Scientists are political people too: changing minds about climate change?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m taking a break from writing about research on the personality traits of liberals vs. conservatives. I need a rest after this magnum opus, although one of these days I may take one more swipe at the topic.

No, this time it’s global warming that’s sparked a few thoughts on science and bias in general.

You may have noticed that global warming is a subject I ordinarily don’t get into. There’s a reason for that,and it’s not lack of interest. I’ve actually read about global warming in some depth–on both sides, as usual (and in this case the Joni Mitchell song with its lyric “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now…” is unusually apropos).

My conclusion is that it’s a very technical and specialized subject about which I’m unfortunately unable to come to any firm conclusion at the moment, despite having tried, because I lack the specific in-depth scientific background that would enable me to come down on one side or another.

That doesn’t stop most people from having a firm opinion. And it’s true that, if the global warming alarmists are correct, we need to have opinions–to decide, take a stand, and act. But that “if” is the problem. Because another truth is that the scientists are hardly immune to bias, and this colors their work, despite disclaimers to the contrary.

It’s not surprising–after all, scientists are people, too. The “harder” the science the more protection there is against bias (that’s why the social sciences are notoriously–and perhaps fatally–susceptible to it). Climate change, although a “harder” science than the social sciences, is still relatively “soft”–a new and poorly understood discipline, complex and fraught with unknowns, especially in the all-important area of computer simulations of climate models. Here’s a quote from a recent discussion of some of the problems (hat tip: Pajamas Media):

…for predicting the future climate, scientists must rely upon sophisticated ”” but not perfect ”” computer models.

“The public generally underappreciates that climate models are not meant for reducing our uncertainty about future climate, which they really cannot, but rather they are for increasing our confidence that we understand the climate system in general,” says Michael Bauer, a climate modeler at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York.

In general, the simpler a system is, and the fewer the variables, the more confidence we can have in the applicability of the results of scientific studies. But climate (like humanity) is a notoriously complex and poorly-understood system, and models for either are inherently unreliable. Therefore predictions are exceedingly suspect in both areas.

And yet policy must be made. So, how to decide? Are sites such as this or this reputable? Without specialized knowledge, how can we know?

One can go by the majority opinion, and it certainly appears that the majority of scientists believe not only that global warming is real (the less controversial part of the equation), but also that it is caused at least in good part by human-generated CO2 emissions (the far more controversial part). But, historically and conceptually speaking, science is not a democracy in which the majority opinion ends up being correct in the end. And what are the political biases of these scientists? And does it matter–how much is their research affected by those biases, especially in an area such as climate change with profound political repercussions and implications? How openminded are scientists to data that threatens their point of view, the hypotheses and theories on which their reputations have been based?

The danger of bias–in science and elsewhere–is present on both sides of the political spectrum, by the way. There’s a reason my “change” series (and one of these days I plan to get back to it, by the way!) is entitled, “A mind is a difficult thing to change.” It’s not easy to reverse one’s opinion, and most people resist and defend against data that challenges it, even scientists.

The history of science is replete with theories that have had their day in the sun and then departed, to be heard of no more (except in History of Science courses). As evidence amasses and knowledge grows, old theories are discarded and new ones take their place. We don’t know when that tipping point will occur in any particular scientific discipline, but I do know that almost every theory in its earlier stages (especially in the “softer” areas of science) has areas of confusion and data that don’t fit into the big picture. As time passes, either the theory is able to explain that data, or it collapses in the face of it. Global warming is an area replete with these anomalies at the moment.

In other branches of science that aren’t so tied into policy recommendations, it’s fine to wait until more data comes in. The problem with global warming is that, if the alarmists are correct, we need to act soon. And the actions required aren’t minor, they are major and involve a certain amount of sacrifice. People are naturally resistant to that sort of thing, as well, and want the danger to be clear and present before they are willing to give up certain pleasant aspects of modern life to which they’re become accustomed.

And that’s one of the reasons that proponents of the point of view that global warming is dangerous, imminent, and manmade might be tempted to sound the alarm more vociferously than they should based on the evidence at hand, as this article claims. The idea is to get with the program and sound the clarion call.

So beware, those who might want to give a more “nuanced” message, even if they agree with the general thrust. Sometimes the pressure on them isn’t so subtle:

Shaman says some junior scientists may feel uncomfortable when they see older scientists making claims about the future climate, but he’s not sure how widespread that sentiment may be. This kind of tension always has existed in academia, he adds, a system in which senior scientists hold some sway over the grants and research interests of graduate students and junior faculty members.

“I can understand how a scientist without tenure can feel the community pressures,” says environmental scientist Roger Pielke Jr., a colleague of Vranes’ at the University of Colorado.

Pielke says he has felt pressure from his peers: A prominent scientist angrily accused him of being a skeptic, and a scientific journal editor asked him to “dampen” the message of a peer-reviewed paper to derail skeptics and business interests.

And remember, Pielke isn’t a climate-change skeptic, he’s just not a true enough and strident enough believer. This state of affairs ought to give everyone pause.

The psychology of Psychology Today (about those liberals and conservatives)

The New Neo Posted on by

I want to say more about that Psychology Today article on fearful conservatives vs. rational liberals, the one the Sanity Squad discussed in its latest podcast.

But oh, where to begin, where to begin?

I’ll start by disclosing my personal association with the article. Back in July, I got an email from an intern at the magazine, inviting me to be interviewed for a piece on political conversions. According to the email, the article was be entirely even-handed and nonpartisan, and would incorporate stories from both sides of the political spectrum about people whose viewpoints had changed. It sounded like fun, and definitely right up my alley.

But if you read the finished product, it turns out that the “change” stories have boiled down to just one, that of journalist and blogger Cinnamon Stillwell, plus four short and superficial blurbs containing a couple of sentences apiece about four famous “changers” (yes, this part was an attempt at even-handedness, at least by the numbers: there were two righty-to-lefties and two lefty-to-righties: Brock, Huffington, Reagan, and Hitchens).

