The reason there are limits on the number of people
there is _logistic_. The Bush Administration is
desperately trying to squeeze as many people as it
possibly can into Iraq. The "long pole in the tent"
is that we are currently at capacity for the number of
people we can _support_ in Baghdad. That's the issue.
Last February, the former chief of staff of the US Army claimed
otherwise. He figured an additional 250,000 Americans could go into
Iraq.
Since he also predicted the asymmetrical nature of the fighting,
namely, that the US would win conventionally and that after that there
would be several months of guerrilla attacks, unless the US introduced
a large occupation force, I tend to think he is right.
Additional Americans would not necessarily be comfortable; and they
would cost the US tax payer a lot, but this is a campaign in a long
term war. (Wars are infamously expensive and wasteful.)
I should also add, btw, that there is another reason
why people work those hours, which you have missed in
your otherwise excellent article. As someone who has
worked those hours, it sticks out at me pretty
obviously. It's the same reason that my friends in
the Pentagon are currently working that, and more.
It's that when you're working on something extremely
important, the amount of work to be done can be
effectively limitless. ....
Of course, the amount of work to be done is effectively limitless.
That is why management has to be concerned about fatigue and has to
take steps to prevent reduction of good judgement.
In World War II, the British were training new pilots as fast as they
could. (They could build new fighter airplanes faster, so the choke
point was new pilot training.) The problem was, they were fighting a
difficult war. In the Battle of Britain, British pilots kept getting
killed.
Pilots knew they could do more. Even with radar warning, so they did
not make too many `useless' flights, pilots could do more. (This was
told me by a pilot as an aside to why he had lost his hearing at
certain frequencies: the frequencies he lost were those generated by
his Spitfire engine during the battle of Britain when he flew too
much. I also read the same in history books (the fatigue issue, not
the hearing loss), and I have no reason to think he was making things
up. The British pilots definitely understood that Germany would have
to gain control of the air before it would invade; the British pilots'
goal was to prevent that.)
... if you doubled the number of people they had,
they would _still_ work those hours, because the
amount of work _to be done_ is effectively infinite.
So you do everything you can, and hope that's enough.
Which is what we do as well.
The point is, if the cost of mistakes is very high, then a good
management worries about long term fatigue. They do not permit
people to do all the work that could be done.
Only if the "marginal value of another analysis" is higher than the
discounted cost of a mistake (discounted by the probability or
improbability of it occuring), does a smart management permit "another
analysis".
Is "the `marginal value of another analysis' is higher than the
discounted cost of a mistake"? Not likely in the case of this war.
What you are saying here is in the 250 days since 2003 May 1, the US
administration has not figured out that the Americans, outside the
military, in Bagdad are working so many hours they are making, at
times, mistakes that they would not make normally. Or else you are
saying that the mistakes they are making are not relevant to the cost
of the war or to its ultimate outcome.
You are claiming that delays in providing electricity to Bagdad is
irrelevant to US goals in Europe; or that providing gasoline to
civilians is irrelevant. I do not think this is true.
The goal is victory. Based on Osama bin Laden's latest statement, he
(or whoever is pretending to be him) has changed tactics, since his
previous tactics failed. It is a victory for the US that the previous
enemy tactics failed. On the other hand, it is still not clear that
the US will succeed 30 or 50 years from now in providing its people
with freedom and a democratic mode of deciding political issues. This
what the war is about, from the US point of view. (bin Laden's goal
is different.) It is not clear that the US will get a balance of
payement deficit funded by European investors in 2035.
Gaining support for UN inspections in Libya, as the US had done, is
good for the US. However, the inspections or the disarmament that
they imply must last for more than one generation. This is victory
for the US. Unfortunately, it is not yet clear that either a UN
agency will continue inspections of Libya in 2035, or else that Libya
will be so different a country that inspections will not be necessary
for the US. If one or the other of these do not happen, the US loses.
The goal is victory. The goal is not to win the battle and lose the
war.
