The 1% Doctrine

If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It's not about our analysis ... It's about our response.  –Dick Cheney, November, 2001

    The 1% Doctrine, also called the Cheney Doctrine, is a standard of action implemented by the U.S. since 9/11.  Pakistani scientists are mentioned in the quote, but the issue involves much more than them.  The quote and the name are from the book The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind from 2006.  The Doctrine has expanded to other situations, the reasoning behind it is a fallacy, Cheney had ulterior motives for applying the doctrine in limited cases, it fails CAWTBER , and it should be discontinued.

    The Cheney Doctrine released George W. Bush from his area of greatest weakness—the analytical abilities so prized in the U.S.’s professional class--and freed his decision making to rely on impulse and improvisation, according to the book.  This ties in with negative instinctual behavior as described in Instinct vs. Intellect.  In addition to naming the doctrine, the book also relates historical events of the time leading up to the invasion of Iraq and the election of 2004.

    Although once #3 on the New York Times bestseller list, the book is currently on sale new at Amazon for $0.49 indicating that the book arguably has little current value, but the Doctrine should be addressed because it is apparently still in widespread effect.  A New York Times review of the book, Personality, Ideology and Bush's Terror Wars (June 20, 2006), was harsh on the Bush Administration saying that the doctrine was simply to sell predetermined initiatives to the American public.  The instant discussion is not another book review and is about the Doctrine, not the book.

    While some action was taken at first concerning the Pakistani scientists, they were later freed.  (The back-story on the scientists is here (2004).)  The impetus from the 1% Doctrine was used in invading Iraq where lame evidence on weapons of mass destruction was used to justify a war that has cost more lives and damage than the original 9/11 attack.  We are still paying the price of the invasion of Iraq and the doctrine is being used in other scenarios.

Zimmerman’s 1% Solution

    By projection, in George Zimmerman’s mind, if there was even a 1% chance that Trayvon Martin was a major threat, then Zimmerman was justified in confronting Martin.  The abject failures of Cheney’s reasoning in invading Iraq, and Zimmerman’s reasoning in provoking Martin discount the 1% Doctrine.  As explained in Dick and Trayvon … Connect the Dots (July 5, 2013), by Judy Balaban, the reasoning behind the 1% Doctrine has evolved into Your Home is Your Castle and Stand Your Ground laws.  This reasoning has also slipped into other areas such as over arming police agencies and over searching airline passengers.  Balaban wrote, it absolved us, as a nation, from the responsibility of having to retreat or prove anything in order to justify using force.

    Balaban said, much like an armed George Zimmerman riding around to look for a problem in Sanford on the night he shot Trayvon Martin, the Bush administration looked around the Middle East for a problem, decided it had found one in Iraq where nobody had attacked us and where there was no hard evidence that anyone was planning to, and shaped its suspicions into a rationale for invading Baghdad.

    In similar current issues, as examples, if there is even a 1% chance that a 95-year-old man who uses a walker might endanger the lives of police, then the 95-year-old should be tasered to death for refusing medical attention.  If there is even a 1% chance that a 3-year-old handicapped child might be a terrorist, then he should be pulled out of an airline search line and confronted.  These trigger happy actions are the result of failures in policy.

The Doctrine is a Fallacy

    The idea that the 1% Doctrine is a good way to make decisions is a fallacy.  Decision Theory examines methods of decision making and you can get an idea of the complexity of this study here.  Some methods of making decisions under uncertainty are the law of large numbers, the axiomatic approach, the Von Neumann-Morgenstern utility theorem, and Bayes probability.  The null hypothesis in statistics is a standardized method which is often based on a 95% probability.  The 1% Doctrine is a silver bullet that seeks to explain away complex procedures such as these with a simple solution—a lazy way for an administrator to make what appears to be an effective decision.  (The silver bullet is a magic bullet used to kill werewolves and used by the Lone Ranger for trick shots.)

