Protect Yourself

With the occupiers unable to restore order to Iraq, The New York Times' John Tierney reports, the natives are turning to private and voluntary arrangements, from militias to security companies.

Good for them. I've got a question, though. Just a few months ago, we kept reading articles that said weapons ownership in Iraq was as widespread as it is in America. Now Tierney says Saddam "forbade private citizens to carry weapons, effectively outlawing the security industry." So what was the law?

Comments

[Kevin Carson]

junyo,

But how is a jury more likely to make an informed decision about the facts in a courtroom? By listening to both prosecution and defense present the best case they can, with all the facts and reason at their disposal, and then challenge each other's use of the facts? Or by listening to a neutral party present a dispassionate list of facts while pretending to be unable even to determine which facts are important?

The very judgement of what facts are relevant to a given article is based on one's view of the world. If a reporter digs for statistics that call the public statements of one figure or another into question, instead of quoting the official statements of "both sides" without comment, he is open to the charge of bias in what statistics he looked for. So "objectivity," as it actually exists, usually means disingenuously pretending to know less than one actually does, and adopting a studied pose of ignorance on any factual matter that relies on personal research beyond the statements of public spokesmen.

The idea of a "neutral" presentation of facts, independent of the case one is trying to make, is as illusory as the nineteenth century "cut and paste" historians' belief that it was possible to reduce history to a "neutral" list of facts, with no role for judgment in what facts were relevant.

[junyo]

K.C.,
I wouldn't characterize objective journalism as a "dispassionate list of facts". I would characterize it as fatually accurate and free from overt bias (yes, grylliade, there will always be a certain level of bias). But read the article. Repeatedly Tierney either states or repeats statements to the effect of 'US personnel stays safe behind walls while Iraqis die'. I think this would be a great suprise to the American men and women out on patrols in Iraq. I think this would be a great suprise to the native police force that the US is trying to train. None of these people were interviewed, nor their quotes included. That's either sloppy or extremely disingenuous. Is the sudden demand for security a newsworthy story? Sure is, but it would have been nice to know what the US, who's been trying to disarm everyone, thinks of armed security firms popping up. It would have been nice to know the extent of day to day crime to know whether this sort of thing was even warranted. But we got none of that, no prospective at all, other than the one the reporter chose to give, one clearly designed to change/reinforce opinions rather than to inform them.
Is the adversarial process very good at finding the truth? Sure. But that system mandates an advocate for the opposing sides of an issue. In the mordern news industry you're usually not going to see columnspace/airtime devoted to reporting multiple slants of a particular event. And then there's the simple fact that there may not be an advocate for the opposing viewpoint. And this is why reporters are supposed to play that middle ground, the prosecutor/defense attorney role, and leave persuasion to commentators. Letting a journalist only examine/present one side of a story is letting laziness off the hook. Couldn't try to overcome his/her bias, couldn't side that there might be something beyond their own viewpoint. IMO, a reporter incapable of stretching themselves to see the other side of an issue probably can't provide real news, only shallow partisan babble.

[Lefty]

Re: the illegal weapons issue, here's an unbiased article explain it along with an account of a failed raid on a weapons flea market.

"A new law, established June 15, in An Nasiriya allows each adult male in a household to possess one firearm, not to exceed the size on an AK-47, as long as the weapon is registered with the police department. Anything larger is outlawed, and any weapon not registered with the police can be confiscated."

http://www.usmc.mil/marinelink/mcn2000.nsf/lookupstoryref/200371214220

[Jason Ligon]

I think the Saddam private arms law went something like:

"Want the opportunity to oppress your neighbor? Sick of those nasty Kurds taking your jobs? Sign up now for Saddam's new youth group and get an AK-47 free! Bring ten friends, and you could be in the lottery for an RPG!"

[R.C. Dean]

"It's a column, Junyo. It's not supposed to be "nonbiased.""

I guess factual accuracy is too much to ask, even in a column.

I'm not aware of too many cases of US soldiers standing idly by while looting occurred under their noses, or of an order from Americans to the populace to disarm (an order allowing everyone to have a full-auto assault rifle does not strike me as "disarmament"). I doubt the US has any Gurkhas hanging around, and there is extensive patrolling activity, so the crack about retreating into fortresses is also unfounded.

