say--regardless of the view held since the Senate’s beginnings that it is a continuing body with continuing rules and precedents--they can be ignored or reversed at any given moment on the whim of the current majority.

There have been times in the past when Senate leaders and presidents have been frustrated by inaction in the Senate and have contemplated action like this. Each time, the leaders and presidents drew back from the precipice. They knew that the short-term gain of breaking minority obstruction would come at the price of enormous long-term damage--turning a deliberative process into something akin to government by the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland.”

Rule XXII is clear about extended debate and cloture requirements, both for changing Senate rules (two-thirds required) and any other action by the Senate, nominations or legislation (60 Senators required). Ignored in this argument has been Senate Rule XXXI, which makes clear that there is neither guarantee nor expectation that nominations made by the president get an up-or-down vote, or indeed any action at all.

It reads: “Nominations neither confirmed nor rejected during the session at which they are made shall not be acted upon at any succeeding session without being again made to the Senate by the President; and if the Senate shall adjourn or take a recess for more than thirty days, all nominations pending and not finally acted upon at the time of taking such adjournment or recess shall be returned by the Secretary to the President, and shall not again be considered unless they shall again be made to the Senate by the President.”

By invoking their self-described nuclear option without changing the rules, a Senate majority will effectively erase them. A new precedent will be in order--one making it easy and tempting to erase future filibusters on executive nominations and bills. Make no mistake about that.

I agree with Ornstein completely. This is serious business. So let me try to address some of the procedural issues involved.

My Job Is Safe For Now

by hilzoy

Department of Louise brings scary, scary news: people are not just developing, but actually marketing and using, software that supposedly enables computers to grade (or, more accurately, "grade") essays. According to one of the people who is selling this stuff, their biggest problem is that no one believes that computers can possibly do a good job grading essays:

"That's the biggest obstacle for this technology," said Frank Catalano, a senior vice president for Pearson Assessments and Testing, whose Intelligent Essay Assessor is used in middle schools and the military alike. "It's not its accuracy. It's not its suitability. It's the believability that it can do the things it already can do."

I can see how this would be a problem. Take me, for instance: I am not an ignorant Luddite, but when I ask myself: self, honestly, do you think a computer could do a good job of grading a student's essay? the answer is: no. Not a chance. Maybe at some distant point in the future, when all of us except for those fortunate few who can afford beachfront property in Antarctica are living in climate-controlled biodomes, they might be able to, but not just now. Oddly enough, I'm right:

"The software is not flawless, even its most ardent supporters admit.

When the University of California at Davis tried out such technology a couple years back, lecturer Andy Jones decided to try to trick e-Rater.

Prompted to write on workplace injuries, Jones instead input a letter of recommendation, substituting "risk of personal injury" for the student's name.

"My thinking was, 'This is ridiculous, I'm sure it will get a zero,'" he said.

He got a five out of six.

A second time around, Jones scattered "chimpanzee" throughout the essay, guessing unusual words would yield him a higher score.

He got a six.

In Brent's class, sophomore Brady Didion submitted drafts of his papers numerous times to ensure his final version included everything the computer wanted.

"What you're learning, really, is how to cheat the program," he said."

Just the lesson we want to give those impressionable young minds entrusted to our care. But that hasn't stopped people from using it:

"Watertown, S.D., students are among those who now have their writing-assessment tests scored by computer.

Lesli Hanson, an assistant superintendent in Watertown, said students like taking the test by computer and teachers are relieved to end an annual ritual that kept two dozen people holed up for three days to score 1,500 tests.

"It almost got to be torture," she said.

Some 80 percent of Indiana's 60,000 11th-graders have their English assessment scored by computer, and another 10,000 ninth-graders are taking part in a trial in which computers assess some routine written assignments.

Stan Jones, Indiana's commissioner of higher education, said the technology isn't as good as a teacher but cuts turnaround time, trims costs and allows overworked teachers to give written assignments without fearing the workload."

