Must Read: The Death of Relativism

There is nothing else I can add to this brilliantly written piece by Judea Pearl, father of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl.

The Death of Relativism
The film A Mighty Heart goes too far in likening my son's murders to the Guantanamo regime
The Guardian

I used to believe that the world essentially divided into two types of people: those who were broadly tolerant, and those who felt threatened by differences. If only the former ruled the earth, I reasoned, the world might know some measure of peace. But there was a problem with my theory, and it was never clearer than in a conversation I had with a Pakistani friend who told me that he loathed people like George Bush who insisted on dividing the world into "us" and "them". My friend did not realize that he was in fact falling straight into the camp of people he loathed.

This is a political version of a famous paradox formulated by Bertrand Russell. The stronger you insist on the necessity of tolerance, the more intolerant you become toward those who disagree. The moral lesson is that there is no such thing as unqualified tolerance; ultimately, one must be able to expound intolerance of certain ideologies without surrendering the moral high ground normally liked to tolerance.

Which brings me to my son, Daniel Pearl. Thanks to the release of A Mighty Heart, the Angelina Jolie movie which premiers in the UK this week, Danny's legacy is once again receiving attention. Of course, no movie could ever capture exactly that magical combination of humor and integrity, gentleness and resilience, that made Danny so admired by so many. Still, traces of these qualities are certainly evident in A Mighty Heart, and viewers will leave the cinema inspired by them.

At the same time, I am worried that the film falls into a trap Russell would have recognised: the paradox of moral equivalence, of seeking to extend the logic of tolerance a step too far. You can see traces of this logic in the film's comparison of Danny's abduction with Guantanamo (it opens with pictures from the prison) and of al-Qaida militants with CIA agents. You can also see it in the comments of the movie's director, Michael Winterbottom, who wrote in the Washington Post that A Mighty Heart and his previous film, The Road to Guantanamo, were very similar: "There are extremists on both sides who want to ratchet up the levels of violence and hundreds of thousands of people have died because of this."

Important item for consideration

Linda Babcock has an article on ABC which should be required reading for all workers, particularly working women. In it, she talks about her research with Deborah Small, Michele Gelfand, and Hillary Gettman into women's willingness to negotiate higher salaries. While the particular study she discusses might not be very significant, some of her findings may be. Most strikingly, by not negotiating salaries, women give up an average of half a million dollars during their careers.

Hopefully, by hearing about research like this, more women will better understand the control they have over their employment and how they can empower themselves to earn more money throughout their lives.

How Avoiding Negotiations Hurts Women
ABC News

I spend most of Sept. 19 at the campus of Arizona State University, conducting a negotiation study with "Good Morning America" cameras rolling. The study was based on my paper with colleagues Deborah Small, Michele Gelfand and Hillary Gettman.

Study participants signed up for our project, knowing they would be paid between $5 and $12 for their time. When they arrived, they played a game of Boggle. When they were finished, our graduate student experimenter, Justin, went up to a participant and said, "Here is $5. Is $5 okay?"

We were, of course, watching to see who negotiated for more money. In the ASU study, we found that many more men negotiated than women. In our original paper, this gender difference was extremely large - more than eight times as many men as women negotiated (2.6 percent of women versus 22.9 percent of men.)

And not only did men negotiate more often, the cameras revealed another striking difference: The men seemed extremely confident in asking for more money, while the women who did negotiate seemed very tentative. This was reinforced by the interviews that Tory Johnson conducted with the participants after the study.

Must Read

The Daily Mail today has a story about a woman who will have her baby taken by the government. The reason? Several years ago, after being brutally raped by a serial rapist, she spent some time in a mental hospital. Despite being cleared by a psychiatrist and having a second one write a letter of recommendation on her behalf, local authorities in the U.K. are trying to seize the baby at birth and turn her over to foster parents and eventually for adoption. Despite never having a history of harming another individual, and despite having no psychiatrist or physician say that she's likely to harm her child after examining her, the social services in Northumberland assume she's going to suffer from Munchhausen's Syndrome by Proxy, wherein a caregiver intentionally induces illness or the appearance of illness in a child or disabled or elderly person in their care.

I don't think I can say anything that isn't already there. It's a pretty disturbing, frightening look at the nanny-state run unbelieveably amuck.

My baby will be taken from me the moment it's born
The Daily Mail

The daughter of teachers and with a glimmering academic future, Fran was delighted when she became pregnant. But social services discovered the illness she thought she'd put behind her - and will confiscate her daughter when she is born...

Fran Lyon is due to give birth to her first child - a daughter she has already named Molly - on January 3. But the prospects, far from being one of joyous anticipation, fills her with a dread that keeps her awake at night.

It's not because Fran doesn't want the child. She does. Desperately. And not because she is frightened of the pain of labour. She is prepared for that.

It is what happens afterwards that fuels Fran's anxiety. And there can be no preparation for that pain.

For within 30 minutes of birth, barring any medical complications, Molly will be handed by doctors to social workers. They have instructions to take away Fran's newborn baby and place her in foster care.

Must Read

Hitch nails another one...this is a must-read.