[Anonymous]

R.C.: "Inaccurate" and "biased" are two different words, two different issues, two different meanings.

[Kevin Carson]

junyo,

You're quite right that an adversarial system requires a number of advocates for opposing viewpoints. And that's a lot less likely now that so many local media markets are in the hands of one newspaper chain (although the advent of the Net certainly offsets that). But that's an entirely different can of worms.

And I admit that I didn't initially read the article linked, which probably was guilty at the very least of rhetorical excesses without the factual ammunition to back them up. I guess the reference to "bias" just pushed some of my buttons. I don't concede the desirability of "neutrality," by any means; but I like advocacy to be GOOD advocacy.

[junyo]

Forbidding and preventing are two vastly different things. Forbidding people from having weapons means they couldn't establish a business based on the open carry/display of firearms, but that wouldn't necessarily prevent one from having/owning weapons.

[junyo]

"...looters started rampaging under the gaze of American soldiers, and it flourished after American occupation officials ordered the populace to disarm while they retreated into fortresses guarded by tanks and Nepalese Gurkhas."

Now that's some good ol' fashioned nonbiased reportin'. No agenda there!

[Jesse Walker]

It's a column, Junyo. It's not supposed to be "nonbiased."

Anyway, you may be onto something with your comment on the difference between forbidding and preventing. A related possibility is that people might have been allowed to possess such weapons in the home, but not to carry them on the street.

Yet another possibility, of course, is that either Tierney or the earlier reporters got the facts wrong.

Does anyone reading this actually know what the law was?

[Kevin Carson]

junyo,

This retreat from making any observations or deductions from what is observed, and restricting reporting to direct quotes from politicians and public spokesmen, is exactly what bothers me about the cult of "objectivity" among "professional" journalists today.

I'd much prefer a journalism that does not refrain from pointing out contradictions in official statements, or putting together pieces of evidence from different sources and drawing conclusions from them; we'd all get a greater wealth of fact if the press adopted the adversarial model of partisan advocacy of the nineteenth century, made their cases the best they possibly could, and were then subject to the best possible critique and cross-examination by the adversary press.

The present model makes reporters afraid to report what's right under their noses if it isn't in an official press release or statement, for fear of being called "biased." It confuses a pretence of stupidity and gullibility with "objectivity." It is only through a dialectic between adversaries making the best possible case they can, that truth advances.

[Flapjack]

Hard to discuss the "law" of a totalitarian thugocracy, but perhaps "average" people could not own firearms but large numbers were also part of different paramilitary or tribal structures (i.e. Baathist thugs) that were given arms by the regime.

[Kevin Carson]

On the substantive question of the law, there's also a distinction between owning and carrying.

[junyo]

Jesse, I assumed it wasn't a column because it's not under the editorial or Op/Ed sections of the Times, it's lumped in with "NYTimes.com > International > Middle East" as if it were regularly reported news. As to your second point, I communicate with a couple of expat Iraqis in the course of work and was told that the Saddam regime issued weapons to households based on percieved loyalty, but that weapon ownership beyond that was common and widespread. That doesn't really answer your point though...

K.C., there's a difference between encouraging journalists to analyze data, to point out disparities between public statements and actions/voting record for instance, and forming conclusions ("and based on this the Congressman is a lying bastard...")and presenting them as news. News and the neutral analysis thereof allows the electorate to make informed decisions. Commentary presented as news allows the media to insert themselves into the process to a inordinate degree, because people can find news that slants the way they want, and then bask in the allusion that their opinion has been validated by "facts".

What the colunmist/reporter here did was skew a fact based story. He used the tools and language of a propagandist rather than a journalist. Therefore instead of being able to just read the story for information, I now have to weight all his information and conclusions in light of his apparent bias.

[grylliade]

Therefore instead of being able to just read the story for information, I now have to weight all his information and conclusions in light of his apparent bias.

. . . Which you'd have had to do anyways. There ain't no such thing as an unbiased reporter; some are more effective at hiding or minimizing their bias than others, but it's nearly impossible to write a story without biasing it in some way. I'd rather deal with a reporter who wears his bias on his sleeve than one whose bias I have to guess at.