Data Don’t Bleed
By Robert Higgs • Saturday April 17, 2010 8:36 PM PDT • 22 Comments
I spent several hours today preparing a short article on defense spending for The Beacon, updating similar articles I wrote in 2004 and 2007. The subject matter required me to do a fair amount of work that most people no doubt would consider tedious—locating and cross-checking data, performing various arithmetic operations, checking my figures again and again to ensure their accuracy. I have been doing this sort of work off and on ever since my college days, and strange to say, I rather enjoy it. I used to joke with my grad students that “I’m what you might call a data man, Jack” (with apologies to Group Captain Lionel Mandrake).
Today, however, as I was working along, my mind seized on something I had never dwelt upon. Numbers, data checking, mathematical operations—these things are abstract and in themselves completely lifeless, regardless of the human qualities or quantities to which they sometimes relate. One can work on the figures themselves without being drawn, perhaps unwillingly, into reflections on distressing things: loss, disappointment, pain, desperation, sorrow, death. Perhaps this disjunction between the black-and-white of numbers and numerical computations, on the one hand, and the exquisitely varied coloration of human life and death, on the other, explains the origin of the expression “cold, calculating killer.”
At this point in my reflections, I could not help recalling Robert Strange McNamara. (Was it simply a coincidental family oddity—his mother’s maiden name—that denominated him strange, or was his middle name divinely ordained to serve as a warning?) McNamara was a promising young man, but the big impetus to his later career achievements came during World War II, when he impressed his superiors while serving in the air force as a bombing efficiency expert. I wonder if he ever thought, while examining his data on the results of the U.S. incendiary bombing of the highly flammable Japanese cities, about the human beings—the old women, the infants and little kids, and all of the others who had done so little to deserve their fiery fate—who were suffering the unimaginable agonies of being terribly burned or of seeing their loved ones burned to death and torn apart by blasts. Or did the up-and-coming young officer think only about the ratio of X to Y during his working hours, and then stop by the officers’ club for a stiff drink or two before dozing off between clean sheets?
I don’t pretend to know what passed through his mind, or through the minds of countless other men who played similar roles amid the madness of war. I do know that many people have the capacity to keep troubling thoughts out of the forefront of their minds, to avoid dwelling on things they tell themselves they cannot do anything about in any event, and thus to steer clear of speaking or even thinking about exactly what they are doing. This self-protective evasiveness may explain why soldiers so often speak not of causing horrific deaths and destruction, but of “getting the job done” so they can return home for a slice of blueberry pie with their wives or sweethearts.
Data, then, may serve as soporifics—medicinal tablets that keep our minds off things about which we dare not think too hard or too long. Even then, however, we may be left with Hamlet’s ominous worry, for in that sleep, what dreams may come? Whether nightmares disturbed McNamara’s slumber during World War II or later, when he was secretary of defense during the Vietnam War, with responsibility for the B-52s employed to turn immense swaths of land into carpet-bombed hell, I do not know.
I do know, however, that in the 1960s he surrounded himself with “whiz kids” who were devoted to bringing their “planning, programming, and budgeting system” to bear on getting “more bang for the buck.” People who knew McNamara’s background were surely not surprised. “Cold, calculating killers” – can anyone honestly deny that this term applies in an altogether literal way to these men. And who would have expected anything else? Hadn’t they already honed their skills while working for the RAND Corporation, where they had learned to speak “rationally” of megadeaths and to conclude with numerical precision that if in a nuclear exchange with the Soviets, we suffered 100 million deaths and they suffered 150 million deaths, we would have “won the war”?
Data are fine things; I’ve devoted much of my professional life to their examination and analysis. Yet it behooves all of us to realize that data may sometimes clothe madness or veil inhumanity, and to beware the power of numbers to lull us into an immoral sleep.
Tags: Integrity, Morality, Nuclear Weapons, War 
Well said.
Randy | Apr 18, 2010 | Reply
Excellent piece, Bob. In today’s society, figures and their analysis, and certainly euphemisms, often serve to sanitize killing thereby separating natural innate humanity from the horror of deeds committed.
Christine Smith | Apr 18, 2010 | Reply
We have a war economy, supported by a majority of the population, and war is depravity. Therefore.....
richard | Apr 18, 2010 | Reply
I think you make an excellent point, but do not go far enough in doing the math. Numbers do maim and kill, and not just in the war room. Social policy data comes as some of the bloodiest. Think of the millions dead subtracted from Health Insurance, the millions homeless added to Wall Street profits or the millions starving as the by-product of Big Agriculture. I suggest a “real” math that calculates qualitative data as the root for all quantitative analysis.
Lorie Barzano | Apr 19, 2010 | Reply
If McNamara was worth anything as an analyst, he knew early on that no matter how awful the effects of the war on our enemies, we were still not fighting to win in any strategic sense, and that our own soldiers’ deaths were in vain.
Vietnam was a classic case of the Emperor’s new clothes.
Mark | Apr 19, 2010 | Reply
Anyone who would treat draftees’ lives so cavalierly should be strung up in the public square.
