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The Power of Negative Thinking

By William Saletan
Updated Friday, Oct. 19, 2001, at 7:02 PM ET

There will never be another Sept. 11. A few more days of bombing, and the Taliban will collapse. We'll hunt down Osama Bin Laden and bring him to justice. We'll tear his network out by the roots. The world is rallying to the banner of the United States and its ideals. We're building a global alliance for peace and freedom. No villain can defeat or escape us. Our children will live in a world free of terror.

Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? The more we read about collateral damage, Pakistani mobs, invisible al-Qaida cells, and anthrax, the further we retreat toward the opposite outlook: We'll never be safe. We'll never catch Bin Laden. If we do, others will take his place. Afghanistan is a quagmire. Our bombs are useless. We can't hide, but the enemy can. We can't scare fanatics. We'll lose soldiers. We'll kill civilians. The Muslim world is turning against us. Nobody trusts us. We have no real friends. We can't win.

Today, the second outlook is gaining currency because the first strains credulity. That's a shame and a fallacy. Just because the rosiest picture is false doesn't mean the gloomiest is true. There's a third way to think about terrorism, a middle ground between idealism and skepticism. It starts with this postulate: Everything the optimists say about the war is true, but only in the negative.

Negativism differs from the skepticism that pervades criticism of the war. Skepticism doubts anything is true or right. Negativism says that even if we don't know exactly what's true or right, we know that some things are false or wrong. This makes negativism a belief system with teeth. When somebody lies, you have to call him on it. When somebody commits grave wrongs, you have to stop him.

Start with the morality of the war. President Bush represents the naive view. He says we're fighting for "progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom." Critics of U.S. foreign policy point out that this can't be true: We're cutting wink-wink deals with dictatorships, theocracies, and human rights violators from Iran to Pakistan to Uzbekistan to Russia. Does this mean the war is immoral? No. Even if we're not leading our allies toward progress, pluralism, and freedom, we're leading them to war against the most urgent threat to those principles, and that's good enough.

This kind of thinking isn't always appropriate, but it's well suited to grim situations like the present one. It clears your head of moral and practical aspirations that exceed what you can reasonably do. Your job right now isn't to make the world better but to limit the ability of others to make it worse. The first rule of negativism is that things can always get worse. The second rule is that if you act as though they can't get worse, they will. From a negativist standpoint, the constant whining about negativity in American politics over the past two decades underscores how easy we've had it. The world is full of very bad things and very bad people. Fighting them is both noble and necessary.

As you're fighting the good fight (or, as a negativist would put it, fighting the people who are fighting the bad fight), negativism narrows your tasks to manageable proportions. You don't have to destroy the enemy, though that would be nice. You just have to negate its ability to hurt you and your people. In the days after Sept. 11, Bush talked brashly about rooting out and rounding up all the terrorists. Critics pointed out that he'd never be able to fulfill those promises. From this, many concluded that it was pointless to go after the enemy militarily. Gradually, Bush retreated to the negativist case for military action. Operation Infinite Justice became Operation Enduring Freedom. Yes, the terrorists can lie low. Yes, they can move their training camps, hideouts, and financial supply lines. Yes, if we kill some, others will replace them. But we don't have to wipe them out. We just have to keep them on the run and disrupt their ability to organize attacks on us.

We don't have to make such attacks impossible. Naming a price we can't bear to pay—50 children in an American elementary school, 5,000 workers in the World Trade Center, 50,000 casualties in an anthrax attack, 5 million deaths in a nuclear catastrophe—puts the power of blackmail in the enemy's hands. Until you can negate the enemy's ability to inflict these horrors, you have to negate his ability to get what he wants from them. You have to endure them, as Londoners did during the Nazi blitz, while your government works to make the war more horrible for the enemy and his protectors than it is for you.

Negativism also solves the problem of asymmetry. Terrorists, unlike states, don't convey precise collective responsibility for their acts of war and don't offer obvious targets against which to retaliate. This confounds traditional doctrines of war and deterrence. Idealists expect us to prove the guilt of each terrorist, track him down, and bring him to justice without harming others. Skeptics argue that this can't be done, and therefore a war against terrorists can't be won. Negativism says we don't have to throw out the old rules of state warfare; we just have to negate the deviation terrorists have taken from it. How? By declaring, as Bush did on Sept. 11, that states will be held responsible for terrorists who operate within them. If we can't make an example of Bin Laden, we can make an example of the regime that harbors him. It's not exactly fair, but it's effective.

This is just one of many moral compromises we're making. Strictly speaking, governments aren't necessarily responsible for what terrorists within their borders do. Likewise, before we bomb a country for harboring a fugitive, we really ought to hand over enough evidence to warrant an indictment. In this case, we've withheld evidence on the grounds that it would expose our intelligence sources and methods. Idealism says such compromises are unacceptable. Skeptical realism says no principle is absolute, and therefore any compromise in pursuit of our interests is acceptable. Negativism says that while no principle is absolute, one relative standard must limit all of our compromises: Negating the enemy makes no sense unless your goals and methods remain better than his.

This standard is hardly meaningless. Bin Laden killed about 200 people in the Pentagon and about 5,000 in the World Trade Center. If we kill 5,000 Taliban soldiers and 200 Afghan civilians, there shouldn't be any doubt as to which of us is the bad guy, particularly if the civilian deaths we cause, unlike those he caused, are accidental. Is it wrong to kill Taliban soldiers for the deeds of al-Qaida? Not when they protect an organization that, according to its own boasts, kills American janitors and secretaries for the deeds of Israeli soldiers. Our standard of culpability is vastly more precise than the enemy's. As for the Taliban's refusal to give up Bin Laden without clearer proof of his guilt, imagine how many executed Afghans would be alive today if the Taliban had been required to supply as much evidence against them as we've supplied against Bin Laden.