During my rather lengthy telephone interview with author Jay Dixit, he asked me many times whether my post-9/11 political change had been motivated by fear. I repeatedly explained that it had not, referring to my blog articles on change, and describing the process involved in some detail.

Certainly, I said, there had been brief moments of fear, but they were not predominant, and didn’t last very long. Instead, it seemed to me that 9/11 had acted initially as a sort of shock to the system, a signal to me that there was a lot that I didn’t understand about the world, and that learning more would be of vital importance and would help me know what actions to support as a response to the attack.

I said that reading had been a huge part of the process for me–and in due course I’d encountered books and articles from the conservative side, a point of view I hadn’t studied in any depth up to that point (I was already familiar, of course, with the liberal point of view). I emphasized that for me the process of change was not sudden at all; it took several years, and was far more cognitive than emotional.

Looking back, it’s clear to me that the questions Jay Dixit asked were designed to get me to focus on fear as a motivator. That’s fine, since it turns out to be the main topic of the article. But it hardly seems unbiased or balanced to leave out a story (mine) that challenges the article’s conclusions.

I can’t know for certain what motivated the author to leave me out of the article entirely. Nor do I know whether there were others who were similarly left on the cutting room floor. But I can’t help but wonder whether my interview was eliminated from the final product because I repeatedly gave answers that didn’t fit in with the message the author wanted to deliver: that those who became more conservative were motivated by fear rather than rational thinking.

In addition, are fear and rationality mutually exclusive, anyway? As the Squad said on the podcast, fear is often adaptive and functional. After all, it evolved to warn us of dangers, so that we can respond appropriately. The real question is this: even if most post-9/11 “changers” were motivated by fear (and the article presents no data on that particular question; I don’t think anyone’s done the research), was the danger realistic? If so, fear would be a rational initial response, and could lead to taking appropriate action to eliminate the danger. Denying the existence of a real danger is not only irrational, it can lead to the destruction of the denier.

Nowhere in the article are any of these issues dealt with, even on a superficial basis. And yet they are absolutely vital.

But the bulk of the article had nothing to do with this. The article as published was predominantly a summary of research studies purporting to study the differences between conservatives and liberals; to associate fearfulness and other (mostly negative) character traits with the former, and openness and flexibility (and, ultimately, rationality) with the latter; and to show that fear motivates people to become slightly more conservative in their responses.

I might have written that the finished piece represented an analysis rather than a summary of such research, but that didn’t seem to be the proper word. In fact, the Psychology Today article made no real attempt either to evaluate the research or critique it, nor to mention any research that might counter or negate it.

As I went through the article, flaws in the reasoning behind every piece of research cited came to mind. But to really understand the quality of a piece of research and to effectively critique its flaws, it’s necessary to go to the source, the original paper itself. To do this for all the research cited in the article would be enough work for a small Ph.D. thesis. So, even though I’m known for my long posts, I’m not about going to be doing that today (sighs of relief all around).

Fortunately, the internet has come to my rescue, as it has so many times before. Someone known as IronShrink has done some of the work for me, and for us.

IronShrink critiques one of the main pieces of research relied on in the article: Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, and Sulloway’s review of some 88 previous studies on conservatism. Finding fault with their study seems to have been a bit like shooting fish in a barrel for those well-versed in research methodology (here’s another take-down of the same Jost, et. al. article, this one written by Colorado State professor C. Richard Jansen–who, by the way, is a research chemist and nutritionist rather than a social scientist).

Read both pieces, if you’re interested in the details. Even in the slippery world of social science research, the Jost review’s methodology seems particularly elusive (or perhaps the proper word would be “illusive”). Among other things, as both articles point out, the Jost researchers fail abysmally in their most elementary task, the basic definition of the terms they are studying–conservatism and liberalism.

Just to get a bit of the flavor of what we’re talking about here, the Jost review apparently says that Stalin, although on the left, could be considered as a figure on the right because he wanted to defend and preserve the Soviet system. “Conservative,” get it?

Other methodological flaws are enumerated in some detail in both articles. Here’s Jansen on the subject:

Jost and his colleagues carried out a meta-analysis of 88 studies involving 22,818 individual subjects in which approximately 27 discrete psychological variables were examined, according to the authors, in terms of the political orientation of the subjects…The methodology and software employed were not described, indeed in this paper there is not even a section entitled methodology or methods. Meta-analysis to be even valid much less successful should be based on a systematic review of the available literature, definition of terms, and a complete unbiased collection of original high quality studies that examine the same, not 27 variables in terms of 12 other variables.

This clearly was not done…[A] hodgepodge of variables were examined in studies involving mostly undergraduate students. The subjects, other than undergraduates were not adequately described, either qualitatively or quantitatively. Gender, age, race or ethnicity were not addressed. The authors describe no efforts to attest to the quality of the studies examined, or the biases potentially involved in the studies themselves or by the investigators, not to mention their own biases. Many of the studies quoted apparently were not peer reviewed since they were in monographs book chapters and conference papers.. The impression of statistical rigor is more apparent than real…

I’m no expert on research; I haven’t got a Ph.D. in the field. But I had to take courses at the graduate level in statistics and in designing and critiquing research, and I worked for a while as a research associate on a large project under some fairly well-known social science researchers. So I know enough to know that you shouldn’t leave out important data–and if you do, it usually means you’re covering up some more basic flaw in that data itself.

IronShrink goes into even greater detail than Jansen in his piece about the Jost review article. I didn’t read the original Jost research (it doesn’t appear to be available online), but IronShrink has, and he’s not impressed.

I did, however, read another piece of research discussed at length in the Psychology Today article, the Block and Block study. You can find it online here.

I’ve mentioned that I’m familiar with reading psychology research. I’m also well aware that it’s almost spectacularly difficult to design it well, and easy to find fault with most such studies that are done. But even give that caveat, the Block research is almost shockingly poorly designed, especially in terms of sample.

