ABCDE OUTLOOK sunday, august 1, 2010 INSIDE
Leaking a wish list Daniel Ellsberg wants a few more national security secrets revealed. B4
Climate bill, meet health reform Energy activists need a new playbook. B2
BOOK WORLD, B6-8 Overlord of the flies William Golding’s blockbuster gave him the freedom to hate himself. B6 Love was his battlefield A tale of jobs and relationships, set to an ’80s soundtrack. B7 Passage to which India? As it hurtles to modernity, India is in danger of losing its soul. B8
5 BOOK REVIEW
To err, and err, and err is human
by Michael Washburn E
rror arrives cloaked in cer- tainty. In our politics, in our relationships and in the ad- vice we solicit, we’re at the mercy of an ever-present un-
reliability. Such are the lessons taught by Kathryn Schulz’s “Being Wrong” and David H. Freedman’s “Wrong,” complementary explorations of our re- lentless genius for getting it . . . wrong. The good news, from Schulz’s per-
BEING WRONG Adventures in the Margin of Error By Kathryn Schulz Ecco. 405 pp. $26.99 WRONG Why Experts Keep Failing Us — and How to Know When Not to Trust Them By David H. Freedman
Little, Brown. 295 pp. $25.99
spective, is that mistakes shouldn’t be condemned, at least not in any tradi- tional sense. Schulz draws on philoso- phers, neurosci- entists, psycho- analysts and a bit of common sense in an eru- dite, playful ru- mination on er- ror. “We are wrong about what it means to be wrong,” she writes. “Far from being a sign of intellec- tual inferiority, the capacity to err is crucial to human cogni- tion . . . [and] it
is inextricable from some of our most humane and honorable qualities: em- pathy, optimism, imagination, convic- tion, and courage.” By understanding the dynamics of error, we open a space for tolerance of both our own and oth- ers’ failings. This is error as pedagogy, and it does not come naturally. Being wrong, Schulz notes, feels ex-
actly like being right. We often fall vic- tim to the “cuz it’s true” dynamic: the self-serving circularity of taking one’s
wrong continued on B5
Michael Washburn is the assistant director of the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
My Pepco nightmare
by Lauren Ashburn O
n Wednesday morning, for the first time since Sun- day’s storm, we woke up in a cool room. We flicked a light switch and — wait for
it — a light came on. We looked at the clock, and it told us the time. The cordless phone rang. The coffee mak- er percolated, putting to shame the International Delight I’d whipped up the day before on my gas stove, very nearly singeing my eyebrows in the process. Mike Moss on WTOP radio told me about the 30,000 Pepco customers who still didn’t have power — but we were no longer among them. My 10- year-old son fired up iTunes and sat down to play “Spore.” My 2-year-old sang quietly, “Come on, vámonos! Everybody let’s go!” as she twirled to an episode of “Dora the Explorer” on TV.
And then, just seven hours later,
pfffffft. As Pepco giveth, Pepco taketh away. “I hate Pepco,” my son yelled as he stared dejectedly at his blank com- puter screen. At my own laptop down the hall, I had been preparing to hit send on a proposal that was due in an hour. Already behind on two other projects because we hadn’t had Inter- net access for three days, tears of frus-
pepco continued on B4
Lauren Ashburn is a former managing editor of USA Today. She has been a Pepco customer, off and on, since 1989.
Imagining Obama’s response to an Iranian missile crisis
2009 TEST-FIRING OF A MEDIUM-RANGE MISSILE AT AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION IN IRAN; ISNA NEWS AGENCY VIA AGENCE FRANCE-PRESS/GETTY IMAGES I by Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh
magine a moment when President Obama has only two alternatives: prepare to live with a nu- clear-armed Iran or embark on the perilous path of military action to stop it. Imagine that diplomacy has run its course,
after prolonged and inconclusive negotiations; that surging international oil prices have un- dercut the power of economic sanctions against Tehran; and that reliable intelligence says the Islamic republic’s weapons program is very close to reaching its goal. Facing such conditions, would Obama use force against Iran? Former CIA chief Michael Hayden believes such a move would be necessary, recently tell- ing CNN that a U.S. military strike against Ira- nian facilities “seems inexorable” because di- plomacy is failing. “We engage. They continue to move forward,” Hayden warned. “We vote for sanctions. They continue to move forward. We try to deter, to dissuade. They continue to move forward.”