The question is, if those assignments are going to be graded by programs that give a perfect score to a letter of recommendation with the word 'chimpanzee' scattered throughout, why would you bother giving written assignments at all? And if you really don't care about the grading, why go to the trouble of buying software when it's so much easier to paint the letters A through F on dice and roll them? Sheesh.

For some no doubt quaint and technologically unsophisticated reason, I think that teaching my students to write well is the most important thing I can do for them, bar none. Long after they have forgotten exactly what the Categorical Imperative is, or what the main objections to utilitarianism are, the kind of intellectual confidence and precision that really learning to write gives you will linger on. So I think: if I can teach them that, I have done my job. And if, in addition, I teach them that it's possible to make arguments for moral claims, I can die happy. The idea of handing either task over to software that can't distinguish a letter of recommendation for someone called "risk of personal injury" from an essay on workplace safety is -- well, I can't even figure out how to say how awful it is. And I should say that I hate, hate, hate grading.

Of course, lucky me has a good job at a wealthy research university. So if I were to say that I just didn't have time to grade essays, I would be lying. Possibly the teachers in Indiana (paging von!) have the time too, and they're just lazy. Possibly, though, they really don't have the time. Grading essays is hard work, especially if you try to do right by your students. There are rough drafts and rewrites, lengthy attempts to explain what went wrong with a student's argument and how it might have been improved, and so on. I have been doing this for a while, and it still takes me about 45 minutes per 5-7 page paper, if I'm working efficiently. (Note to future professors: this is not only the right thing to do; it also does a lot for student morale. When they get over a page of comments that are plainly written about their paper, not mass-produced, they are much less likely to think you're biassed.)

The point is: it does take a lot of time. And eleventh grade teachers have a lot more students than I do. Maybe they really, honestly can't grade their students' papers. If that's the case, it's time to think about hiring some more teachers. And if there isn't enough money, it's time to think about finding some, through higher taxes if need be. Because if essays are being graded by this software, kids are being badly shortchanged.

Great Takedown

by hilzoy

Praktike posts a really wonderful takedown, by Thomas Barnett, of "How We Would Fight China", Robert Kaplan's latest article in the Atlantic. (I've linked to praktike's site, since Barnett's site has the piece as a Word download, whereas praktike has posted the whole thing.) I have read Kaplan's piece, and it is as fatuous as Barnett says. Small sample (note that Kaplan describes China as having a 'proximity advantage' to us, and Barnett has already riffed on that: "What an advantage to have war in your front yard as opposed to your alleged enemy's front yard! This is why living in the ghetto is so much better than the suburbs"):

"Kaplan does show some sense by actually running some numbers. We have a navy that's about 2.86 million tons of displacement, armed with the highest high-tech gear in the universe. China's scary navy weighs in at about 0.263 million tons, or roughly one-tenth our sheer fighting weight. We have 24 aircraft carriers (if we count both the regular ones and the Marines' big decks) whereas the Chinese have . . . none.

But I forget China's sheer proximity advantage, do I not? America has to send its warships to China, whereas China has only to sit there waiting for them to come!
Ah the sheer genius of the Chinese approach!

But all these stats are meaningless (and don't even get me started how much better our Army, Marines, and Air Force are than anything China has to offer, because—of course—this is PACOM's wet dream of future war), because, as Kaplan tells us, Athens once had a huge naval advantage over Sparta about a billion years ago and after they fought a war for 27 years, Sparta won!

Geez! With China's advantage in sheer proximity and our clear disadvantage in having a much larger and far more technologically advanced navy, we should get the hell out of Asia right now and hope the Chinese don't want Cuba any time soon! I mean, it'll be the first thing to go after Honolulu and the Panama Canal in this decades-long war that Kaplan is dreaming up."

