j a c k *

Electric Bugaloo...

When I go into a theater I have some prior expectations.  That's a given.  I know what the producers want me to see, and that colors my experience.  However, I think what was especially misleading about Operation Iraqi Freedom was that it was billed as a whole new kind of war.  We were told that everything had changed, the old rulebooks were all torn up, and this would turn the world on its head.  But what do we get instead?  Another cheesy sequel.

But why should we have expected anything different?  This new production was created by nearly the exact same crowd that brought us Desert Storm.  If anything, the brains behind this latest offering are the second team, and it shows.  Anything remotely plausible or commendable about the original are either missing, distorted or accidentally parodied in the sequel.  The producers thought -- as do all money-obsessed executives with no concept of what actually matters -- that they could simply recycle the superficial details that worked before as if they were yesterday's newspapers and get easy profits from a public that would buy anything that was packaged slickly enough.  Not so.  Sources tell us this $250 billion dollar epic is so far in the hole that our great-great-grand children will still be paying for it decades from now.

As a reviewer I will admit that I didn't like the original, but I think that even die hard fans will be disappointed this time around.  The premise is nearly the same as Gulf War I, as I think its predecessor should now rightly be called.  Another President (the son of the President from the first one, if you can believe that) wages war on a rogue middle eastern regime led by a charismatic strongman.  You would think there would be plenty of venues in the region to choose from as well as plenty of suitable villians, but no -- it's Saddam and Iraq again.  That's originality for you.  But wait, it gets worse.

You may recall the Powell Doctrine.  This was one of the central themes of the first story and is quoted by nerdy fans at their conventions constantly.  More importantly it served as both the rationale for the war and the motivation behind the diplomatic and military action scenes we all recall so well (whether we liked them or not).  Fans will be especially shocked and dismayed to find that the Powell Doctrine has been entirely forgotten.  In its place is the utterly unsatisfying "Bush Doctrine," which -- improbably -- allows the President to decide to attack countries virtually at will, with no allies and whatever level of force he believes will work.  To rub salt in the wound, Colin Powell, who played the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the first time, shows up here as the ineffectual Secretary of State and spends the entire time pouting like a wounded sheep.  His performance at the U.N. is totally unbelievable, and although it's supposed to catapult us into the second act it just leaves the audience all saying "huh?"

Turns out there's a good reason for this "Bush Doctrine" nonsense.  The writers couldn't think up a justification for the war, a way to get allies, or a post-war plan.  Unlike the Saddam's aggressive action from the original with its canned (if somewhat strained to this reviewer) tales of horror and degradation, as a pretext this time we get hypothetical "Weapons of Mass Destruction."  This oft-repeated phrase from the first act is all but forgotten by the end of the invasion, where suddenly we're supposed to think that it was all about "liberating the Iraqi people" the whole time.  All that build up and they can't be bothered to even show us a single drum of nerve gas?  This kind of shoddy writing persists throughout.  The President is constantly given ridiculous lines (which he cannot deliver properly to save his life) like "smoke 'em out" and "bring it on."  Would anyone believe someone like that could get elected?  The new Secretary of Defense sounds like a post-modern English lit professor on acid.  Here's a sample:

As we know, there are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.

What kind of person talks like that?  It's simply absurd.

I imagine the producers thought that this war would be the remake some fans had been asking for -- a chance to start from scratch and do it right this time.  This time we'd kill Saddam and get candy and free oil from the grateful Iraqis.  The problem is this crew doesn't have even a fraction of the talent required to pull off that kind of fantasy.  So instead we got a crappy sequel.

I'm hoping that with the terrible box-office returns and the rather scathing reviews, that the whole "Gulf War" franchise will die a miserable but well-deserved death.  But who knows?  The merchandising has done well.  With the advent of the oxymoronic "no-bid contract", the third party licensees have made out like bandits.  Literally.  And producers tend to stick with a known premise rather than take a chance on something unproven to an almost insane degree.  They believe that ideas like universal health care or -- I don't know  -- feeding the hungry can never appeal to the average Joe.  They'd rather stick with an old standby like war, and fit it into the tired Gulf War framework because they're not creative enough to think of anything else.  What are we going to get next time: this President's brother deposing the next Iraqi strongman who used to be our ally?