This is the basic design: taking nursery school students in Berkeley and Oakland, California; testing them at the age of three (1969-1971) for certain personality traits; and then comparing the personalities of those judged to be liberal against those judged to be conservative years later, (around 1989), at the age of twenty-three.

So, what’s wrong with this picture? Quite a bit, I’m afraid. The most serious problem is the nonrepresentativeness of the sample population. Then, as now, conservatives in Berkeley and Oakland were and are scarcer than hen’s teeth. And these were twenty-three-year-old conservatives in Berkeley and Oakland, growing up in the late 60s and 70s–an especially unusual bunch, I’d imagine. There is absolutely no reason to imagine that any conservatives found by this study would be typical or representative of conservatives as a whole; on the contrary. So the generalizability of the study would be highly suspect, to say the least, even if it were otherwise impeccably designed.

But it’s actually much worse than that. When I looked at the figures, I encountered what I’ll call the mysteriously missing data problem. There were 95 subjects, and when I looked to find one of the most elementary facts about them–how many had been defined as conservatives and how many as liberals–I discovered that Block and Block had failed to report the answer.

How odd. Because the authors had written in the body of their article that, “The LIB/CON [Liberal/Conservative] score distribution in this sample leans toward liberalism, with relatively few participants tilting toward conservatism.”

Get that, folks? In this supposedly seminal study on the personality traits of conservatives, not only can we conclude that any youthful conservatives found in Berkeley and Oakland might be atypical in terms of the conservative population as a whole, but it appears possible that the authors found hardly any conservatives at all. At any rate, they’re not telling.

Note the authors’ careful wording: there were “relatively few participants tilting [my emphasis] towards conservatism.” If you read the rest of the paper, it continually speaks of “relatively liberal” and “relatively conservative” [my emphasis again] subjects. Every now and then the authors slip into use of the terms “liberal” and “conservative” without the modifier, but for the most part the authors use the term “relatively.” That fact, coupled with the glaring absence of the relevant data involved, leads me to conclude that it is entirely possible that the study featured no conservatives at all.

There’s no way to know, of course. But the authors’ careful hedginess about terminology such as “relatively,” their mentioning the paucity of conservatives in the study, and, above all, the missing figures, make me very suspicious indeed. And, if there were few or no conservatives in their population, then what were the Blocks actually studying and comparing? The liberal and the less liberal, perhaps? The Left and the liberal? A worthy task, no doubt, but one that cannot possibly shed much light on conservatives. Because a relatively less Leftist liberal does not a conservative make–even in Berkeley.

But the point is not to attack Block. The point is that Psychology Today, which should know better, breathes not a word of any of these problems or criticisms.

Social science research about politics needs to be especially rigorous because of its potential to reflect the bias of the researchers, whatever side they may be on. Such research is especially amenable to being used (and misused) to score political points, as propaganda. And that’s something Psychology Today ought to have been well aware of, and to have guarded assiduously against. Unfortunately, the editors appear to have failed abysmally at that task.

[NOTE: Here’s a great email another blogger, Asher Abrams, sent to Dixit. And here’s Cinnamon Stillwell’s own take on the article. Others speaking out are Fausta, Shrink, and Dr. Sanity. And here’s a discussion at Eugene Volokh’s by a researcher named Jim Lindgren, who agrees with me on the problem of sample representativeness in the Block study.]

The surge and the Sadrists and the Sunnis (and the AP)

The New Neo Posted on by

When I read this article, entitled “Iraqi rebel army expressing siege mentality,” I found myself doing a double-take: this is the AP?

The piece seemed relatively upbeat about, of all things, the “surge,” the new commanders of US forces in Iraq, and their plan.

Far more important than the AP and its editorial politices, of course, is the actual information contained in the article. It touches on a concern of mine about whether the announcement of our plan might possibly give the enemy enough warning to be able to evade the net more easily (see here and here).

According to Steven R. Hurst, author of the article, the Sadrists are running scared. Something about this one’s got them worried–that is, if we can believe what they are saying:

[Sadrist commanders’] account of an organization now fighting for its very existence could represent a tactical and propaganda feint, but there was mounting evidence the militia is increasingly off balance and has ordered its gunmen to melt back into the population. To avoid capture, commanders report no longer using cell phones and fighters are removing their black uniforms and hiding their weapons during the day.

The key to the new notion the Sadrists have of the potential seriousness of this particular campaign? President Maliki sounds as though he might be on board this time against them, instead of providing them protection.

And why? According to the article, Maliki told Bush at a meeting in November that he would no longer stand in the way of our going against Sadr. And what’s behind that change of heart? Well, one begins to wonder whether Psychology Today might be correct after all, at least about certain political conversions to conservatism being motivated by fear–someone seems to have put the fear into Maliki, at least.

And whom might that be? Here’s the money quote:

Jordan’s King Abdullah II was said by al-Maliki confidants to have conveyed the increasing anger of fellow Sunni leaders in the Middle East over the continuing slaughter of Sunni Muslims at the hands of Shiite death squads.

That just may be the most important sentence in the entire article. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that the surrounding Arab nations with their largely Sunni populations are not at all cheered by the possibility of a Shiite (read: Iranian-allied) ascendance in Iraq.

Jordan has always been an interesting nation among the group–the most clearly moderate and Western-friendly of all (or what passes for moderation in that neck of the woods). What’s more, Jordan has not been at all shy in the past about using power against other Arab states or peoples when its own survival warrants (see Black September).

As noted before, what the Sadrists are telling the AP might be the equivalent of a psych-op. Hard to tell. But here is some more:

The third commander, who also spoke anonymously to protect his identity, said U.S.-led raiding parties were now also engaged in massive sweeps, having rounded up what he said was every male old enough to carry a gun in south Baghdad’s Um al-Maalef neighborhood Tuesday night.

As for the US, the military seems to be aware of the potential for running and hiding on the part of the enemy, and to have prepared for this eventuality:

Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said the security strategy and the additional American forces would allow the crackdown to be sufficiently broad to sweep up those who try to escape Baghdad and operate elsewhere.