My only quibble: Barnett is puzzled that the Atlantic actually published this piece. Hah. I subscribe to the Atlantic, since it averages about one really good article a month. But it publishes some really, really bad stuff. My particular least favorite was an excerpt from E. O. Wilson's Consilience, on philosophy, which was really embarrassing. (I am sure that if I tried to write a magazine piece on ants, the results would be even more embarrassing. But I don't, and if I did, I wouldn't expect anyone to publish it.) In that article, Wilson made one amazing mistake after another. My two favorites: (1) ethicists "tend not to declare themselves on the foundations of ethics." (Plainly I have just hallucinated all those books I seem to have read.) (2) "if ought is not is, what is?" Wilson is responding to the claim that if I tell you that X is the case, nothing follows about what ought to be the case, without further assumptions. He says this is wrong. Why? Because "if ought is not is, what is?" Think about that for a moment. It's a rather amazing statement.

But none of this is anywhere near as funny as Barnett's piece, which should be read in its entirety.

On the mystery of Chet

Alamedia asks:

I have here a special, economics-type query which I direct to Brad DeLong, among others. Here's the thing: I have known many investment bankers in my day. Hell, I'm related to plenty of investment bankers, even if only by marriage. Many of these men are stand-up guys, fun to be with, always up for smoking a few bowls and playing golf. Others are asshole blowhards. Mmm, more of the latter, probably. All of them, however, have the same basic character type, which I will call "Chet". Chet is a hail-fellow-well-met sort, .... Chet is tall, probably tan, and has big white teeth like a mouthful of chiclets. If Chet does not play golf, it is only because he has ascended into the super-Chetosphere and plays polo. Chet is a member of country clubs, and has a thin wife, and two adorable kids, etc. etc. ... Finally, Chet has an incredibly high opinion of himself. He is confident to the point of arrogance, but friendly, outgoing. There is one thing Chet is not, ever, in my experience, and that is particularly bright. Really. Not an intellectual powerhouse, is where I'm going with this. Not, in all likelihood, able to perform complex mathematical operations. Given that this is so, I have a few questions.

Alamedia then goes on to ask a series of questions, each of which essentially boils down to, "why is an idiot like Chet so successful?" 

Brad DeLong responds by stating (if I may paraphrase) that the reason why an idiot like Chet makes so much money is because Chet really isn't an idiot.  And that's true, so far as it goes.  Yet, though I fully endorse DeLong's answer, there's a little bit more to it.  Speaking as one who swims among the Chets -- heck, who may even be a self-hating, closeted Chet -- there are four further reasons that explain Chetdom.

If you have a drum, you may wish to begin rolling it now.

An Interesting Comparison...

by hilzoy

From Angry Bear:

"This coming Thursday, May 19, 2005, will be the 1,346th day since the attacks of 9/11. That is the same length of time from the attack on Pearl Harbor to the end of WWII on V-J Day. (Dec 7, 1941 to Aug 24, 1945)

Most comparisons between WWII and the Global War on Terror (GWOT) have been preposterous: Saddam Hussein was no Adlof Hitler; the "Axis of Evil" was no WWII Axis Powers; the far right even went so far as to compare Colin Powell to Neville Chamberlain.

But this milestone does provide the opportunity to compare the effectiveness of America's responses to both crises. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, America came together, and with determination, shared sacrifice, and the effective and focused leadership of FDR, George C. Marshall, and many others, America and her allies were victorious. (...)

A poorly defined mission has led to poor results. Iraq is a mess and many Americans have concluded that the invasion of Iraq was unrelated to the GWOT. The situtation in Afghanistan is not much better. Worldwide terrorism is still on the rise and America is now deeply divided.

The economic consequences of this "war" have been significant and are growing. The most obvious are the war expenditures: over $250 Billion already spent and Congress has just passed another spending bill for an additional $82 Billion. Even before the ink dried, Congress is discussing the need for another $50 Billion later this year. All of these expenditures are "off-budget" and are not included in the Bush Administration's reported budget deficits. CORRECTION: The GWOT expenditures are excluded from the "on-budget" projections, but they are included in prior year on-budget deficits. Sorry for any confusion, CR.

