Not the Pentagon Papers
The release of classified documents on the Afghanistan war by Wikileaks to three major newspapers has been compared to the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret study of US Vietnam War. But this is an inaccurate comparison: in fact, the differences between the two whistle-blowing incidents highlight how today’s Wikileaks story is much less meaningful in political terms, and less likely to shift views on US involvement in the war.
The “Pentagon Papers” was the unofficial name given to United States–Vietnam Relations, 1945–1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense. The report was commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967, and it was published the following year. Daniel Ellsberg, a contributor to the study, leaked its contents to the New York Times in 1971.
The first major difference between the Pentagon Papers and the Wikileaks Afghanistan documents is given away by a word in the official title – that it is a “study”. The Papers are a historical study of US political and military involvement in Vietnam. It is an analytical work of synthesis, reflecting the views of senior officials and policy-makers.
In contrast, the Wikileaks documents are a massive dump of undigested, raw reports. They are from the field, generally from low-level military operatives. As Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post notes, it is hard to make anything out of: "At 1850Z, TF 2-2 using PREDATOR (UAV) PID insurgents emplacing IEDs at 41R PR 9243 0202, 2.7km NW of FOB Hutal, Kandahar. TF 2-2 using PREDATOR engaged with 1x Hellfire missile resulting in 1x INS KIA and 1x INS WIA. ISAF tracking #12-374." Applebaum says that Wikileaks inadvertently has proven the need for the mainstream media, in order to interpret this gobblydegook. But even when we learn from the New York Times that this means “Predator drone firing a missile at men who were planting roadside bombs”, it still remains a fragment of information. Continue reading→
The special relationship
Well, an end to my radio silence. I travelled to London last week, and thought I’d have time to post from there, but discovered that I did not. As it happens, the news while I was in London was about America – namely, David Cameron’s trip to America.
The Prime Minister first visited Washington for talks with Obama and members of congress, and then he went up to New York to talk business and eat a hot dog with Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It was big news in the UK, but much less so in the US. (I asked Americans what the reaction was to Cameron’s visit, and the general response was, “he was here?”)
At the start of his trip, Cameron sought to lower expectations. He talked of the UK as a “junior partner” to the US, and said the relationship should be “solid not slavish”. In a number of respects, this level-setting made sense. The “special relationship” has always been one-sided (the UK talks about it, the US doesn’t). And by playing down the importance of the visit, Cameron avoided heightened UK media scrutiny, like the kind Gordon Brown received during trip to the G-20 in Pittsbugh last fall, when every gesture was examined for signs of a snub from the Americans.
But I get the sense that this “we’re just the junior partner” stuff is going too far in the other direction. It’s as if Cameron hopes that the UK will be seen as such a modest and unassuming small-time player that it won’t get criticized for what it does in the world, because it doesn’t amount to much. But there are significant US-UK ties still: intelligence and commercial interests spring to mind. Cameron’s posture seems more like a defensive response to the type of criticism that Blair was Bush’s poodle, and in doing so, he gives some credence to that outlook. Continue reading→
This week’s articles of note
"An economics blind to human ingenuity," The Guardian, by Daniel Ben-Ami
"Economics behaving badly," The New York Times, by George Loewenstein and Peter Ubel
"The fatwa: Ayatollah Khomeini and the legacy of the Salman Rushdie affair," Foreign Policy, by Kenan Malik
"Hayek: the back story," The New York Times Book Review, by Jennifer Schuessler
"Frank Furedi on the crisis in education," FiveBooks. Interview with Frank Furedi by Georgie Day
George Steinbrenner
George Steinbrenner will be forever known as the owner of the New York Yankees who restored the baseball team to greatness. After dominating baseball in the first half of the 20th century, the team became mediocre in the 1960s. Following Steinbrenner’s purchase of the team in 1973 for $10 million, the Yankees won seven World Series championships and the value of the team increased to $1.6 billion.
Steinbrenner will also be remembered for his outsized personality, as an icon of New York. In response to his death this week, many have praised him. In fact, there has been a tendency to gloss over Steinbrenner’s faults. On WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show, Ibrahim Abdul-Matin saidwe shouldn’t look at what we didn’t like about him, but instead lean towards “fond memories”. Of course there is a longstanding rule about not speaking ill of the dead, but I think this approach misses out on what was unique and colorful about Steinbrenner.
Many younger people only know Steinbrenner as the soft buffoon character in “Seinfeld” (who never showed his face). Or as the frail man of recent years, who could be found crying from time to time. But in his heyday, he was brusque and obnoxious, and known to be hell to work for. If you want a better idea of Steinbrenner, rent “The Bronx is Burning”, which is about the “Bronx Zoo” Yankees of the 1970s (although the actor Oliver Platt doesn’t do the man justice, you will get a better idea of what Steinbrenner meant).
Steinbrenner went through 23 managers – including hiring and firing Billy Martin five times. He would ridicule particular players, such as when he labeled Dave Winfield “Mr. May” for his lack of production in the October post-season, or when he called Hideki Irabu “fat toad”. He was twice barred from baseball: the first time in 1974 after pleading guilty to making illegal political contributions to Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign, and the second time in 1990, after paying $40,000 to gather damaging information on Winfield. It could be argued that the Yankees’ four championships during the 1996-2000 period, and success afterwards, were due precisely because Steinbrenner was not involved in the team from 1990-1993: it was during that time that the Yankees rebuilt their farm system, and signed and developed what would become known as the “core four” (Jeter, Rivera, Posada and Pettitte). Continue reading→
Thank you for exterminating the Prospect Park geese!