“On the militia, the Baghdad plan itself is integrated to a holistic, countrywide plan that the multinational corps is developing. And security for Baghdad won’t just come from securing the inside of Baghdad,” Casey said at a briefing on Monday.

“It comes from the support zones around the outside as far away, as you suggest, Baqouba and Ramadi and Fallujah. It goes all the way out to the borders to stop the flow of foreign fighters and support coming in there.”

Again, one wonders about the motivation for the Sadrist commanders in divulging the following news to the AP, but here it is:

The Mahdi Army commanders said they were increasingly concerned about improved U.S. intelligence that has allowed the Americans to successfully target key figures in the militia.

With this as background, I say “give the surge a chance.” But just tell that to Congress. Many of its members seem determined to stop a program that represents the only present hope we have to get these people.

But I suppose some of them consider it more important to “get” Bush, and to get themselves re-elected. And if I sound a bit cynical about that, it’s because I am.

[NOTE: Tigerhawk has some further thoughts about Maliki’s motivations.]

Sleeping with Saddam, the lesser enemy?: realpolitik vs. the neocon agenda

The New Neo Posted on by

Leftists often criticize our present intervention in Iraq by bringing up the point that the US supported Saddam back in the 80s against Iran in the ill-fated—and ultimately stalemated—war that cost many Iraqi and Iranian lives. For example, see this comment in a recent thread:

Are you [Neo} arguing that it’s ok if the US practically created Saddam and supported him throughout much of his reign of terror, and eventually had to spend billions and sacrifice thousands to undo the damage, because we are, after all, but mere “imperfect players in an imperfect world.”

First of all, I wonder at the logic of the point being made—obviously, if we really did create and support the monster Saddam, then we certainly have a deep obligation to take him out, and even to sacrifice thousands to undo the damage, regrettable though that would be. What’s the alternative? Say “Oops, sorry!” and let his regime fester, uncorrected, forever?

Of course not. If the critics were sincere about their argument, it would be used to justify our more recent intervention, not to blast it. But somehow, I’ve never seen it used that way—odd, isn’t it? It does me make wonder whether their argument might just be sophistry.

However, I’ll assume this commenter’s motivations were sincere, and respond to his/her argument on its merits.

The United States has choices about its actions in the world. The first choice is whether to act at all—not that total inaction is really possible, but relative inaction is. That’s the course isolationists have advocated for years, if not centuries. It used to be more possible back when the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans represented huge gulfs of space and time, but it wasn’t really possible even then.

And in the last century and this, it most certainly has become less possible. One of the reasons, of course, is that both action and inaction have consequences, although we are able to see the consequences of action more clearly. So, the US cannot help but act—even by refraining from action.

Initially, our attitude towards Saddam was largely shaped by the Cold War, and rightly so. Back then all third-world countries had a choice themselves—and that was, essentially, whether to ally with us, with the USSR (and/or China), or whether to play both sides against each other. In the real world—and that is the one in which we live (after all, we’re talking about “realpolitik” here, are we not?) those alliances mattered greatly, and third-world countries were somewhat like chess pieces in the power play of the large states that were struggling with each other for dominance.

The Soviet Union was rightly seen as an evil empire, not only cruel and repressive, but openly interested in amassing as many “satellites” (remember that word?) as it could. Rumor from those old retired CIA agents with the loose lips has it that Saddam was originally supported by the US in 1959 in attempting the assassination of Iraqi ruler Qassim, who was allying with the Soviets at the time.

Whether or not it’s true that the CIA recruited Saddam for such a plot—and again, let’s assume for the sake of argument that it is—it was the way of the world in 1959. I don’t like it at all, to tell you the truth. I wish the world were different. I wish we had found more of an Ataturk to support, someone who would reform and modernize the country with a strong but not an overwhelmingly harsh hand.

But would it have been better to have kept our hands clean, isolated ourselves from the world, and left the field to the Soviets? As I said, both inaction and action have consequences, and some of the consequences of either or both are always going to be bad. And nations must choose, given incomplete information.

What was the incomplete information here? Well, if you read that Wikipedia article on Saddam (and here it is again, in case you missed it the first time) you’ll see who Saddam appeared to be back in the early 70s, when he first amassed power in Iraq as right-hand-man to his cousin al Bakr, the President. Not unusual for that time and area of the world, they already had a repressive security apparatus in place to deal with their enemies.

But there seemed to be quite a bit of good, as well. During the 70s, the amount of repressive violence there wasn’t anywhere near the reign of terror it became under Saddam, who officially came to power in 1979. Saddam was Vice-President under al Bakr, whose regime in the 70s:

…was providing social services that were unprecedented among Middle Eastern countries. Saddam established and controlled the “National Campaign for the Eradication of Illiteracy” and the campaign for “Compulsory Free Education in Iraq,” and largely under his auspices, the government established universal free schooling up to the highest education levels…The government also supported families of soldiers, granted free hospitalization to everyone, and gave subsidies to farmers. Iraq created one of the most modernized public-health systems in the Middle East, earning Saddam an award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

To diversify the largely oil-based economy, Saddam implemented a national infrastructure campaign that made great progress in building roads, promoting mining, and developing other industries. The campaign revolutionized Iraq’s energy industries. Electricity was brought to nearly every city in Iraq, and many outlying areas.

On the basis of this, I don’t think the US can be faulted for not having seen what was to come later, under Saddam’s own watch as head of the country. Yes indeed, the Baath Party under al Bakr silenced many opponents in various harsh ways, including killings at times. But it was, unfortunately, nothing so out of the ordinary for the time and place.

Saddam began to show his true colors and to stand out in this regard only after he became President himself in 1979. I’ve referred before to the video he made of his early chilling and Stalinesque move to nakedly stamp out anyone who threatened his power.

But shortly after Saddam was flexing his newly-acquired muscles, we had a much greater problem on our hands: Iran. In fact, we still have that great problem on our hands, over a quarter of a century later, and the problem has only grown.