And the most deleterious impact may come from the growing lack of confidence in America's leadership. In the event of an international or economic crisis, I have no confidence that the Bush Administration will respond appropriately.

It took 1,346 days to win WWII. 1,346 days after 9/11, what have we accomplished?"

Good question. One of the things that I find hardest to understand about this administration is its fundamental lack of seriousness in the war on terror. I wrote about this before the election here (Afghanistan), here (nuclear non-proliferation), and here (homeland security). Rather than rehash all the details here, I'll just say that I think Bush has not done a good job at all on these fronts, and that details about why I think this can be found in those earlier posts.

We have not caught Osama bin Laden or Ayman al Zawahiri. (But then, Bush is "not that concerned about him".) We have done very little to secure ourselves against further terrorist attacks, secure nuclear material overseas, or prevent North Korea from turning into a one-stop shopping center for WMD, and we have made a mess of Afghanistan.

So when, exactly, can we expect VT Day? And how many lives will be lost before we get there?

Who Is Going to Pay for This War?

Current estimates go as high as $300 billion. That's $300 billion dollars the invasion of Iraq is going to cost US taxpayers. Some day. Maybe more.

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UPDATE: As hilzoy wisely notes in the comments:

It will certainly be more. Since, as you note, this will just be added to the deficit, we will have to pay debt service on it. And anyone who has ever taken out a mortgage and looked at the total amount they will pay by the end of the 30 year term, and seen how very much more it is than the original price of the house (even at what my spam keeps assuring me are Today's Low Rates!), knows that the debt service on $300 billion will be a lot of money.

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On Friday, October 11, 2002, Congress voted to authorize Bush to attack Iraq if Hussein refused to give up WMD as required by U.N. resolutions. Shortly after that we heard a range of estimates for what such action would cost.

In January 2003, the White House was downplaying reports that the effort could cost as much as $60 billion:

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels told The New York Times in an interview published Tuesday that such a conflict could cost $50 billion to $60 billion -- the price tag of the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

But Trent Duffy, an OMB spokesman, said Daniels did not intend to imply in the Times interview that $50 billion to $60 billion was a hard White House estimate.

"He said it could -- could -- be $60 billion," Duffy said. "It is impossible to know what any military campaign would ultimately cost. The only cost estimate we know of in this arena is the Persian Gulf War, and that was a $60 billion event."

Duffy also was careful to caution that President Bush had not made a decision to use military force against Saddam's regime.

Bush economic adviser Larry Lindsey had estimated closer to $200 billion, but he was dumped by the White House. Apparently his skills at such estimates were not appreciated.

And we were told repeatedly that the recontruction costs would not come out of our pockets, but rather, those of the Iraqis:

1. “Well, the reconstruction costs remain a very -- an issue for the future. And Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is a rather wealthy country. Iraq has tremendous resources that belong to the Iraqi people. And so there are a variety of means that Iraq has to be able to shoulder much of the burden for their own reconstruction.” Press Secretary Ari Fleischer (February 18, 2003)
2. “There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people…and on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years…We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” Paul Wolfowitz [Source: House Committee on Appropriations Hearing on a Supplemental War Regulation, 3/27/03]
3. “I don't believe that the United States has the responsibility for reconstruction, in a sense…[Reconstruction] funds can come from those various sources I mentioned: frozen assets, oil revenues and a variety of other things, including the Oil for Food, which has a very substantial number of billions of dollars in it. Donald Rumsfeld [Source: Senate Appropriations Hearing, 3/27/03] (emphasis mine)

Compare that last statement, in particular, with this:

President Bush said Monday that seeing Iraq through reconstruction to a stable and secure democracy is a worthy cause that the United States will press regardless of whether its coalition partners remain there.

"The fundamental question is: Is it worth it? And the answer is, 'Absolutely, it's worth it for a free Iraq to emerge'," said Bush....

Bush considers it worth it.