The core postulate of this philosophy—that everything the optimists say is true, but only in the negative—pertains most acutely to theories about necessary and sufficient conditions. Optimists believe that if you follow certain steps or principles, you'll succeed. Skeptics argue that people who follow these steps often fail, and therefore they're a waste of time. Negativists take the middle view: Such steps, while insufficient, are necessary. This insight applies to left-wing pacifism as well as right-wing unilateralism. Doves say violence alone can't win the war. Yes, says the negativist, but the renunciation of violence will lose the war. Hawks say multilateralism makes victory difficult. Yes, says the negativist, but unilateralism makes victory impossible.

The upside-down relativist logic also applies to human nature. Idealists posit that we're strong and brave and that these virtues will lead us to victory. Cynics posit that we're weak and cowardly and that these vices will lead us to defeat. Negativists posit that we're weak and cowardly, but so is the enemy. We don't have to be stronger or braver than the Taliban. We just have to subject them to more pain and stress than we could withstand if we were in their shoes.

If the Taliban surrenders and Bin Laden is killed or captured, idealists will declare victory. Negativists won't. Negativists don't believe in happy endings. There is always a new threat. That's why we haven't bombed the Taliban troops who stand between the Northern Alliance rebels and the Afghan capital. We don't want another tribal militia full of shady characters reigning over multiethnic Afghanistan. We want a balance of power, even if that means keeping the old villains around to hold the new ones in check.

The same cold calculus applies to us. As long as we're at war, negativism countenances compromises of our civil liberties. Lower standards for deportation? Sure. Broader surveillance of phone calls and e-mail? Fine. Detaining people who have associated with terrorists, on the chance that this will disrupt imminent strikes? OK. But no expansions of government authority without limits or a sunset clause. Because once this war is over—or rather, once terrorists are no longer the worst threat out there—there's a good chance that the new worst threat will be the people to whom we gave the power to win the war. Maybe virtue will keep them from abusing that power. But don't count on it.

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William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.
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Notes From The Fray Editor:





This article was particularly successful at provoking good arguments among Fray posters. One such debate is featured below, but elsewhere Ah q started an excellent thread on how the bombing of a Red Cross building, and the Administration's comments on the incident, test the USA's principles: "Would a truly moral war need this kind of third-rate spin?" Carolyn Taylor's impassioned explanation of her "abhorrence of this military action against Afghanistan" brought many replies, and Otto asked others: "How much safer do you feel now that the bombing has gone on for two weeks?" Fowler quotes from Philip Larkin here: wrenched out of context, but strangely apt.





Reader Comments:

(click on a name to find or answer the post)





Texwiz: As interesting as Saletan's musings on Negativism were, I was more gratified to see the evocation of compromise. Every time hard left and hard right types scream that the world will end if we don't do things their way, I want to scream back, "You're reverting to barbarism." Barbarism is where the strongest, whether physically or politically, calls the shots; all the shots. Compromise on the other hand, is the foundation not only of democracy, but of civilization itself. To remain civilized, we have to allow some things we may not like. To remain civilized, we have to fight battles that we may never win. The antipathy toward all compromise stands in some hearts as the epitome of integrity, but like a tree that will not bend in a hurricane, those who deny the power and value of compromise will be broken. The Taliban is one good example.





Tim: If I could have my barbaric way then some kind of commanding principle would apply that made sense out of our foreign affairs, forays and interventions. Take all of our highest profile overseas commitments of the last few years. This would include aid and support to Israel, the Kosovo campaign, financing the basically fascist government in Columbia, continued sanctions and sporadic bombing in Iraq coupled with the Saudi Kuwait alliance. If we were to reverse every one of these policies our consistency and commitment to ideas such as human rights would be either completely unchanged or improved. Palestinians would get the right to vote, travel, and do laundry regularly, national sovereignty would prevail over irredentism, para-military thugs (dubbed "right wing" whatever that means) would have to pay for their own bullets, bludgeons and vehicles, and in the last case we couldn't be blamed for supporting despotism or depriving malnourished children. Our policy since Wilson has proven so destructive that the weight of the evidence is, ten years of laissez-faire diplomacy from the New World borer would be a welcome respite for everyone. Someone's bound to say: "Hitler would have welcomed it", but absent U.S. involvement in the Great War no one would have ever heard of Hitler. If they have to attack us let it be for what we don't do.





Texwiz: I'm afraid that while you're absolutely right about some of the foreign policy tragedies you cited, I suspect that there are factors beyond those you're considering in some cases. While I would like to see a world where lives are the only factor considered and compromise with dictators is never necessary, I'm afraid neither of us lives in that world… While you and I as citizens reserve the right to consider and support the rights of all mankind, our government does not have that luxury. They are charged with the responsibility to seek the best interests of this nation, at the expense of other nations, if need be. That is part of the oath that elected officials take. Consider also, that while evil and greedy leaders undoubtedly exist, here and elsewhere, many of them are doing the best they can in this imperfect world.



Tim: Our leaders take an oath to the Constitution, the one they take to Wall St. is secret and not binding. According to your way of thinking, Joseph Stalin could be running policy to his whims and since he "knew more" our criticism is lese majeste. This ridiculous, corporate-inspired notion that we are compelled to support governments that compromise everything we stand for has corrupted people long enough. It has even launched a propaganda campaign in the U.S. military that has our youth believing anything they are told and only the strongest among them(like Michael New) come out with their sensibilities intact. Right and wrong did not change when American companies made a fortune overnight in WWI, only the agenda of people who saw bigger profits through the subversion of democracy.



(10/18)



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