From their ascendance to power in 1979, the mullahs made it clear that their goal was to war against us in any way they could, and to dominate the Muslim world with a new type of totalitarian regime, one based on religious fundamentalism rather than a secular worldview such as Communism. But the goal was the same: “We will bury you.

Iraq’s war against Iran started shortly thereafter, in 1980. At first we stayed out of it, but a few years later, when it seemed that Iran was actually going to win, we secretly helped Saddam with intelligence and facilitated Iraq’s acquisition of arms from other countries. And yes, we even winked at his use of chemical weapons against the Iranians, and later against the Kurds (one of our very darkest hours):

Washington was strongly opposed to chemical warfare, a practice outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In practice, U.S. condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons ranked relatively low on the scale of administration priorities, particularly compared with the all-important goal of preventing an Iranian victory.

It seemed a no-brainer at the time to back Saddam. Not only did he appear to lack designs on us (unlike the Iranians), but it seemed back then that his regime—bad though it was in many ways—was one of the better (or at least the less dreadful) ones in a region not known for its enlightened rulers.

Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam,” said Joe Wilson, Glaspie’s former deputy at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and the last U.S. official to meet with Hussein. “Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and commercial relationships that would have the effect of moderating his behavior. History will demonstrate that this was a miscalculation.”

Yep.

We dumped Saddam when he invaded Kuwait; dumped him for good. The rest of the history is more familiar than the earlier years; I won’t bother to reiterate it here.

So what are we are left with? A messy business, the choices a country must make in the real world.

I’m not whitewashing how bad it was. But those who require moral perfection in our actions on the world stage are either hopelessly idealistic and out of touch with the consequences of what acting on that idealism would have wrought (in this case, the triumph of the Soviets, and later the Iranians), or they are cynically mouthing arguments they don’t even believe.

I wish the world were otherwise. But it’s not, and pretending the lion has already lain down with the lamb is an absurdity, or worse. There are plenty of lions out here, about to devour huge herds of lambs, and sometimes all we can do is back the lion who seems less voracious.

The funny thing about the whole thing (and I mean funny-strange, not funny ha-ha) is that it is the neocon philosophy that represents one of the only strategies offering a possible way out of the realpolitik dilemma. And yet those who criticize our realpolitik decisions to back dictators also criticize our neonconnish decisions to overthrow them and try to institute a better and more democratic form of government. Odd, isn’t it?

Make no mistake about it, however: the neocon notion that we should attempt actions designed to transform these countries into something better is not an easy one to execute, as Iraq has demonstrated (and, by the way, it does not always involve our waging war—sometimes it involves our supporting internal forces within the country itself, as suggested presently for Iran).

I’m disappointed in the missteps of the Bush administration while occupying Iraq (examples: not stopping the looters, not taking Sadr out, way back when). But I don’t believe any of these to be insurmountable even now—if we had the political will in this country to understand how important it is to succeed at the task.

This is the stark choice we face: (1) realpolitik business as usual, “he’s a thug but at least he’s our thug;” (2) inaction, allowing totalitarian Islamism (or Communism before it) to take over most of the world; or (3) trying to transform these regions into functioning democracies that protect human rights.

The latter is the neocon agenda, and I consider it the best alternative of the lot. But I don’t consider myself naive about how difficult it is to do this and how much of an investment in time, energy, money, blood, and will it would cost to succeed. But the alternatives would ultimately demand a greater human sacrifice, and entail even more suffering.

Take your choice.

Sanity Squad psychs Psych Today

The New Neo Posted on by

The lastest Sanity Squad podcast is up at Pajamas. The Squad takes aim at a recent issue of Psychology Today purporting to analyze the difference between liberals and conservatives. Well, Dr. Sanity, Shrinkwrapped, and Siggy analyze the analysis.

And even though I don’t do links all that often, the aformentioned blogs of my Squad colleagues are always well worth visiting.

[ADDENDUM: I’m planning a further post on the subject of the Psychology Today article.]

Good grief: what about the Iraqi dead?

The New Neo Posted on by

In my recent post about how poorly our own Civil War had been going for the North even as late as the spring of 1864, I mentioned the incredibly high casualties in that war compared to what we’ve suffered so far in Iraq.

A commenter named Global Citizen wrote:

Good grief, what about the Iraqi dead?

A timely observation; Global’s comment was written on Monday, and it was on Tuesday (yesterday) that two pieces of news came through the wires almost simultaneously: an especially blood-curdling bombing that killed at least sixty people at a university in Baghdad (yes, a graphic demonstration of how the terrorists eat their own young); and the announcement by the UN that, by their calculations, more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians died in violence last year.

The UN figures are disputed by the Iraqi government:

Death tolls in Iraq are controversial because they vary so widely and because there is no uniform, transparent system of tabulating killings throughout the country. The 2006 civilian death toll of 34,452 provided by the UN — drawn from the Health Ministry, hospital reports and the Medico-Legal Institute of Baghdad — exceeded official government figures.

Iraq’s ministries of defense, health, and interior said in early January that there were 13,896 violent deaths of civilians, police officers, and soldiers last year. An Interior Ministry spokesman, Abdul Kareem al-Kinani, said yesterday’s UN figures were “incorrect, unsuccessful, and very exaggerated.”

The truth is we don’t know the truth, and probably will never know. Both the Iraqi government and the UN are suspect as reporters, and those giving them the data on which any such figures would be based probably have agendas, as well. The expression “the fog of war” covers civilian casualties in a chaotic and violent country in which many sides have a powerful motivation to distort the truth.

But one thing I do know: the murderers are relying on our reporting of the carnage to help their cause by inflaming US public opinion against our mission there.

So, what’s the MSM to do? Ignore such a big story? Of course not.

And the killers know that. They also know if they kill enough innocent people with a big enough bang, it will become ever more likely that America will get fed up with our intervention there and leave them alone to do the rest of their dirty work in peace (ironic word, that).

And therein lies the rub for people such as Global–if, that is, they bother to think about what would happen after we leave. I’m afraid that, to many who espouse such an argument, the only Iraqi deaths that really matter are the ones that take place on our watch.

