Oliver Kamm: An Apology
In the comments below I attribute to Oliver Kamm the following statements:'victory in Iraq' and the 'victory in the war against Terror'
Oliver has pointed out that:
"Incidentally, I don't believe I've ever used the phrases you attribute to me...Might an apology be in order for your having sacrificed accuracy for a fluent one-liner? " [for those who need the bit in between the ... see the comments below]
He's right. The post I was dimly recollecting, in fact went like this:
"These figures ...[referring to US government figures on terrorists casualties] are...nonetheless a useful criterion for assessing the outcome of Green Party deliberations. Messily, with setbacks and moral compromises and the enduring risk that if our enemies find the opportunity they will do something truly terrible to our citizens, we are defending ourselves.The strategy adopted by the US and British governments is right and far-sighted in countering threats posed by forces as nihilistic and destructive as any faced by western civilisation in the past century"
So not victory, but 'messily defending ourselves', which is a rather different story. Nevertheless in itself it's an interesting piece. The metric Oliver (at least in this article) used to decide we are defending ourselves was the US government's tally of the number of terrorist attacks, which they claimed was the lowest in 30 years.
On this thought it appears things were not what they first seeemed. Oliver continues:
"The apology, unfortunately, should be from me. My inferences from the BBC report were unjustified, as it is now (10 June) clear that the report relied on flawed data that undercounted the number of terrorist incidents and fatalities."
Why the apology? It appears that rather than the lowest in 30 years, as the Administration originally claimed they were the highest in 20 years. The Admnistration puts it down to a clerical error.
Anyway as a useful criteria, it's all rather depressing. In other words, we aren't defending ourselves, messily or otherwise, we are losing.
posted by Matthew @ 8/02/2004 10:02:00 PM
Comments: 0
