THE ONE PERCENT OR CHENEY's DOCTRINE
El Chino
This is what happen when a minority person run the risk of being
treated by the police in this great Country.
Either you have to DEMONSTRATE to him that he would not run any risk
with you or He will kill you on the ground of the one percent
doctrine. You "might" have a concealed weapon; and He is justified in
killing you.
In International relations this might work with small countries but no
wuith biggies. This is the reason why North Korea and Iran wanted the
bomb !
In his heralded new book, "The One Percent Doctrine," Ron Suskind
writes that Vice President Dick Cheney forcefully stated that the war
on terror empowered the Bush administration to act without the need
for evidence or extensive analysis.
Suskind describes the Cheney doctrine as follows: "Even if there's
just a 1 percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it
is a certainty. It's not about 'our analysis,' as Cheney said. It's
about 'our response.' … Justified or not, fact-based or not, 'our
response' is what matters. As to 'evidence,' the bar was set so low
that the word itself almost didn't apply."
There is a complex interplay between an act's possible consequences,
evidence, and the probabilities involved. And sometimes, of course,
the probability justifying action of some sort is even less than 1
percent. Vaccines are routinely given, for example, even for diseases
whose risk of being contracted is much less than 1 percent.
That being granted, the simplistic doctrine of "if at least 1 percent,
then act" is especially frightening in international conflicts, not
least because the number of threats misconstrued (by someone or other)
to meet the 1 percent threshold is huge and the consequences of
military action are so terrible and irrevocable.
1 Percent Rule in Other Contexts
Imagine what would happen in various everyday situations were the
Cheney doctrine to be applied. A young man is in a bar and another man
gives him a hard stare. If the young Cheneyite feels threatened and
believes the probability to be at least 1 percent that the other man
will shoot him, then he has a right to preemptively shoot him in "self-
defense."
Or an older woman visits her Cheneyite doctor who, finding that the
woman has suffered from a sore throat and fatigue for months, orders
that she be put on chemotherapy since the likelihood of cancer is in
his opinion at least 1 percent. Further tests, he might argue, would
take too long.
A Cheneyite gambler would be a casino's dream. The chance of rolling a
12 with a pair of dice, for example, is 1/36, almost 3 percent, and
hence would justify the gambler betting his house on rolling a 12.