The truth is that Iraq has been a bloody killing field for decades. Back in the years when Saddam and his boys were murdering and torturing Iraqis for fun and profit, did we see the daily death toll printed on the front pages of our newspapers? No, of course not; those deaths slid into the general background noise, the hum of all the other third-world deaths perpetrated by murderous dictators against their own people. Non-Western killers against non-Western victims? For the most part, to the MSM–not our problem, not our news. Relegated to the back pages.

And now, every tally of Iraqi deaths that’s published would do well to include a comparison to the deaths under Saddam (which would most likely have continued, unabated, had we not invaded)–or the deaths that are predicted to occur if we leave prematurely. But, of course, they don’t. And the left doesn’t talk much about these things, either.

It’s a bit like the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The suffering perpetrated on the South by the North during that lengthy conflict; the re-education camps and with torture and murder afterwards; and the boat people, so many of whom died in their efforts to escape the regime after we abandoned them–there was hardly so much as a whisper of sorrow from the Left on that score.

Global uses the phrase “good grief” to begin his comment. He/she means it merely as an exclamation of astonishment. But it seemed an apt one to me. Because, to much of the Left, the only good grief to feel is about casualties caused by the US.

The deaths caused by regimes the US is trying to topple? The grief over them isn’t nearly as good. And the deaths caused by our abandonment, at the urging of the Left, of a country we had pledged to defend? That’s really un-good grief.

In the present conflict in Iraq, the US military has cared more about the number of dead civilians, and tried harder to avoid causing any such deaths, than any fighting force ever has before. And the “surge” policy is meant to flush out and kill the killers of such people.

That, of course, is not enough for the Left. Their remedy for the murders going on now is to leave. And, were we to listen to them, and the aftermath was a huge increase in the number of dead, would the Left ever take any responsibility for that particular bloodbath?

[NOTE: I’m well aware that the far Left often ascribes all casualties, before or after US intervention, as being caused by the US and/or the West in general. According to the Left, damaged third-world countries with murderous dictators are really the result of Western colonialism. Saddam’s crimes are on our hands since we supported him now and then because of realpolitik (against the greater threat of Iran, for example). And of course any killings after we leave are our fault as well, because we shouldn’t have gone there in the first place.

There is always at least a kernel of truth in these accusations, although they are simplistic and ridiculously reductionist. The US, like all nations, is an imperfect player in an imperfect world. Most of the time we face, as I’ve written before, “choices among crazinesses.”

The validity of the causes for our intervention in Iraq has been rehashed ad nauseum: in a nutshell, I still consider them valid, although our execution has been faulty. The topic of this post, however, is how the MSM shortsightedly picks and chooses which casualties in Iraq to pay attention to, and how the Left uses that information to suggest actions likely to cause more of those innocent Iraqi casualties it purports to care so much about.]

Iraq: lost in translation?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written before about Peter Braestrup’s book Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington. It describes how the media got the Tet Offensive wrong.

Braestrup’s conclusion is that the press errors were mostly multidetermied, and that most of them were not necessarily the result of press bias, but rather misperceptions, misinformation, and ignorance. But the whole thing added up to an error of major proportions, one that had a huge effect on American public opinion.

Granted, Amir Taheri’s latest NY Post column is no Big Story. For starters, it’s a short essay, not a book. Perhaps we’ll call it “Small Story.” But that’s only because of its length, not its importance. Because there’s nothing little about press distortions concerning Iraq, nor about their importance in influencing the course of this war and our will to fight it.

Like Braestrup, Taheri doesn’t ascribe all the errors of Iraq reportage to bias or intent. Some are simply the function of reporters’ lack of knowledge of the language. Dependent on translators, they don’t always get the correct information–especially in the early years, translators often had agendas. Journalist isolation is part of the problem, as well. Both hazards are inherent when trying to cover events in a unfamiliar country that has been blocked from significant contact with the West for decades. Then there’s the fact that news of bombings and death is easy to report, and has the old “if it bleeds, it ledes” sensationalistic appeal.

Bias does come into play as well, however. According to Taheri, many papers predicted chaos and failure in Iraq and don’t want to be proven wrong, and thus they naturally skew their coverage to the negative. Whether or not this motivation is conscious and deliberate, or subtle and hidden, perhaps even from the journalists themselves (I happen to believe the latter is the case), is unknown.

Taheri also gives us some of the Iraqi good news that we usually don’t hear too much about:

Last month, Iraq received the U.N.’s special environmental prize for reviving parts of the marshes drained by Saddam, thus saving one of the world’s most precious ecological treasures. Almost no one in the media noticed.

Also last month, the Iraqi soccer squad reached the finals of the Asian Games – beating out Japan, China, South Korea and Iran. Again, few in the West noticed.

In 2006, almost 200 major reconstruction projects were officially completed and 4,000 new private companies registered in Iraq. But few seem interested in the return of private capitalism after nearly 50 years of Soviet-style control.

Iraq’s new political life is either ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. The creation of political parties (some emerging from decades of clandestine life), the work of Iraq’s parliament, the fact that it is almost the only Arab country where people are free to discuss politics to their hearts’ content – these are of no interest to those determined to see Iraq as a disaster, as proof that toppling Saddam was a modern version of the original sin.

Iraq may still become any of those things – but right now it is none of them. When the real history of the Iraq war is written, posterity might marvel at the way modern media were used to manufacture that original sin.

Let’s hope Taheri never has to write that sorrowful sequel to Braestrup’s book: The Bigger Story.

Cat-and-mouse, jihadis and the “surge:” they can run, but can they hide?

The New Neo Posted on by

I wondered about it a few days ago: what’s to stop the terrorists/jihadis/insurgents in Iraq from running away in the face of the proposed surge, and living to fight another day?

The answer seems to be “nothing, at least for the moment.” It’s been reported that that’s exactly what’s happening–the jihadis are dispersing to areas other than Baghdad.

