Baker's Abilene Paradox
The Iraq Study Group, Part Four
By streiff Posted in War — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
the unofficial avatar for the ISG
If you need insight into how the ISG managed to produce an absolute mishmash of recommendations touching on every subject from Iraq to curing glutteal boils I encourage you to read the Washington Post’s “From Hundreds Of Sources, Panel Forged Consensus.”
The headline pretty accurately sums up the activities of the ISG and explains the report. Consensus is nice and all, everybody leaves the meeting happier but consensus doesn’t necessarily produce better decisions. As Jerry Harvey observed in describing his famous Abilene Paradox more organizations fail through agreement than through conflict.
Read on.
For instance:
The Iraq Study Group was starting final deliberations last month when the issue threatened to disrupt the careful consensus its members had tried to forge. Former defense secretary William J. Perry had drafted a proposal calling for a timetable to withdraw U.S. troops, according to accounts by insiders. Former secretary of state James A. Baker III resisted a firm date, wanting to leave that to the president.
"I'm not going to sign anything that is going to paper over the problem," Perry said.
"Well, if that's the case, that's the case," Baker replied.
In the end, though, Baker and Perry walked off together to settle their differences rather than let them split the commission. With suggestions from other members, they crafted careful language that they both could support, a recommendation to pull out nearly all U.S. combat units by early 2008 -- a goal, not a timetable, but a date nonetheless.
This is just bananas. This is an abject failure of leadership on the part of the ISG co-chairmen (just subscribing to the idea of “co-chairmen” is in itself a sign of a failed organization). Either Perry is right or he isn’t right. If his view is a minority view then he should be given the opportunity to dissent in the report. But the idea that the problem was not “papered over” is ridiculous. For the sake of consensus a report was produced that really reflected neither the views of Baker nor of Perry.
At first, they were a little bit uncertain of what they were going to do and even whether it would amount to anything," said Daniel P. Serwer, the group's executive director. "There were a lot of initial questions: What was our role? How can we manage? We're not Iraq experts -- where are we going to get the expertise?"
Good questions, questions I might add that the story never answers. I wondered this same thing when I was called in as a consultant on installing the first mechanical heart. “What am I doing here?” I asked. “I’m a freakin paratrooper I don’t know squat about anatomy.” But they said I didn’t need any expertise. Anyway, I digress here.
To show the malleable nature of their beliefs, which we know were not grounded in experience, we have only to read the account of their visit to Iraq.
The turning point came in September, when seven of the 10 members traveled to Baghdad aboard a C-130 military transport…
Only one member, former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), a retired Marine, left the Green Zone, venturing out to look at the impact of the operation intended to secure Baghdad. By the time they returned home, many of the commissioners had concluded that the war was going worse than they had realized.
…
Yet many were slow to support even a phased withdrawal. In a straw poll in September, only two of the commission's 44 advisers favored the idea. Over the next eight weeks, as casualties mounted, support for withdrawal grew exponentially.
…
In the last straw vote, on Nov. 3, half of the 44 advisers supported withdrawal.
This type of wooly headed thinking in a panel charged with evaluating our nation’s efforts in Iraq is simply reprehensible. How casualties entered into the picture, or their personal feelings for that matter, is simply unfathomable.
Either we need to prevail in Iraq or we need to cut our losses and do a full Murtha. It is as easy and as difficult as that. Sacrificing your beliefs, ideals, and integrity for the sake of consensus on a report is not the mark of serious men. It is the mark of poltroons.
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From my perspective, this exchange during the Iraq Study Surrender Group’s press conference yesterday was most telling.
QUESTION: You're certainly a group of distinguished elder statesmen, but tell me, why should the president give more weight to what you all have said, given that -- as I understand, you went to Iraq once, with the exception of Senator Robb; none of you made it out of the Green Zone -- why should he give your recommendations any more weight than what he's hearing from his commanders on the ground in Iraq?
HAMILTON: The members of the Iraq Study Group are, I think, public servants of a distinguished record. We don't pretend now, we did not pretend at the start, to have expertise. We've put in a very intensive period of time. We have some judgments about the way this country works and the way our government works, and some considerable experience within our group on the Middle East.
We recognize that our report is only one, and there will be many recommendations. But the report will stand on its own and be accepted or rejected on its own.
Had Hamilton just stopped right there and let that statement stand on its own… but both Hamilton and Baker decided to dig a little deeper.
We tried to set forth here achievable goals. It's a very easy thing to look at Iraq and sit down and set out a number of goals that really have no chance of all of being implemented. We took a very pragmatic approach because all of these people up here are pragmatic public officials.
HAMILTON: We also hope that our report will help bridge the divide in this country on the Iraq war and will at least be a beginning of a consensus here. Because without that consensus in the country, we do not think ultimately you can succeed in Iraq.
BAKER: Let me add to that that this report by this bunch of has-beens up here is the only bipartisan report that's out there.
"Consensus is the absence of leadership," and leadership was sorely missing among this group of has-beens.
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"The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so." - Ronald Reagan
I have always been suspicious of James Baker III. He won some good will by his performance in the Florida Recount. But this has really been a nightmare. Say goodnight, Jim.
It amazes me the elitist smugness of these self-appointed, self-anointed Smartest-Guys-In-The-Room. They get together for a self-congratulatory bipartisan, pseudo-intellectual Kumbaya Fest, come up with a document that an eighth grader would be embarassed to turn in as a homework assignment, and then expect to get their collective butts kissed for dispensing their wisdom.
Thanks for the analysis. As the man says, when all is said and done more will be said than done.
You closing line says it all, improving on that is impossible.
John
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