PAGE 4
A ‘DECISION TREE’ FOR IRAQ POLICIES
ANALYZING WHAT COULD OR SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT IRAQ
intangible, but still quantifiable to a certain extent in terms
of dollars. Same for the adverse effect on our international
credibility, prestige, trust and respect — whether or not other
nations contribute to this and future causes and whether they
agree to future proposed treaties such as NAFTA. Equally
important, although again hard to put an exact dollar figure on,
what will be the effect internally concerning credibility, prestige,
trust and respect for American institutions such as the three
branches of government and our two-party system? What will
it do to our national morale and stalemates? How about our
willingness to remain involved in international affairs? Will
corruption and its fallout increase? Will prices go up? An
atmosphere of hypocrisy, lack of honor or morals, might tend
to increase government-spending losses and waste due to
corruption for instance. Worse yet, are we increasing the number
of those inclined to be terrorists? Will we further destabilize
friendly or former friendly regimes in thè area or elsewhere?
Will moderation in tactics disappear? Will it make nuclear prolif
eration more likely — or more likely the use of these proliferated
weapons against us? Are the increased number of spawned
terrorists likely to ultimately attack the U.S. or just our offices
and people abroad? What will be the costs of future 9/11s?
How many can we afford? Ask the insurance industry. Ask the
municipalities. Can we actually make our borders impregnable?
How and at what expense? Again the effort should be to analyze
all costs and consequences including the intangible ones. The
analysis should be a sober one based on hard facts and figures
to the extent possible, but add in some extra amounts as a
contingency for the unknowns that usually are discovered too
late and the unintended consequences that so often occur.
Proceed to paragraph 7.
"OH TOE £RCW5ICE,MR. PRESIDENT, t t LEÊST WE HIS/E MORE THAN QUiOPTION!"
DAVID HORSEY
BY CHARLES HILLESTAD
Possibly the most, certainly one of the most, pressing
and divisive questions facing our country today is whether we
should stay in Iraq or leave. If you believe the former, start with
numbered paragraph 1 below for a way to ultimately determine
whether that is a wise decision. If you believe the latter, start with
numbered paragraph 8.
-1. The current policy being pursued by the President,
in its essence, seems to be simply adding approximately 21,000
(+10,000 support) military personnel to the 135,000 or so already
there and staying there for an indefinite period conducting train
ing and counter “insurgency” activities. If you favor that idea or
are at least willing to investigate it further, proceed to paragraph
2. Keep in mind that even if you initially trust the President or
any other “decider” for that matter, that does not excuse you as
a citizen from exercising judgment of the decision, particularly
when it is a literally life and death result at stake.
~2. Begin with determining what are the potential
benefits from the current “surge” policy as it is commonly called.
Is it a prevention of civil war between one or more of the three
Iraq religious factions? (That would be a good thing.) Is it an
end to or at least substantial reduction of insurgency activities?
An end to suicide bombers, kidnapping, mortar attacks and other
terrorist activities in Iraq? Elimination of terrorist threats in allied
countries? In America? Capture of Osama bin Laden? An end or
at least substantial reduction of influence in predominantly Shiite
Iraq by predominantly Shiite Iran and predominantly Shiite Syria
or other countries? A stable and/or democratic government
capable of defending itself and rebuilding Iraq? A stable and/or
democratic government Middle Eastern region? Cheap oil? A
permanent base for military and other operations in the region?
Significantly improved admiration, respect and/or at least fear of
the U S. in Iraq or elsewhere? Prevention of nuclear weapons
development by antagonist countries? Assuming there any
genuine potential benefits from the course of action under
investigation, proceed to paragraph 3.
-3 . More important than the mere possibility of benefits
is the question of how likely is it that each of the alleged benefits
or goals will actually be accomplished by such a policy? It does
not matter that we desire something in the abstract. Examples
would be a perpetual motion machine or permanent peace in
the ethnically and religiously divided Middle East. They are
nice concepts, but not likely in our lifetimes, if at all. You should
conduct a hard look to determine such likelihood. For some
reason, that seems to be particularly difficult for Americans.
Our particular view of history is that we always prevail regardless
of what history has to say on the subject when closely examined.