The terrorists are many things, but they’re certainly not dumb (although I often think that false perception allowed us to soothe ourselves into our state of torpor during the 80s and 90s). And, despite the frequent characterization by the Left of our own military as poverty-stricken dupes, ignorant victims and tools of the Rovian Right, those leading our armed forces are not stupid, either. It’s almost a certainty that this jihadi movement had to have been anticipated by the US.

One of the hallmarks of any successful military campaign is the ability to adjust to changing circumstances. It’s good to anticipate events as much as humanly possible; but, realistically speaking, this can’t be done perfectly, and the idea is to adapt to changes faster than the enemy.

The comments section of the previous thread on this subject contains many shrewd observations. I excerpt a few here:

(1) The primary strategic weakness is the close margin of support for continued fighting in Iraq. This weakness is telegraphed daily by the NYT and major media.

Tactically, the insurgents would know almost immediately when the surge started.

The strategic strength of this message [Bush’s speech] is the commitment of forces itself, even if for a limited period of time, and changes in the rules of engagement.

There will be tactical surprises in the actual mission, and on balance, the telegraphing of the surge and change of ROE more than offsets any benefit of surprise.

(2) Strategies that depend on surprise are not strategies, they are tactics and operational details.

This is almost a matter of definition, because strategies are not executed over the course of hours or days, they are executed over the course of months, years, or in some cases, even decades. As such, if your strategy requires your opposition to be surprised month after month by your strategic approach, your strategy is doomed to failure. In that case, you are implicitly assuming that your opponents are stupid, in which case, why do you need a strategy in the first place?

(3) What can terrorists do differently now that they know? They can’t go hiding. Why? Because as the newest Counter Insurgency Manual just told us, insurgencies acquire power by creating chaos and then doing the extortion-protection racket game. But when they succede in doing that as the first part of the insurgency, this means THEY are in Power. This means they are now responsible for security. They can’t run anymore. They can run when they have no strongholds. But Sadr? Those Baghdad Sunnis? Their enclaves have been safe from American attack for a long long time now, given the limitations placed on American soldiers.

This post at Iraq the Model, discussing the cut-and-run tactics of the jihadis who are leaving Baghdad for parts somewhat unknown, sheds further light on the matter. Right now, the jihadis’ situation somewhat resembles that of an animal who’s built a cozy nest for the winter but has been flushed out by a hunter. It takes some time for it to build a new and safe place to dwell, and in the meantime there’s increased vulnerability.

It seems that not everyone in Iraq wants the honor of housing these new visitors as they build new homes-away-from-home, despite the highly vaunted Arab virtue of hospitality. According to Iraq the Model, locals are already alerting authorities on the movements of the jihadis.

Unfortunately, there are areas in Iraq, particularly Diwaniya, where the Sadrists have already established cozy nests:

…Diwaniya is not far away from Baghdad, and the past few months had shown the level of the Sdarists strength in that city when order was restored only after reinforcements were summoned from neighboring provinces.

The Sadrists feel they are very strong in Diwaniya and what their man in the city said yesterday shows the level of extremism of the Sadr followers in this city…

…the bad guys are adjusting their plans as the government and US military adjust theirs. The clear and hold tactic means militants will have little chance to maneuver within Baghdad like they used to do to work around previous crackdowns so now they are planning to make long-range maneuvers in provinces outside Baghdad.

The cat-and-mouse game continues. As the cats, we have to be craftier than the mice. And much of that craft depends on anticipation, flexibility, and above all, the quality of the intelligence we receive.

Iraq War changes: maybe it’s a Civil War in more ways than one (see 1864)

The New Neo Posted on by

Recommended reading on a Sunday: this article by Barry Casselman, comparing Bush and his new proposals for the Iraq war to the situation Lincoln faced in the spring before the 1864 election.

Bush, Lincoln–huh? you say.

Well, read it. Casselman is clear that Bush lacks Lincoln’s eloquence, and even much more basic communication skills; those are certainly not the similarities he’s suggesting between the two. But he points out that, even as late as 1864, many in the North considered the Civil War a lost cause, and the antiwar movement was strong and included violent draft riots.

The opposition candidate in the election, McClellan, was a “peace now” advocate. And the peaceniks of the time had a lot more to complain about than today’s in terms of bloodshed; the casualties in the Civil War (all of them, of course, were US casualties, like it or not–and the Southerners didn’t like it) were far greater than today, both in actual terms and compared to the smaller population of the time. Follow the link if you’re not familiar with the figures; they are shocking.

Lincoln changed course with a new Supreme Commander in the West, General Sherman, who was promoted to that post in the spring of 1864 and began the relentless campaign that resulted in Union victory. Sherman was:

…ordered by Grant to “create havoc and destruction of all resources that would be beneficial to the enemy.”

A year later the South had surrendered, roundly beaten in one of the first total wars.

We look at history from the viewpoint of–well, of history. We have the advantage of the passage of many years and the knowledge of where events were leading. But if a history of the Civil War and evaluations of Lincoln had been written in early 1864, they would look awfully different.

A good recent example of the perspective that comes with time are the lovefests that attended the deaths of Presidents Reagan and Ford, with appreciations galore of administrations that had been excoriated by many in their own time (and are excoriated by many still, to be sure, especially Reagan’s).

Whether or not Bush’s new Iraq campaign will be successful remains to be seen, of course. Whether or not General Petraeus will be the turn-around general that Sherman was also remains to be seen (he certainly is no advocate of total war, however).

Whether Congress will allow us to find out remains to be seen, as well.

The return of the missing: two kidnapped boys found

The New Neo Posted on by

This is the sort of story that can easily make any parent’s–or nearly any human being’s–eyes mist up. I know it did mine.

One of the worst things on earth to imagine–and, fortunately, for most parents, it’s an event that remains in the realm of imagination–is the disappearance of a child. For the Akers, 15-year old Shawn Hornbeck’s family, it’s been a gut-wrenching, heart-breaking, four-year struggle in which they’ve dedicated their lives to finding their kidnapped son, and to other missing children. And now their faith, hope, prayers, and work have been rewarded.