Fighting the "Real" Fight
Salon

Over the past few months, I have been debating Roman Catholics who differ from their Eastern Orthodox brethren on the nature of the Trinity, Protestants who are willing to quarrel bitterly with one another about election and predestination, with Jews who cannot concur about a covenant with God, and with Muslims who harbor bitter disagreements over the discrepant interpretations of the Quran. Arcane as these disputes may seem, and as much as I relish seeing the faithful fight among themselves, the believers are models of lucidity when compared to the hair-splitting secularists who cannot accept that al-Qaida in Mesopotamia is a branch of al-Qaida itself.

Objections to this self-evident fact take one of two forms. It is argued, first, that there was no such organization before the coalition intervention in Iraq. It is argued, second, that the character of the gang itself is somewhat autonomous from, and even independent of, the original group proclaimed by Osama Bin Laden. These objections sometimes, but not always, amount to the suggestion that the "real" fight against al-Qaida is, or should be, not in Iraq but in Afghanistan. (I say "not always," because many of those who argue the difference are openly hostile to the presence of NATO forces in Afghanistan as well as to the presence of coalition soldiers in Iraq.)

The facts as we have them are not at all friendly to this view of the situation, whether it be the "hard" view that al-Qaida terrorism is a "resistance" to Western imperialism or the "soft" view that we have only created the monster in Iraq by intervening there.

Brookings Scholars: "...we might win"

Even the liberal Brookings Institute has come around regarding the Iraq Surge. What should be self-evident to everyone paying attention is reflected in the Brookings op-ed in yesterday's New York Times. The Surge is working and stability is coming to Iraq.

A War We Just Might Win
The New York Times

VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

Everywhere, Army and Marine units were focused on securing the Iraqi population, working with Iraqi security units, creating new political and economic arrangements at the local level and providing basic services — electricity, fuel, clean water and sanitation — to the people. Yet in each place, operations had been appropriately tailored to the specific needs of the community. As a result, civilian fatality rates are down roughly a third since the surge began — though they remain very high, underscoring how much more still needs to be done.

In Ramadi, for example, we talked with an outstanding Marine captain whose company was living in harmony in a complex with a (largely Sunni) Iraqi police company and a (largely Shiite) Iraqi Army unit. He and his men had built an Arab-style living room, where he met with the local Sunni sheiks — all formerly allies of Al Qaeda and other jihadist groups — who were now competing to secure his friendship.

A Must Read from Christopher Hitchens

The Latest "Must Read" from Christopher Hitchens:

Peanut Envy
The latest absurdities to emerge from Jimmy Carter's big, smug mouth

Almost always, when former President Jimmy Carter opens his big, smug mouth, he has already made the psychological mistake that is going to reduce his words to absurdity. When he told the press last week that the Bush administration had aroused antipathy around the world, he might have been uttering no more than a banality. But no, he had to try to invest it with a special signature flourish. So, he said instead:

'I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history. The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including (those of) George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me.'

Leave aside the sophomoric slackness that begins a broken-backed sentence with the words "as far as" and then cannot complete itself. "Worst in history," as the great statesman from Georgia has to know, has been the title for which he has himself been actively contending since 1976. I once had quite an argument with the late Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who maintained adamantly that it had been right for him to vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980 for no other reason. "Mr. Carter," he said, "quite simply abdicated the whole responsibility of the presidency while in office. He left the nation at the mercy of its enemies at home and abroad. He was the worst president we ever had."

Read the rest here.

Must Read

There is nothing to say, other than this one should be required reading for everyone.

The Great Wall of Indifference
On patrol inside Baghdad's tensest neighborhood
by Bing West with Slate

Combag Outpost Fort Apache, Azamiyah. The news of late has been focused upon this Sunni district in northeast Baghdad, where materials for a 12-foot-high concrete barrier have been positioned along a main avenue. Of the dozens of barriers across the city being laid down - principally by U.S. military and contractors - Azamiyah was the one that caught international attention when the residents complained the government was "imprisoning and punishing them for the acts of a few" by forcing all cars to pass through check points. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, on a visit to Egypt, ordered the barrier halted, and the American ambassador agreed to comply.

On the surface, the episode is a triumph for the press in bringing to international attention an injustice, and for the prime minister in immediately responding and standing up for the rights of the Sunni minority.

On the ground, the episode is less inspiring. Here at Fort Apache in Azamiyah, Charlie Company is on the eight month of a 15-month tour in a combat outpost along the Tigris. (it was the setting for the 2005 documentary Gunner Palace.) Six of the first 110 soldiers to patrol in Azamiyah, a stronghold for Sunni insurgents and al-Qaeda operatives, have been killed. 1st Sgt. Kenneth J. Hendrix had been hoping Azamiyah would make headlines because of the valor of Spc. Ross McGinnis of Knox, Pa., who has been nominated for the Medal of Honor. On Dec. 4, while patrolling Azamiyah's narrow streets, a grenade was pitched into McGinnis' Humvee, and he fell on it, sacrificing his own life to save the lives of his fellow soldiers.

"We got hit here with two IED's yesterday," Capt. Nathaniel Waggoner yelled to me. "The trigger men are outsiders. They don't give a damn what happens to the locals."