Obama has also emphasized Tehran’s own
actions as the determining factor in a U.S. re- sponse. “We offered the Iranian government a clear choice,” he said on July 1, when he signed the Iran Sanctions Act. “It could fulfill its inter- national obligations and realize greater securi- ty, deeper economic and political integration with the world . . . or it could continue to flout its responsibilities and face even more pressure and isolation.” And a few days later, the president stressed in an interview with Israeli television that al- though his administration will “continue to keep the door open for a diplomatic resolution . . . I assure you that I have not taken options off the table.” As a practical matter, however, Obama’s deci- sion on the use of force would hinge on factors well beyond Iran’s timetable for obtaining a bomb. In fact, the political, military and policy
iran continued on B5
Steven Simon served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration and is a co-author of the forthcoming “The Sixth Crisis: Iran, Israel, America, and the Rumors of War.” Ray Takeyh is a former adviser to the Obama administration on Iran and the author of “Guardians of the Revolution: Iran and the World in the Age of the Ayatollahs.” They are senior fellows at the Council on Foreign Relations.
The challenges of immigration are macro. Arizona’s law offers micro solutions.
down in defiance of Washington, Ari- zona achieved both objectives as soon as the law became a national contro- versy this spring. Remember Proposition 187? That
1994 California ballot initiative also combined anxiety over illegal immi- gration with a big dose of anger at an ineffectual federal government. Cali- fornia voters had their rant on Election Day, but, like SB 1070, Prop 187 got tied up in federal litigation, and there it died — legally speaking. The voters’ ire lived on politically. Before the 1996 elections, President Bill Clinton and congressional Democrats put strict limits on immigrants’ access to welfare and health programs, and they en- acted the toughest immigration en- forcement measure in a generation. SB 1070 has the potential to have an
even greater impact on the debate over immigration, even if it dies in court. The stakes are higher this time. We are into the third year of a brutal economic downturn, and Washington gridlock has had a stranglehold on immigration policy for even longer. Immigration policy needs to be about a lot of things, including nation- al identity and security, but right now it needs to be about getting the econo- my’s pulse up and improving our glob- al economic competitiveness. These challenges are macro. The Arizona law offers micro solutions. It argues that immigration can be a law enforcement matter and pushes the decision-mak- ing down to the state and local level.
immigration continued on B4
Roberto Suro is a professor at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. on
washingtonpost.com
3He will discuss this article on Monday at noon at
washingtonpost.com/liveonline.
A B DC MD VA B
myths about the Bush tax cuts. B3
Arizona set a trap. Obama fell in.
by Roberto Suro
rizona’s immigration law was never going to solve the problem of illegal immigra- tion. That is not its purpose. Instead it is an invitation to a shootout in which there will be no win- ners. It is more of a provocation than an attempt to enact policy, and as a protest against Washington’s failure to fix a broken immigration system, it resonates. A preliminary injunction issued by
U.S. District Judge Susan R. Bolton on Wednesday halted several major parts of the law, but it really did nothing more than set the terms for more liti- gation. A tortured path to the U.S. Su- preme Court seems likely, though even the nine justices won’t be able to settle the heart of the matter. If Arizona ulti- mately wins in court, states could end up obliged to fashion their own immi- gration controls. If the federal govern- ment wins, President Obama could find himself running for reelection on a devilish issue he has done his best to avoid. The authors of Arizona’s SB 1070 set out to accomplish two main goals: They wanted to attack legal precedents that have given the federal government almost total say over immigration mat- ters since the 1890s under a doctrine known as “preemption.” They argue that Washington has failed to control illegal migration, so states should have a chance. They also wanted national at- tention for their solution: a strategy they call “attrition through enforce- ment.” The idea is that if illegal im- migrants constantly fear arrest by state and local cops, they’ll leave the country on their own. By promising a crack-
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152