Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
My daughter sent me the following email:
i thought you’d like to know one of my co-workers was reading your blog and taking to me about it, without knowing who you or I were. Then yesterday your blog posting was sent to me on myspace. You’re all over the web and in the middle of the lancet study debate still. Just thought you would find it funny.
Some long-time readers may have noticed that I am often more interested in intellectual methodology, i.e., the means by which people arrive at certain conclusions, than I am in the conclusions themselves. Methodology trumps conclusion in my view because only by understanding the quality of the methodology can we hope to understand the quality of the conclusions. We evaluate the quality of a methodology by the accuracy of the predictions the methodology produces. Science works this way, and that same concept applies to all other fields of endeavor (albeit with far less precision.)
Working from this perspective, what do 30 years of hindsight about the Vietnam war tell about leftist methodology? In turn, what does that tell us about the quality of leftist policy recommendations in Iraq?
The major Left-wing British newspaper, The Guardian, published an unflattering ( surprise, surprise) article – ” US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse” about the new counterinsurgency-oriented “surge” strategy being employed by the Bush administration in Iraq. LTC. David Kilcullen, the special adviser to the State Department for Counterinsurgency, strenuously disagrees. Well, I infer Kilcullen believes that The Guardian’s article is cross between shoddy journalism and a politically motivated “hit piece” but holding an official position, he’s too reticent to blast The Guardian that explicitly.
Petraeus’ speech follows in the tradition of others we have linked on this site. The great old rhetoric may not be as effective in our media-soaked age where all voices are blurred by the white noise that surrounds us (and some of it is more than white noise – it grabs at us even as we read). These may, indeed, be speeches for another era – but I suspect its listeners did listen, knowing a quiet in which such words stand alone.
(Instapundit linked to Mona Charen at The Corner.) Speech below.
This is interesting.
(Via Michael Barone.)