... People are sleeping on cots in their offices because _there's
nowhere else to put them_.
The US Army puts them in tents (with soggy ground in the winter) --
this is less comfortable, but the Army can put many people in tents.
... People in the Pentagon are understaffed because of legal
reasons - Congress has authorized such and such a budget, which
can't be exceeded, ....
Again, this is a statement of incompetence. You are, willy-nilly,
telling me that the Bush Administration is incompetent. This does not
appear to me to be your intent, but this is what you are saying to an
American patriot.
Note that the party that controls both the House of Representatives
and the Senate is the same party that controls the Administration.
Here is what it sounds like you are saying:
* First, the Administration is unable to convince its own people in
the House and Senate that it needs more; and,
* Second, that given the limitations put on it by the House and
Senate, the Administration prefers people to make major, albeit
occasional, mistakes, than do less.
The first may be a political defeat that is better for the
country; I do not know; but the second is not.
War fighters in the past found that success is more important to
victory than doing more, and, in the process, making mistakes that
cost victory.
It was better, for example, for the US to avoid declaring war on
Finland in WWII, even though they were an enemy of the Soviets, a US
ally. Later, the Finns changed sides and fought a brutal war in
Lapland against the Germans. This meant the US had an easier time
providing aid to its then ally, the Soviet Union. (Incidentally, when
I was young, and did not really understand any of this, I met the man
who commanded the British escort for one of early convoys to Murmansk.
A very large portion of the ships under his protection were sunk and
the sailors killed. Nonetheless, his convoy was considered a success
for the Allies.)
Your statement comes across as saying that the US should not have
adopted convoys when it did (after may Allied ships were sunk during
what the U-boat captains called the `happy time') because convoys
were more expensive, excluding sinkings, than regular sailings.
The point I am trying to make here is that at the moment, the US is
winning: it has got both Iran, a member of the `Axis of Evil', and
Libya to accept UN inspections. In October or perhaps November 2003,
the killing rate in Bagdad, counting both `normal murders' and
`political' murders, was below the murder rate in Los Angeles, CA,
USA.
The question is whether the US will continue to win this asymmetrical
war, or whether, in 30 or 50 years time, American citizens will find
themselves with fewer freedoms than they have now.
(I have read statements that claim that less freedom for Americans is
OK -- these are clearly efforts at asymmetrical warfare by US enemies.
As I have said several times: the goal for the US is victory. You,
for example, should be against corporate enemies gaining what is now
illegal and confidential information about McKinsey.
(The nice thing about this goal is that it includes others. For
example, this goal of US victory means that people who come out of a
Hindu or Chinese Communist culture will not have to become a
particular type of Moslem. As Osama bin Laden, or someone pretending
to be him, said,
The Americans' intentions have also become clear in statements
about the need to change the beliefs, curricula and morals of the
Muslims to become more tolerant, as they put it.
In clearer terms, it is a religious-economic war.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3368957.stm
)
Without a doubt, in some activities, the marginal revenue from extra
work is high and the marginal cost of mistakes is low. This applies
to war, too. In particular, many failures in war are unimportant.
But the problem here is that the US occupation of Iraq is difficult.
For example, it is important to the US that the authorities make the
right decision regarding the division of oil revenues from Kirkuk that
go to the Kurds' regional government and that go to the central
government. (Currently, I am told, the US is trying to delay the
decision until after the Shia gain dominance in the Iraqi government;
the Kurds, obviously, oppose this. Perhaps this is the right decision
for the US. Unfortuately, my father told me the Kurds were an issue
outside of the Middle East more than 80 years ago. For a long time,
they have been a non-dead `nation' (in the original sense of
`nation'). It does the US no good if the Kurds are still an issue 80
years from now.)
Under the circumstances, the question of US admininstrative management
becomes significant.
That is the point. That is why your claims are so horrific to an
American patriot. They suggest ultimate defeat, not victory.
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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