The One Percent Doctrine, part one of ?:Theory
There's a lot of food for thought in Suskind's book. The premise of this book is that, since 9-11, the US Government (via Cheney) has adopted the so-called "one percent" doctrine. To wit, if there is a "one-percent" chance that a catostrophic event will occur by terrorists, the government must treat that one-percent chance as an absolute certainty. Upon finishing this book, two thoughts leap to mind. First, there are three components to the mess this country is in--theory, practicality and personality. For purposes of this post, I'll stick to theory.
Put briefly, the "one percent doctrine" has no place in a liberal democracy with a Constitution that guarantees freedoms of speech, association, and religion (not to mention unreasonable searches and seziures). It is possible, for example, that a statute which proscribes remarks critical of the government, or the disclosure of government corruption, will prevent civil unrest. In fact, it's bloody likely. However, the premise of the freedom of speech and association is that this society will not permit the government to restrict that speech unless the government can show that it's actually the only way to prevent the harms it seeks to prevent. We live, in other words, with the 1% chance, in all aspects of our lives.
There are portions of the government that should act that way--as if each intelligence item can or might reveal a WMD plot in downtown Chicago. Butt there has to be another arm which says "whoa, that's not likely, let's get more information and facts before we start detaining/torturing/killing people." That portion of the United States government, at least as described in this book, is not running the show right now. In fact they are being completely marginalized.
Perhaps all this is old hat to some folks, but the book's a real eye-opener.