The fact that we are almost as likely to be eaten by a shark in
Nebraska as win the big lottery does not seem to deter us from
gambling. Nevertheless, it will not help if we continue acting
on wishes, assumptions, hope, ideology, arrogance, pride, or
misinformation. Review each of the supposed benefits as to
the realistic probabilities they will happen when the policy being
considered is carried out Assuming you will ultimately conclude
based upon real evidence that all, or perhaps any, of those
proposed benefits are relatively likely if we continue pursuing
the current White House policy, then skip to paragraph 6
If you are no longer as sure, proceed to paragraph 4
-4. If 21,000 additional boots on the ground (+10,000
support), many to be “embedded" with Iraqi forces, are deemed
by you to be insufficient to accomplish the desired goal, is there
anything else that might achieve them? 100,000 troops?
1,000,000? Of course, if you start thinking that way, you must
also answer the question of whether we have that many spare
troops, especially the actual combat ones as opposed to support
troops who typically outnumber ground pounders ten to one?
Remember, we only count less than a million and a half military
on active duty in the entire world at the moment. It is an easy
confirmation on the internet with a Google or other search
So, do we need a draft? Factor in how long it will take to train
them Will other countnes of the UN willingly supply all that is
'•cessary? Do they want that oil for themselves? Would they
us taken down a peg or two? Are they courting some of the
other players such as Iran? Okay, how about then bringing in
more pure mercenaries hired by our mercenary companies like
Blackwater instead? Be sure to consider the effect, though, if
they are not governed by our morals, ethics, or laws. Same issue
on timing too. Can we train the new Iraqi troops to adequately do
the job? If so, can we do so before the American voter runs out
of patience, not to mention can such newly trained Iraqi soldiers
stay loyal to a national government instead of sectarian groups?
How will they be used? Will it matter if electricity, jobs, schools,
and other infrastructure are not restored and remain secure? If
the answer to any of the foregoing is no, how about splitting Iraq
to separate the warring factions? Monetary bribes perhaps? To
whom? Bigger rewards for bringing in villains? Given what we
are already offering, do we have enough money in the Treasury?
Are we likely to interest anyone in accepting if offered? Would
more diplomacy work? That does not seem to have been tried.
How about returning to a semblance of neutrality regarding
Israel and Palestine issues? Sacrificing Israel? Everything is
on the table for the purpose of analyzing alternative routes as
to whether they would have any chance at success. Would that
buy Iraqi friends? How about nuking Iran? Would that eliminate
an enemy or just create new ones? How about permanent
relocation or internment or maybe just outright genocide of
one or more of the groups in Iraq? Offering the testicles of Bush
and Cheney? Be creative.We are not discussing morality at this
point but mere feasibility. Morality and legality are a second level
for elimination of any particular alternative. Go to paragraph 5
now.
~5. If any likely new possibilities or alternate policies
present themselves to you as potentially successful avenues
for accomplishing the chosen goals you are articulating, then
you can determine if they are permissible to be implemented.
If they are still viable after consideration of applicable laws
and still acceptable to you based on your morality and ethics,
proceed to paragraph 6. If not, proceed to paragraph 8 (because
at this point you have in essence concurred in a choice to leave
rather than stay.)
~6. Assuming any of the proposed benefits are
genuinely likely, what are they worth? Values must be assigned.
Assigning values will be tough. For instance, how much is a live
trained soldier worth versus a dead one? Be sure to count all the
future earnings and children and happiness they could create if
not killed or mangled in Iraq carrying out the President’s current
policy. It is tough, but not impossible to assign dollar values
to human suffering. Courts and juries do all the time. For the
moment, ignore the dead Iraqi citizens, even the women and
children being constantly killed. That is a moral/legal question
unless we are paying money to the relatives of the dead civilians
as we do when it is a “friendly fire" situation. For the most part
though, at the moment we are only discussing direct costs to
American citizens either as treasury expenditures or lost oppor
tunity costs. The bottom line is you are trying to decide the
potential costs to achieve the stated goals and whether we
can afford it. In addition to the obvious increase in deaths and
wounds to our soldiers and treasury dollars going to Iraq, what
about the costs to the active duty military in terms of morale,
recruiting and readiness to respond to other crises? What
about such costs to the National Guard and the Reserves,
not to mention equipment replacement and retraining? What
about costs to our economy, social programs, oil energy
independence, global warming? What about the costs to civil
liberties elsewhere? Civil liberties here? Those are a bit more
OPEN YOUR MIND
M ental Illnesses Are Brain Disorders
-7 . What would happen if we are precipitously kicked
out of town and opposed to an orderly withdrawal? Review the
history books for a starting point. This step is to insure “Plan Bs"
exist and that they too are analyzed. For Instance, do we want to
leave behind a large stockpile of modern weapons in the hands
of those who don’t like us as we did in Vietnam? Look what hap
pened when we merely left Saddam's ammo dumps unguarded
and that was relatively low-tech outdated stuff that could be used
against us. What if our modern tank and smart-bomb arsenals
are seized or left behind. Now, proceed to paragraph 9.