For 13-year old Ben Ownby’s family, it was “only” a week of suffering. A week that probably lasted twenty lifetimes, all of them bad.

Amidst the joy, one caveat: the reentry, especially for Hornbeck, will probably not be smooth. I am reminded of another story, that of Steven Stayner, who was kidnapped in the early ’70s at the age of seven (much younger than these boys) by a pedophile, and kept for over seven years.

Stayner’s captor used sophisticated methods of “re-education” on him, convincing the boy that his parents had forgotten about him and didn’t want him back, sexually abusing him, and encouraging him to regard him as his new father. Stayner was only found when his kidnapper hauled in new prey, a young child for whom Stayner developed a feeling of compassionate protectiveness. He planned to guide the boy to a police station, but the child was fearful and wanted Stayner to go in with him. In doing so, Stayner himself was detained, and the entire story ended up spilling out.

But Stayner’s re-entry into his joyful family was fraught with psychological problems for all concerned, some of them detailed in an unusually fine made-for-TV film entitled, “I Know My First Name Is Steven” (the words Stayner voiced to the police when he was first being interrogated.) There was a book, as well.

The problems were not surprising considering the dreadful trauma and dislocation all had endured–the fact that they had lost a young child and yet a teenager was returned to them, one who’d seen and endured things no child should ever have to face.

Stayner married young and had two children, but tragically, was killed in a motorcycle accident when he was only twenty-four. But the tragedy doesn’t end there.

Decades later, his brother Cary Stayner was found guilty of the 1999 murders of four women in Yosemite National Park, where Cary worked at the time. The vicious murders had gripped the nation, and I was glad to hear the news that the killer had been found. But when I heard the perpetrator’s identity, I couldn’t help but think of Stayner’s parents as well, who had emerged from one long nightmare only to enter another, and then another.

It is highly unlikely that the present case will lead to anything remotely like that. I make no excuses for serial murderers, but one still wonders just how much the kidnapping of his brother and the family trauma affected the elder Stayner boy. It certainly is not the case that something like that causes a person to become serial murderer; that much is certain. But it is also true that those who kidnap children harm far more people than those children themselves. They set up a ripple effect with a long reach.

But today is a day of rejoicing. And I add my hopes that these two kidnapped boys have a smooth and relatively trouble-free re-entry into their families, and that they all resume their lives so that this incident fades away into distant memory, except for the added preciousness it gives the rest of their days together.

Nyamko Sabuni: an Afro-Swedish breath of fresh air

The New Neo Posted on by

Who’s Nyamko Sabuni? She’s the new Swedish Minister for Integration and Gender Equality.

Sounds awfully PC, doesn’t it? But Sabuni is anything but. In fact, she’s already raised a storm of controversy in Sweden with her statements on the subject of assimilation.

Sabuni herself has impeccably PC credentials, a fact that probably infuriates her enemies, much as the African-American-ness of Condoleezza Rice or Bill Cosby infuriate their Leftist critics in a special way. Her father was a political refugee from the Congo to Zaire and then Sweden, jailed in his native country for opposing the government. Sabuni was twelve when she made the journey to Sweden with her family, learned the language, and thrived in her new environment.

Her father is Christian and her mother Muslim, but Sabuni herself was raised without religion (although Wikipedia’s entry on Sabuni has a different tale to tell than the NY Times on her parents–it says both are Muslim).

What has Sabuni done to ruffle so many feathers? Oh, just a couple of little things: called for a ban on wearing the veil for girls under fifteen, proposed that schoolgirls be checked for evidence of genital mutilation, criticized “honor culture” mentalities, and asked that arranged marriages and the state financing of religious schools be banned.

It’s hard to argue with the fact that the institution of such policies might indeed foster “integration and gender equality” in Sweden. Nor do they run counter to the prevailing customs of Sweden. But argument most certainly has been mounted; Sabuni is considered unsympathetic to the plight of immigrants (read: Muslim immigrants), despite her own status as an immigrant and daughter of Muslim[s].

Sabuni, who calls herself “Afro-Swedish, maybe,” answers her critics thusly:

We have a society that has failed to adapt to new times. We don’t offer people their rights, but we are also unclear about their obligations. So people end up in a kind of no man’s land, where they are neither Swedes, nor Turks nor Congolese.

Hmmm–with rights come obligations. And immigrants to Sweden should end up becoming–Swedes! How revolutionary is that?

{NOTE: Peaktalk wrote an interesting post on Sabuni back in October.]

About cutting off those war funds: beware the veto

The New Neo Posted on by

The news is replete with stories about how the Democrats and some moderate Republicans are against Bush’s “surge.” And many articles also suggest that Congress might even be prepared to cut off funding for the military, or specific funding for that mission, in order to stop it.

This article, more detailed than most, explains some of the legal ramifications of such an act. It’s certainly possible to do it, as evidenced by what Congress did during the 70s vis a vis Vietnam (see here for some of that history).

However, one rather large difference between Then and Now is the size of the support in Congress for such a tactic. Since any such cutoff of funds would of course be vetoed by President Bush, therefore its sponsors would need two-thirds support in Congress for an override.

If they don’t have that, they might try it anyway, of course–just to get everyone on record as “pro” or “con” for use in the next election. But it would not be implemented; the vote would be an act of protest that would have no repercussions as far as funding itself (the only repercussions would probably be the satisfaction the enemy would feel in the knowledge that, once Bush is gone, they’d be relatively unopposed by a weary US).

In the 70s President Nixon, and then President Ford who followed him, were facing a Congress more strongly Democratic (and even more antiwar on the Republican side, as I recall) than Bush faces at the moment (see here for the history of the composition of the House, and here for the Senate). They knew that acts of such Congresses were practically veto-proof.

I’ve not noticed any head counts in present-day articles to indicate whether the votes are there for an override. My guess is that they are not. But I’d be interested on any information on that score.