Quickly.
The U.S. presence in Iraq is destabilizing.
There are numerous reasons for this. The first is the strategy of providing arms and training to people whose interests and loyalties are not primarily toward creating stability.
The second is that you don't promote stability by enraging people, crashing into their homes, humiliating them, insulting them, and killing off their family members seemingly at random. Terror can make a terrible stability, applied systematically. Where there is no system, it just feeds the engine of chaos.
But most fundamentally, everyone knows that change is coming. Eventually, people need to sit down and agree on an outcome of this conflict that will be seen as legitimate by enough people for it to stick. But if change is in the air, that generally means that at least one group will believe it could be the beneficiary of that change. And all you need is one bellicose group at any given time to sustain perpetual conflict. The US stayed in Iraq this long by constantly seeing each new anticipated development as the potential light at the end of the tunnel. Why go when victory is just up this way and a little to the left? Iraqis who are still in the fight are called forward by similar perceptions of promise. They will keep fighting so long as there is a short-run prospect that the US will leave or shift in its actions or allies.
Leave and this disappears. There will be an explosion and then a sit down. The longer the US waits, the bigger the explosion will be and the harder the sit down will be.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
One last time...
Ohmigod! I just realized that I have not posted anything for four months except these gripes against the local news. Just one more, and I'll go on to something else.
A while back, they had a story on how "criminals" (actually, the criminally accused, I think) were allowed one free substitution of a judge, which had lightened the caseload of one judge who was notorious for, variously, either being harsh, or giving mean lectures from the bench. There were some efforts at balance, but it was mainly an expose on this allgedly bad law.
I think this was another disservice. I don't know the original reasons for the rule, but one logical benefit I can see was never mentioned, and seems pretty important. If there are multiple judges hearing the same kind of case, and differences among them in terms of severity of their sentencing or use of discretion so that some are more pro-prosecution and others more pro-defense, then giving out a peremptory strike against a judge (for either side) will tend to promote uniformity. This is vital because the consequences of a crime should depend on the facts of the case and the considerations sanctione by law and not on the dumb luck of what judge you draw in the lottery.
A while back, they had a story on how "criminals" (actually, the criminally accused, I think) were allowed one free substitution of a judge, which had lightened the caseload of one judge who was notorious for, variously, either being harsh, or giving mean lectures from the bench. There were some efforts at balance, but it was mainly an expose on this allgedly bad law.
I think this was another disservice. I don't know the original reasons for the rule, but one logical benefit I can see was never mentioned, and seems pretty important. If there are multiple judges hearing the same kind of case, and differences among them in terms of severity of their sentencing or use of discretion so that some are more pro-prosecution and others more pro-defense, then giving out a peremptory strike against a judge (for either side) will tend to promote uniformity. This is vital because the consequences of a crime should depend on the facts of the case and the considerations sanctione by law and not on the dumb luck of what judge you draw in the lottery.
And more...
I have been away for a while, but I need to post before the month is up. I've fogotten most of my stored-up criticism but there's always something fresh.
They just finished a report in which they concealed the identity of a teacher who had a concern of retribution, not for speaking out against an apparently stupid policy (but who knows, because we never get both sides), but because she admits violating the policy. This gets a black mark from me.
I think it would be ethical for the news to protect its source by concealing the fact that she did something for which she could legitimately be sanctioned, because revealing that fact would chill the willingness of sources to come forward. Sure. But after that, there were choices made that probably weren't right.
Maybe, if the source's confession of rule-breaking were not presented, she could have been shown and identified. We don't know if there was any reason to fear retribution for simply voicing disagreement with the policy. This is a public school system, and in principle, one is legall protected from retribution for speaking out in a private capacity on a matter of public policy. There was no hint in the broadcast that any reasonable apprehension derived from speaking out -- just from admitting insubordination in violating the rule.
In actual journalism, it's considered a good thing to reveal sources. Secret sources are not subject to public truth-testing and hence unreliable unless corroborated. It's always better to get a specific, identified source for a fact as opposed to keeping the evidence in your back pocket.
But I doubt this was much of a concern for Channel 4 News. My guess is that they chose to hide the identity of the source because it adds drama to conceal faces, distort voices, and pretend the source is like some kind of spy who risks grave peril for disclosing the dirty secret.
But here the dirty secret was the source's own wrongdoing. Regardles of whether the rule violated was justified, this same station that flaunted that wrongdoing, and its complicity in abetting it, has frequently in the past run special reports where it exposes individual wrongdoers. The distinction here appears to be the reporter didn't like the rule. The station made a value judgment that the rules they collaborate in enforcing are good rules, and this rule was a bad rule. They decide. They would not have to decide whether they liked the rule if their goal was simply to report the facts. The point of the story was not the violation of the rule, but the fact that the rule exists and is questionable. They could still point out that they'd received reports of the rule's violation, but to do so was less important than to be neutral.
They just finished a report in which they concealed the identity of a teacher who had a concern of retribution, not for speaking out against an apparently stupid policy (but who knows, because we never get both sides), but because she admits violating the policy. This gets a black mark from me.
I think it would be ethical for the news to protect its source by concealing the fact that she did something for which she could legitimately be sanctioned, because revealing that fact would chill the willingness of sources to come forward. Sure. But after that, there were choices made that probably weren't right.
Maybe, if the source's confession of rule-breaking were not presented, she could have been shown and identified. We don't know if there was any reason to fear retribution for simply voicing disagreement with the policy. This is a public school system, and in principle, one is legall protected from retribution for speaking out in a private capacity on a matter of public policy. There was no hint in the broadcast that any reasonable apprehension derived from speaking out -- just from admitting insubordination in violating the rule.
In actual journalism, it's considered a good thing to reveal sources. Secret sources are not subject to public truth-testing and hence unreliable unless corroborated. It's always better to get a specific, identified source for a fact as opposed to keeping the evidence in your back pocket.
But I doubt this was much of a concern for Channel 4 News. My guess is that they chose to hide the identity of the source because it adds drama to conceal faces, distort voices, and pretend the source is like some kind of spy who risks grave peril for disclosing the dirty secret.
But here the dirty secret was the source's own wrongdoing. Regardles of whether the rule violated was justified, this same station that flaunted that wrongdoing, and its complicity in abetting it, has frequently in the past run special reports where it exposes individual wrongdoers. The distinction here appears to be the reporter didn't like the rule. The station made a value judgment that the rules they collaborate in enforcing are good rules, and this rule was a bad rule. They decide. They would not have to decide whether they liked the rule if their goal was simply to report the facts. The point of the story was not the violation of the rule, but the fact that the rule exists and is questionable. They could still point out that they'd received reports of the rule's violation, but to do so was less important than to be neutral.
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