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Deep
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Minority Reports 18 December 2002
"Minority Report" is a great movie, and Philip K. Dick is a great science fiction writer. In Dick's (Philip K.'s, not Cheney's!) crazed and gifted vision, two of three precognitives must agree that something bad will happen, and the state then acts to prevent the event. In this way, Dick's America is secure, orderly, and at peace. In the real life version, at least two precogs in Pentagon and White House circles already know that a crime will be committed by Saddam Hussein. Saddam and the Ba-ath Party must therefore be terminated to make our society safe. The evidence is vague and arguable, in the sense that Saddam and the Ba-ath Party alone will actually commit a particular future WMD-related crime, or help the elusive Osama and his henchmen do such a deed. The "evidence" is based - in outstanding precog tradition - on images, gut feelings, and emotions. It is also based, in modern Defense Policy Board and Richard Perle tradition, on the twin compelling impetuses of Israeli security and US energy consumption forecasts. We have plenty twentieth century friends, allies, and others who used poison and other weapons against the poorly defended within and beyond their borders. We are friends with nations led by elected leaders who openly admit to a terrorist/liberator youth. Authoritarian and totalitarian leaning states, states that starve some of their population and deny them basic human rights are a dime a dozen. Heck, we even count some of them as our friends and partners! But the two precogs see Saddam as the imminent threat, and the state must act. If this were the short story or the movie, a Minority Report would be issued. But in this real life variation, those who might issue the minority report have been compromised. There is no Minority Report. I sat in a Pentagon town hall meeting today and listened to Mr. Feith, Under Secretary for Policy. He talked about how history handed out a bunch of great, terrible and important events for this - our Bush 43 - era. About how the work we are doing to secure America, to create friends and allies, to create order and peace, and to develop a strategy for fighting global terrorism is something we're excited about, honored to do, and bound to do well. Well, not to be a pain, but my first reaction was that Mr. Feith knows very little about history if he believes that these past few years represent great events "saved up" just for us. Even in my own adult lifetime, the ending of the Cold War under Reagan and Gorbachev, the collapse and dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the evolution of market syndicalism in communist China all rank up there as pretty tremendous. The terrorist attacks on Americans in U.S. territory were radical, unadulterated evil, and shouldn't be diminished. But Feith sounded at best like a navel gazer, and at worst, ignorant and vain. Oh well, we're all human. I have a bigger problem with his second main elaboration, and what he didn't say. He told us the DoD Under Secretary of Policy's mission was to develop strategies to secure America, fight terrorism, make friends and allies, and create order and peace. What he didn't say is that we are currently focusing all our energy on designing THE ONE BIG SOLUTION. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, "because of this, therefore that," is known as the Post Hoc fallacy of causation. It's apparently also the chosen motto of the policy gurus. If these great terrible events occurred in this single short period, obviously they must be related and post hoc ergo propter, one big simple strategy can solve it all! Secure America and rupture terrorism = Kill Saddam! Create order, peace and new friends and allies = Put puppet government in Baghdad! Just think - a theory of everything written by lawyers and academics. Einstein tried and couldn't do it, but rest assured these bozos can. And have! Einstein was a wee bit smarter than these guys though. He is credited with saying "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." Feith talked about how our grandchildren would read about the important things we are doing in Department of Defense Policy in their history books. He hoped they would be proud of us. If I wasn't compromised
myself, I'd like to publish a Minority Report on that |