-8 . If you believe leaving is the necessary or desired
route, you must decide between a quick and a fast pullout. For
each, you need to apply the same analysis as above regarding
what are the potential benefits and their individual likelihood.
The same for what are the respective costs and their respective
likelihood. Presumably, pulling out earlier would result in less
troop loss and less money spent than pulling out later. It is also
presumed that pulling out would “embolden” the enemy and
increase bombing here. These are all mere presumptions for
discussion purposes, and more in depth determinations should
be made to see if it actually does make a difference. Neither
the dreaded “dominoes falling" nor increased terrorist attacks
occurred here after the fall of South Vietnam. The Viet Cong
certainly had the terrorist know-how to do so, but the end of
the war was the end of aggression toward us. They were
apparently too busy in other things. Would that be true of Iraq?
Is the mere sight of our uniforms in Iraq inflammatory? Would
they bother to travel to this country to continue blowing them
selves up out of pure revenge or would they tend to be more
occupied with rebuilding in a best-case scenario or destroying
each other in a worst-case scenario? From the casualty counts,
it is sure looking like they like to blow each other up more than
us, at least at the moment. Perhaps some investigation should
be made into whether the 9/11 attack was truly an attack on our
“values" or merely to get us to “butt out" of an internal dispute in
Saudi Arabia in which a rival faction wanted to diminish the ruling
family’s protector. (Don't forget the nationalities of Osama and
most of the highjackers. Forgetting things like that can distort
analysis.) We probably should have stayed in Saudi Arabia
anyway, but the issue is the real motivation. After the same sort
of analysis to determine first benefits of leaving and then costs,
proceed to paragraph 9.
-9 . As always should be done, compare the costs to the
achievable benefits. Be liberal on the side of costs and conserva
tive on the side of potential benefits. The goal is to achieve a
cost/benefit ratio greater than 1. If the value of benefits does not
exceed the costs, don’t do it. Try another route. If all the choices
generate a negative ratio result, proceed, with a heavy sigh, to
paragraph 10.
-10. At one point in time, we had many options including
to not invade Iraq at all. We are long past that point. Blame
should be assigned and punishment enacted for any grossly
incompetent or even criminal decisions that got us where we
are, but merely because the only decisions left are excruciatingly
painful ones does not excuse us from making a new decision,
albeit one literally a “Hobbsian Choice." In any event, if the costs
will exceed the potential benefits under every single alternative,
then the last issue is comparing the various cost/benefit ratios to
each other. If leaving is even marginally less a disaster than the
disaster of staying, you are relegated to choosing the lesser of
two evils. Could have beens, would have beens, no longer have
a place. Reality must trump desire.
The foregoing is what is known as a “decision tree,"
albeit one with regretfully fewer and fewer branches available
regarding Iraq. Utilization of decision trees is a common tech
nique in business (and for many life choices as well whether
recognized as such officially or not). The method is designed to
maximize the return on the minimum investment or, in this case,
to minimize the maximum losses, sometimes referred to as the
MiniMax Principle.
What is not clear is whether any official presently in the
White House has bothered to employ it regarding the thorny
problem of Iraq. If they won't, you should. And, if you can’t get
those in charge to adopt the least costly alternative, then you
need to consider how to best truncate those in charge and bud
in their place someone who will. That decision too is amenable
to scaling the branches of yet another decision tree.
N A M I CLATSOP COUNTY
373 ALTADENA, ASTORIA + 325-3733
An affiliate of National Alliance for the
Mentally III and of NAMI, Oregon
Charles Hillestad is a Cannon Beach attorney. He is
a Vietnam veteran. His earlier contribution to the NCTE, “Life
Where 9/11 is 24/7: Suppose Our Far West Was Like the Middle
East," appeared in the Jabruary/Marpril 2007 issue.