In addition, there is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq. The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases. A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn't hurt U.S. personnel doesn't count. For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence. Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals . (emphasis mine)
I have not read the report of the Iraq Study Group, and I imagine I will do little more than skim my download of it; I had help in finding this quote from one of the speakers on National Public Radio this morning. But even buried away in the back of a government report, the quote seems a stinging criticism of the most basic functioning of our highest level of government. This is truer yet if one believes that the conclusions are non-partisan.
As I ruminated the other day on our situation in the Middle East, I wondered again how it is that our system of checks and balances can have deteriorated so far as to allow one man (or, if you prefer, a very small handful of men, say W, Cheney and Rumsfeld) to make decisions with such far-reaching consequences for the citizens of this country (to say nothing of the rest of the planet). How has it transpired that the business of international policy--and even war!--can be undertaken by a single person without any sure-fire mechanism for even the Congress to slow things down? Insofar as we elect representatives to act as professional politicians and run the country on our behalf, how can a single person even presume to act on behalf of 300 million people? And especially how is that possible when his course of action is controversial and radical?
This administration has systematically excluded alternative points of view and dissenting voices. This seems the worst possible approach for the governance of a superpower, and it stands in stark contrast to most other administrations (a point rather dramatically made in Michael O'Brien's biography of JFK). (Now, rereading that book report, I find that I celebrate the same go-it-alone attitude in Lincoln which I am castigating in W. But the course of action taken by Lincoln--fighting those who desired out of the Union--was not a shocking turn of events; his boldness was in his prosecution of what was more or less accepted by the North as a foregone conclusion. Also, Lincoln did have a diverse group held closely about him, so at least he had a clear idea of his options and his decisions were informed and weighed. Oh yeah, and Lincoln was an unfathomable genius and W is, well, not.)
A citizen calling into one of the morning NPR shows gave a sound thumping to the fourth estate, saying that we have been routinely given too little information about this war and that hard questions and critical analyses have been much rarer than they need to be when our democratic nation is engaging in actions of this kind. It's hard not to agree with him. I've read a couple different studies in the past two or three years which concluded that one of the most popular sources of television news, Fox News, is regularly failing to educate people about the facts and issues at hand; these exclusive Fox News watchers, when quizzed, are pretty consistently misinformed about both broad issues and details about the war. And the rest of the media, in deference to the Bush administration and its Fox News mouthpiece, have failed to hold the feet of this kind of shoddy journalism to the fire. Thus do we find ourselves passengers on a sinking ship.
But shouldn't we be outraged when the very government prosecuting that war--a pre-emptive war of aggression, it must be said--is itself systematically misinforming us? Who's in charge here? Who are the important people in our national equation? The nation does not exist to feed the bureaucracy and to obey it; the bureaucracy exists to do OUR bidding: we, the people, not the government, are the United States of America.
Why do I feel every time I pay attention to the news that we've somehow lost sight of this?
3 comments:
Welcome to the land of 'accurate reportage.' Sucks, don't it?
It doesn't help that the Bush administration has been very good at gagging government sources of information.
I was listening to a talk given by James Hansen, the NASA scientist who has done lots of research on the Earth's climate and has a lot to say about global warming. He talked about how scientists at NASA and other agencies were prevented from reporting their scientific findings if the administration did not like them. As if no knowledge is better than knowledge that is contrary to one's political beliefs.
As an example he told about a mock press conference that he had to go through before giving a real one. When a mock reporter asked if there was anything that could be done to stop making global warming worse, James answered that we could reduce our carbon dioxide output. He was then chastised for making statements of political policy when he is just a government scientist.
It sounds like other classic restrictive regimes throughout history.
Boy, it's so hard to keep one's cynicism in check.
Post a Comment