    The 1% Doctrine is similar to something in Decision Theory called the Precautionary Principle.  The idea is that events with low probability and high impact deserve special attention.  The Precautionary Principle is an argument associated with global warming:  even if the probability is low, the impact would be so high that we should take extreme action now to prevent it.  The Republicans obviously have been denying global warming and so have been discounting the Precautionary Principle.  But phrasing it a different way, if there is even a 1% chance of global warming then we should take extreme measures to prevent it.  Apply this to Saudi Arabia:  given that 15 of the 19 attackers from 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, if there is even a 1% chance that Saudi Arabia was involved in 9/11, then we should attack Saudi Arabia.  These examples demonstrate that Cheney does not really believe the 1% Doctrine himself or else he would apply it to global warming and Saudi Arabia as well as to invading Iraq.

    The uneven application of the doctrine can be seen in other areas.  Cheney did not apply it to the threat prior to 9/11 or else more actions would have been taken to prevent 9/11:  if there is even a 1% chance that airplanes can be hijacked and flown into buildings, etc.  Consider chewing gum and throat cancer.  Presuming that 1% or more of throat cancer victims chew gum, if there is even a 1% chance that chewing gum causes throat cancer, then chewing gum should be outlawed.  (This is not saying that chewing gum should actually be outlawed but rather is a demonstration that the doctrine is flawed.)

    The issue in this discussion is not so much whether we should go to war, global warming is real, or chewing gum causes throat cancer, but whether the 1% Doctrine is a valid method of making decisions--and it is not.  As more evidence, is the cut off strictly at 1.00% or could it be, say, 0.5%?  What if the odds are 0.99%?  Is 0.99% close enough to 1%?  The answer is that the odds in these situations are not known to that accuracy, making the 1% Doctrine not based on 1%, at all, but rather based on the idea of low probability:  if somebody has a belief, justified or not, that there is any chance, then action should be taken, which brings us to irrationality and paranoia (see next paragraph).  But the doctrine is not really just based on low probability or else it would also be applied to global warming, invading Saudi Arabia, and outlawing chewing gum.  The doctrine is based on low probability and an ulterior motive to already take action on some issue.

    The idea to take action based on any belief, however small and not necessarily justified, plays on paranoia.  Fear, as an instinct, can have some legitimate benefits but can also work against us in modern times.  Fear can be detrimental as an unbridled instinct and can be used to manipulate people by corporate leaders and politicians (see Instinct vs. Intellect).  Paranoia is irrational fear.  Lately, paranoia is joked about as being overcautious in a positive way:  if there is even a miniscule chance that someone is going to attack you—oh, wait, that is the 1% Doctrine!  It is paranoia as policy!  The problem with paranoia as a way of living is that if you irrationally treat people as enemies, then they do in fact tend to turn against you—in a way it is a self-fulfilling policy.

    The 1% Doctrine creates more risk than it resolves resulting in a worse case scenario than before.  If you have a 1% probability that someone is plotting against you, then you have a 99% probability that they are not plotting against you.  If you attack them, this makes you the aggressor, not them, and increases the likelihood that they are going to attack you back, so the probability that they are going to attack you has just increased from what it was before, 1%, to something higher.  You just made the situation worse!

    The idea that the 1% Doctrine is a good way to make decisions is a fallacy.  Decision Theory has formal methods of analyzing decisions and the 1% Doctrine is not a true silver bullet answer.  The 1% Doctrine is another label for the Precautionary Principle used in analyzing global warming decisions.  The Republicans only use the 1% Doctrine for actions that they already want to take and they do not apply the doctrine evenly with other issues.  The 1% Doctrine results in irrational decisions, such as outlawing chewing gum because it might cause throat cancer, and promotes paranoia as policy.  The 1% Doctrine makes situations worse by creating more risk than what existed before.

Ulterior Motives

    Given that Cheney selectively used the 1% Doctrine (for invading Iraq and not for global warming, for example), what were his other motives for starting the Iraq war?  The answer is easy, money:

• Cheney's Halliburton Made $39.5 Billion on Iraq War
• Dick Cheney: War Profiteer
• War Profiteers How Dick Cheney lined his pockets
• Cashing In - Fortune In Profits Await Bush Circle After Iraq War
• How Bush & Cheney benefit from Iraq War
• Cheney's Halliburton stock options rose 3,281% last year, senator finds
• The 25 Most Vicious Iraq War Profiteers
• Contractors Reap $138 Billion from Iraq War, Cheney’s Halliburton #1 with $39.5 Billion
• Halliburton Makes a Killing on Iraq War
• Who Profits from War?