That kind of hubris is horrifying.
Mark | Apr 19, 2010 | Reply
You’re a hero of mine, Mr. Higgs. Keep doing what you’re doing!
PalmettoPatriot | Apr 19, 2010 | Reply
So then you take all the monetary data and divide it equally to make it qualitative for everyone and we are all left with a pittance.
It doesn’t work.
Max Marshall | Apr 19, 2010 | Reply
It would seem to follow from your arguments, Mr. Higgs, that the best, and perhaps only way to stop a war is to bring home the humanity of the enemy, to give the numbers a face if it were. This proved to be the case in Viet Nam to a large degree, since the media were reporting quite often on the effects of the war on the Vietnamese themselves. This was viewed in some circles in the USA as being moral destroying, and treasonous. To a large degree this led to the end of the war. It is also the reason behind American forces embedding journalists with American units. War cannot stand up to truth.
Paul the cab driver | Apr 20, 2010 | Reply
I gather you’re a Dr. Strangelove fan, from your reference to Lionel Mandrake, who was a “water man, Jack.” I’ve seen it so many times I think I’ve memorized the script.
I’ve often thought that America’s always had a rather pious view of the horrors we’ve inflicted on those we’ve selected as our enemies. While the British invented the wholesale slaughter of civilian populations by air power, we certainly perfected it. And it’s noteworthy that our air campaigns in WW II didn’t shorten the war by a month. Fortunately for our military and government leaders, we won and thus didn’t have to worry about any war crime tribunals after the shooting stopped.
john | Apr 20, 2010 | Reply
Lorie: I agree with you, but it needs to go further than that to be comprehensive. (I think you mean to say “thousands dead” from lack of health insurance, assuming that’s a reliable figure, and I doubt that very much.) How many people WITH health insurance die from medical mistakes, hospital-based infections, etc., etc.? Health insurance won’t prevent diabetes, after all. So the cost of insuring everyone by mandate needs to factor in the costs of treating preventable diseases due to the poor choices people make (which is hardly the only cause of obesity or diabetes, but it is a huge factor). Similarly, how many die from infections contracted from organic produce? I know of no reliable figures on that, but it should be calculated to weigh all factors evenly (and I happen to share your distrust of Big Food, BTW). Then factor in the homeless toll based on bad government policy (requiring banks to make loans to bad prospects, all on the faulty assumption that everyone deserves to own a home) among other modern liberal fantasies that translate into ill-advised policy, and we’ll see how much homelessness is due to what specific factors.
Sam Gaines | Apr 20, 2010 | Reply
Wow . . .
I’ve read much from the pen of Robert Higgs, but this beats anything I’ve seen so far. Its power grows, it would seem.
(Still) MORE power to it!
N. Joseph Potts | Apr 20, 2010 | Reply
This is by far the best Higgs I’ve ever read, relevant words with a powerful message, gently delivered. Sublime. That ain’t easy to do.
I know many people, whiz kids, who work for the defense department. They make 3 times what they could make in the private sector. They brag about the salary and the latest bombing raid. They created the technology that enabled both. Their wives drive brand new SUVs and they wear great clothes and they don’t clean their own homes.
I wonder if, at the end of their lives, they will wish they’d been watch makers. I wonder how many people they’ll indirectly kill in the meantime.
Dawny | Apr 20, 2010 | Reply
Incidentally, “megadeath” as used in those old and disgusting RAND reports is the source of the name for the band Megadeth, who is fairly well known for their great anti-war songs.
Perry Mason | Apr 20, 2010 | Reply
Great peace Prof. Higgs.
Riyad H | Apr 20, 2010 | Reply
While the focus of this piece, quite rightly, is on war, the observation applies well to most of what governments do.
On the one hand is the clinical analysis which is designed to convince us that policy is rational, workable, and that the ends are desirable.
On the other hand is the reality on the ground: chaos, unemployment, and suffering of every imaginable variety.
D. Saul Weiner | Apr 21, 2010 | Reply
Sam: Your agreement appears to sidetrack my point. The soporiferously horrific cold calculations of war aside, these calculations pale in comparison to the daily aftermath of similarly derived, data-driven, social policies. Yes, millions have died due to inaccessible and unaffordable health care. Millions have fallen ill and died from pesticide-ridden, bacteria-laden agricultural products and fast food fare. I could have as easily chosen domestic violence as an example to make my point that Robert Higgs’ excellent expose of the blood behind data only scratches the surface of the real horror. The real horror passes us daily on the street, attends school with our children, lives next door and the “self-protective evasiveness” of social policy data enables us not to see them bleed. Humanity requires social policies enhanced by data, not driven by it.
Lorie Barzano | Apr 22, 2010 | Reply
John. A careful review of history may cause you to question who won WW2. I suggest to you the winner was not the USA. Ditto for the cold war. Who is spending themselves into bankruptcy, and who is rebuilding their country and currency afforded by vast oil reserves and revenues? And who now if she sold but 10% of her USD holdings would cause a complete collapse of the USD?
alzurzin | Apr 22, 2010 | Reply