72
nomads and it is difficult to get a hold of them), he neglects the
information and fails (4, 83). Also Darius does not gather information
about his enemy before he carries out the war. But as Herodotus delivers
the information (4,2-82), the reader understands why Darius must fail.
Woodward conveys a similar idea. He writes:
Most tragic, Scowcroft (a friend of Bush senior) felt that
the administration had believed Saddam was running a
modem, efficient state, and thought that when he was
toppled there would be an operating society left behind
. . . But the administration wouldn’t re-examine or re
evaluate its policy. As he (Scowcroft) often said, ‘I just
don’t know how you operate unless you continually
challenge your own assumptions.’ (420)
That a decision maker sticks to his chosen option although information is
available which suggests to abandon the option is according to
Woodward the major problem in Bush’s decision-making: “Alternative
courses of action were rarely considered’’ (455). This is the same
problem which Herodotus described as being responsible for
unsuccessful decision making roughly 2500 years ago.
After thousands of years certain motives, patterns and methods
are still valid. Evidently the mental infrastmcture in the 5^^ century BCE
in parts of the Greek world was similar to ours in the 2T‘ century.
Inquiries^^ are essentially still carried out along the same principles. This
makes Herodotus more the father of journalism and reporting, than of
history.
City University of New York
Helmut G Loeffier
Notes
1 Cicero de legibus 1.5.
2 See for example West, pp. 80-81. “An assurance and a confident use of detail
suggesting an eye-witness are part of his stock-in-trade, his approach to his
subject matter being generally nearer to a modem journalist’s than we judge
appropriate to a serious historian.”
3 See Herodotus 1.27. Bias manipulates information to make Croisus decide in a
certain way.
4 See Pohlenz 1937 (^1973).