    Of course, some people will say the money had nothing to do with it, or that he deserved the money because he worked hard for it.  Probably some people believe that this is how capitalism/democracy is supposed to work anyway:  get government influence in order to help yourself make money.

A CAWTBER Fail

    The 1% Doctrine fails CAWTBER because it is far on the fail end of the sliding scale.  The doctrine has a 99% chance of bumping elbows and thus is a fail.

Discontinue this Doctrine

    To overcome this irrational doctrine, use reasoning like that used in Instinct vs. Intellect:  Even though I am afraid of another culture and even though my government is using this fear to persuade me that it is ok for the government to spend billions of dollars on a new war (instead of infrastructure, education, owed retirements, etc.), I have to accept the reasoning that a 1% probability of being correct actually increases risk instead of reducing risk, and that the corporate leaders are making huge profits by manipulating my fears.  The politicians are also manipulating my fear for their own gains.  Therefore, I do not support the 1% Doctrine.

Conclusion

    The 1% Doctrine is a trigger happy standard of action used by the U.S. since 9/11 to pretend to justify military force in pre-determined cases.  Since you can suspect anyone of doing anything, the 1% Doctrine can be used to justify whatever you want.  The arbitrary use of the 1% Doctrine (for invading Iraq, but not for global warming, for example) demonstrates this.  The profitability of using the Doctrine for some people demonstrates an ulterior motive for this arbitrary use.  The extended use of the Doctrine for such things as stand-your-ground laws and airport searches turns would-be victims into aggressors and fails CAWTBER.

1% Doctrine:
A trigger happy blunder
That increases risk.

Suggested Comments:

  Should a percentage cutoff even be used?  If so, what should it be?  99%?  95%?  50%?  Something else?

Kings vs. Consent

If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.

–George Bush

Numerous types of governments fail CAWTBER, including authoritarianism, monarchism, dictatorship, aristocracy, militarism, plutocracy, autocracy, despotism, totalitarianism, and theocracy.  Other types and practices of government might fail, as well, depending on the circumstances.  The issue is not so much assigning pass-fail labels to types of governments as it is analyzing what the governments do in practice.  A democracy, for example, might pass CAWTBER in some areas and fail CAWTBER in other areas, depending upon governmental actions.

Consider the general idea of an historical king as a meme for a governmental authority figure that must be obeyed.  As such, this meme bumps elbows with the citizenry and fails CAWTBER.  An historical king would likely not have been elected, but a modern governmental official matching the king meme might have been elected.  The king meme is pervasive in our society even though we have a democracy and are led by presidents.  In the U.S., We pledge allegiance to the republic, yet our lifestyle is rife with loyalty to monarchs.  Do we as a nation believe in democracy or authoritarian control?  Do we act the same as we think we believe?

A meme is an idea that is passed between people in an evolutionary way somewhat like genes are passed in DNA.  The word was coined by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene.  Here is a good external explanation of memes:  http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/What-Defines-a-Meme.html.  The king meme as used here is more than just the definition of a king; it is the idea passed down through the ages that an authority figure, sometimes respected, is in control and should be obeyed.  Most of us have some idea of historical European kings, but consider also other non-king examples of these kinds of authority figures.  Consider the god of the Old Testament.  Consider Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book.  Of course, Hitler.  These do not have the title of king, but all are authority figures, like a king, that people learned to follow (or were forced to follow).  It’s good to be king!  Does Buddha fit this meme?  Not so much, because kill the Buddha is a teaching that what is important is the teachings of Buddha, and not the Buddha, himself.  In modern times, top-down corporate management fits the king meme:  the boss does not care what you think, just do what he says.  These other king meme manifestations, as well historical kings, bump elbows with their citizenry (or employees) and fail CAWTBER.  King meme in this discussion henceforth refers to all types of authority figures that must be obeyed.