The New York Times reports that wildlife biologists working with the federal Agriculture Department last week gassed to death nearly 400 geese in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.
The reason for the extermination was to cull the large geese population which threaten airplane flights over the city. Prospect Park is near to both JFK and La Guardia airports. “The thing to always remember in this New York situation is that we are talking about aviation and passenger and property safety,” said Carol Bannerman, spokeswowan.
The Times notes that the reduction in geese has increased since some of them flew into a US Airways flight in January 2009, which forced an emergency landing in the middle of the Hudson River. Indeed, I recall that, at that time, Greg Pollowitz wrote an interesting post in the National Review’s “Planet Gore” blog on how New York City’s lack of control over the geese population, due to environmental concerns, might have contributed to the “Miracle on the Hudson” incident. In particular, Pollowitz noted a 2004 bill sponsored by New York Senator Charles Schumer that provided funding to an organization called “Geesepeace” in order to facilitate a non-lethal “solution” to the excessive number of geese.
According to the Times, many Brooklyn residents were “mortified” to learn of the mass euthanasia of the geese. “It’s a horrible end,” said Anne-Katrin Titze. Seth Kaplan, who had recently distributed a video of the goslings, was said to be “crushed”. Continue reading→
The LeBron “Decision”
Back from vacation in the hills of the Wild West, with temperature of 75 degrees and zero humidity (eat your heart out those of you sweltering on the East Coast!) and where I heard virtually no news. What did I miss? It seems like last week’s big issue was the LeBron James prime-time TV show called “The Decision”. And from what I’ve heard about it, I’m glad I missed it.
James’ announcement that he would sign as a free-agent with the Miami Heat basketball team was big news. It garnered more “buzz” than almost any other sporting or current affairs event in the US this year, according to Zeta Interactive, which measures “buzz” by keyword searches. Zeta finds that the buzz around LeBron was more than Tiger Woods’ golf comeback, the Toyota recall and Bernard Madoff. As the Wall Street Journal noted, “Lady Gaga hasn’t drawn as much interest all year as LeBron James did in the single day surrounding his decision to play for Miami – and he didn’t even have to go to a Mets game half-naked.”
The circus around “The Decision” was ridiculous. Everyone knew that if James left his hometown of Cleveland it would be a huge blow to that city. Dumping Cleveland on a national TV special – that he himself arranged – was a really poor “decision”. No wonder his jersey was burnt by his former Cleveland fans. And he came across as narcissistic (referring to himself in the third person numerous times) and cynical (using a charity to cover-up was what clearly a self-promotion exercise). He went from likeable to unlikeable in record time.
But LeBron’s detractors came off badly too. Cavaliers’ owner Dan Gilbert called James’ move an act of “cowardly betrayal,” and he later told the Associated Press that he believed that James quit during some playoff games. As Mike Wise in the Washington Post put it, Gilbert’s rant was “the kind of psycho, ex-girlfriend letter that certifies LeBron made the right decision.” Indeed, if Gilbert really had such a low opinion of James, why did he offer him hundreds of millions of dollars to stay? Continue reading→
On vacation this week…
... will return on Monday, July 12th.
This week’s articles of note
"America may never be the same," The New Republic, by William Galston
"California's new energy divide," National Journal, by Ronald Brownstein
"Citizenship should remain a birthright," Reason, by Steve Chapman
"Financial regulation: not all on the same page," The Economist
"Is McDonald's breaking the law by putting toys in Happy Meals?" Time, by Sean Gregory
"Architecture in the age of Gehry," Vanity Fair, by Matt Tyrnauer
The problem with “cyberbullying”
The New York Times on Monday ran a front-page feature about how school administrators and teachers were being pulled into cases of "cyberbullying" of students outside of school hours.
The Timesarticle admits that "cyberbulling" is an "imprecise label for online activities ranging from barrages of teasing texts to sexually harassing group sites". In a 2010 study, an organization called the Cyberbulling Research Center defined cyberbulling as "willful and repeated harm" inflicted via phones and computers. This organization claims that one-in-five middle students had been affected. The Times piece highlights that it is not clear who is responsible for dealing with these conflicts: the family, the police or schools.
This issue is problematic, for a number of reasons. Using concepts like "cyberbulling" is a way to create the impression that something fundamentally new is happening, due to the use of new technology. In fact, conflicts among kids have existed for ages. "Bullying" should refer to severe harassment and violence, which is thankfully rare. But today there is an expansion of the concept of bullying to cover ordinary antagonisms among schoolchildren. By adding "cyber" in front of "bullying", and indicating that anyone who writes a mean text is a bully, the idea becomes even more pervasive.
Furthermore, widening the concept of bullying gives a reason for more adult supervision and greater intervention in the lives of teens. Already, this is a generation that does not have enough independent interaction, which is the means by which adolescents learn to negotiate socially and eventually become adults. Continue reading→
The Russian “spies”
Apparently we’ve had Russian spies in our midst, pretending to be ordinary folks, for more than a decade. They exchanged orange bags at train stations, used invisible ink and buried money in fields. Who knew the Cold War was still raging all this time?
The New York Times and others