They should at least come up with a better title for this fiasco.  Clearly Operation Iraqi Freedom is not appropriate (although the original title of Operation Iraqi Liberation -- rejected because it spelled out "O.I.L." -- was rather more appropriate).  For truth in advertising this really should have a typical sequel title of the form Gulf War II: something.  Here's some thoughts:

• Gulf War II: This Time it's Personal
• Gulf War II: Revenge of the Bush
• Gulf War II: The Euro Strikes Back
• Gulf War II: The Phantom Mushroom Cloud
• Gulf War II: The U.N. Can Suck It
• Gulf War II: 911 had something to do with this somehow
• Gulf War II: Send in the Clowns
• Gulf War II: There might have been WMDs
• Gulf War II: Patriot Missiles, Patriot Act
• Gulf War II: The $100 per Barrel Affair
• Gulf War II: The Road to Iran

And so on.  I'd read a book instead.

- jack*

UPDATE: Chairman of the joint chiefs, corrected.

Dangerous Morals...

The concept of Moral Hazard has been back in the news recently. While cited explicitly in the argument about Bush's HSA (Health Savings Accounts) plan, it figures implicitly in policy discussions about anything related to the social safety net or health care, especially as regards sex and reproduction. It should be no surprise that moral hazard is called out in arguments against things that conservatives hate, since it is -- at its heart -- a sham.

No one disagrees that some legal compacts, be they contracts between private entities or between the state and its citizens, can shift the incentive structure so as to favor certain specific behaviors. Rational actors generally consider the entire landscape of potential outcomes and pick the action that yields the greatest reward. Fire insurance, to give a canonical example, encourages arson. Since it protects the property owner from the devastation of an accidental fire, it may also reward them for a deliberate fire. Thus arson is the "moral hazard" of fire insurance.

Of course that's true to some extent. But as liberal ethicists we have to consider the entire tapestry of cause and effect. The insurance underwriters, who have a financial stake in the issue, spend a great deal of money and time investigating fires for evidence of arson. A prospective arsonist knows that the insurance investigators will be on the case, and that police will be more focused on suspects who benefit from the fire than those who do not. It may be that these additional downsides and expenses (largely distributed among the legitimate and lawful fire insurance holders) partially counteract the potential increase in arson risk.

The flip side of the argument -- that everyday life itself has moral hazards -- is almost never considered. For example, won't the small shopkeeper be less likely to pay protection to the mob if he has fire insurance? Thus insurance reduces the moral hazard of organized crime. One can also argue that losing a home or business to a freak fire is a moral hazard associated with a society based on ownership and self-sufficiency, one that can be reduced (though not eliminated) with the benefit of insurance. The very fact that bad things can happen to good people might be considered a moral hazard of morality itself, one we can mitigate through collective action and altruism.

In fact "moral hazard" is mostly a very minor consideration in any policy discussion, often operating equally on both sides and far overshadowed by much more significant factors. It's only when the specific moral risk is particularly abhorrent to an ideology that a moral hazard argument seems to take on more weight. Those that thrive on the moral hazard sham are allied -- loosely but consistently -- on the right.

The worst are probably the sex police, also called "moral values" voters in recent elections. For these social regressives, sex is the moral hazard that overshadows all others. The opposition to legal gay marriages and safe abortions are mainly reactionary attempts to maintain the stigma associated with "immoral" sex. Fearing that giving teens the tools to protect themselves might lead to them having sex, these parents instead prefer to neglect their moral duty to properly prepare their children for their inevitable sexual maturity. It apparently doesn't matter to them that abstinence-only sex education leads directly to far greater rates of STDs and unwanted pregnancies as long as it preserves their moral ideology. Likewise these lunatics would rather see thousands of women stricken by preventable disease than risk the"hazard" of immunizing their infant daughters.

In addition to gay couples and promiscuous teens, Conservatives also find poor people morally toxic. Most arguments for dismantling the social safety net rely at least party on the moral hazard assumption that making poverty slightly less unbearable will lead to an epidemic of freeloaders. These legions of lazy cheats who choose to be poor in order to live the high life on the backs of the hardworking taxpayer are strawmen so potent that they blot out all rational thought from the Conservative brain. The concrete benefits from liberal social programs can never quite seem to outweigh this incentive to be lazy, so Conservatives would rather scrap these programs than run the risk that even one person might be incented to work less.

Naturally the measure of any law, regulation or expectation is that it should contribute to the common good. Ideally we would like for the terms of the social contract to provide incentives for individual moral behavior -- but that is only part of the consideration for any change in policy or law. We must also look at the broader implications for social justice, economic fairness, and human compassion, and often these factors far outstrip concerns about behavioral incentives. Social norms themselves may also shift as result of legislative changes, sometimes threatening certain traditional moral values. If an argument against the liberalization of a law is challenged solely on the grounds of moral hazard, it may be best to question whether the values at risk are worth preserving at all.

- jack*