The king meme has carried over into our culture even after a war against a king over 200 years ago.  Consider that we have prom queens and homecoming kings.  There is no such thing as a burger president or president of the hill.  We have king for a day, King Kong, kingpin, and king size.  Although we might believe in a democracy, we seem to think in terms of kings.  Some say that a constitutional monarchy is not really a monarchy—I say that either England is just pretending to have a queen or they are pretending not to have one.  In the U.S. we are starting to have successions of governmental leaders such as George and George W. Bush.  Geb Bush might be next.  Hillary might follow Bill Clinton.  Do you think we as a citizenry might feel comfort in having not just a king, but a royal family, in charge?  Media interest on the personalities of candidates, as opposed to their positions on issues, further degrades progress towards the move away from king memes in government.

Not all authority figures fit the king meme and fail CAWTBER.  Sometimes it is best to turn it over and trust an authority figure.  An example is a car mechanic who takes apart your car and presumably sees the problem to fix while you are at work earning the money to pay hir bill.  Another example is a surgeon who has you under the knife while you are asleep.  Sometimes you are in situation where you just have to trust other people being in control.  Should you always trust all surgeons and always trust all car mechanics?  No, it is not a matter of assigning pass-fail labels on types of people as it is analyzing what people do in practice—the same person might pass CAWTBER in one endeavor and fail CAWTBER in another endeavor.

Even with trusted authority figures, reason can play a part in addition to blind trust of authority.  Even the surgeon and the car mechanic is likely to explain things to you and ask for your opinion on how to proceed when possible.  Shouldn’t a government be the same way?

The opposite of the king meme is consensual government—rule by consent of the governed.  This can be rather difficult and controversial to define.  Being ruled by an elected official makes some sense in that by voting you have given someone consent to govern.  Does that pass CAWTBER?  It depends.  Does the elected official then steal your property and throw you in jail without cause?  Here is another scenario.  Only the very richest people can determine who can run for office.  Generally undesirable candidates are put on the ballots and the citizens then vote for the best of the worst candidates.  The winning candidate then appoints a judge that has a term for life.  Is that judge then ruling with consent of the governed?  This could be argued both ways.   Does this judge situation pass CAWTBER?  That depends on what the judge does more than how ze was put in office.

Lysander Spooner questioned whether the U.S. Constitution met the criteria of being consent of the governed.  You did not sign it, or vote on it.  You are subject to it because you were born in the U.S.  Does that signify consent to it?  The Southern States definitely believed otherwise during the U.S. Civil War.  The concept of once-in-a-democracy-always-in-a-democracy appears to have come from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract:

Each of us places his person and authority under the supreme direction of the general will, and the group receives each individual as an indivisible part of the whole...

 

Abraham Lincoln stated this as a house divided against itself cannot stand.  A similar situation appears to apply to many street gangs and organized crime:  Once you join you cannot quit.

What about rule of law?  Does that concept pass CAWTBER?  Rule of law is often given as a good substitute for rule by man because laws are presumably more consistent than the arbitrary whims of individuals.  But what about laws requiring, say, that run-away slaves must be returned?  Or laws governing women’s bodies?  The answer is that rule of law as a concept neither passes nor fails CAWTBER, it depends on how the laws are used.

Government secrecy is another issue concerning consent of the governed.   Can the citizenry really consent to what they do not know about?

The move towards running government as a corporation, i.e., top-down, is a king meme that moves away from consensual government and fails CAWTBER.

The situation with democracy is that it may or may not pass CAWTBER depending upon the circumstances.  This includes the populace having enough information to make informed decisions, consent continuing even after an election, more direct participation in the selection and election of government officials, and recognizing and avoiding king memes in government.  The test, though, is CAWTBER.  It is not a matter of assigning labels to types of governments, but rather of analyzing particular situations.

Conclusion

 Numerous types of authoritarian governments fail CAWTBER, summarized by the king meme, which persists even in a democracy.  As many people say, democracy is not a good form of government, but it is the best we have.  A government by consent of the governed with informed participation even after elections supports CAWTBER.  A democracy may or may not pass CAWTBER depending upon actions taken by the democracy.  Citizens can use CAWTBER as a tool for awareness and analysis in evaluating the actions of a democracy and other types of government.

Democracy may

Pass or fail—depends

On actions taken.

Suggested Comments:

Does a constitutional democracy effect CAWTBER?