COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

David Harsanyi poses the question: Is it always wrong to make decisions based on fear?

In a speech defending his detainee plan this week, President Barack Obama brandished his now-famous Spock-like wisdom by claiming that "Our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight" after 9/11.

Whether you agree with the president's account of the nation's post- 9/11 policy, you might still ask yourself two questions:

First off, is it always wrong to make decisions based on fear?

Clearly not. If the enemy is capable of putting a hurting on you, you are an idiot if you don't.

But Harsanyi cedes far too much in the debate. We were at war with Al Qaeda, and still are. If not everyone knew it before 9/11, everyone on the planet (except for libtards, it seems) knew we were at war after 9/11.

In a war, it is good policy to maximize the ENEMY'S fear... by consistently adopting the courses of action they fear most, or courses of action even more damaging to their cause. It seems to me that this was, indeed, our policy under the Bush Administration, post 9/11.

Incidentally, the more Obama opens his mouth, the more I intensely dislike him. His constant criticism of his predecessor at every turn, on matters both warranted and unwarranted, strikes me as utterly cheap, petty, juvenile and unprofessional.

I think it stinks in units, it stinks in business, and it stinks even more coming from the White House.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: bloggers, Leadership, Obama, rhetoric, War on Terror

...that Hillary Clinton gave to the Russian foreign minister.

It's worse than I ever imagined: It's not that they got the translation for the word "reset" wrong. This carnival of clowns didn't even use the right alphabet!

I can understand missing the translation. Actually, it happens all the time, though it would be unusual at this level. But not realizing that, gee, I've noticed over the years that Russians seem to use some sort of crazy backwards alphabet, but still taking the idea, running with it, and getting all the way up to the Secretary of State without any adult supervision looking at the damn thing even once on the way up the flagpole takes incompetence to a whole new level of stupidity.

But it's not just incompetence. All administrations have teething problems in the early weeks. All administrations make some bad hires and accidentally let morons through the vetting process (though after the Livingstone thing, Hillary seems to have taken that practice to a high art.)

That kind of incompetence is understandable, and will eventually weed itself out as the incompetent staffers are identified, let go, or placed in positions where they can't do any more damage. Like Secretary of Education, for instance.

But this incident belies incompetence for the worst of all possible reasons:

The error appalled some in the State Department, because the button – which was inscribed in Latin script, not Cyrillic – hadn’t been assembled with the help of State’s cadre of Russian speakers and professional translators, but rather by Clinton’s small political team.

Why in God's name does the Secretary of State still have a "small political team" of commissar loyalists? She's the farging Secretary of State, not the President. She's not a politician. She's a diplomat. Apparently, she's congenitally incapable of telling the difference.

And why is she allowing her small, political team of operatives to stick their juvenile, incompetent noses in protocol functions, where they have zero expertise? Why isn't she putting them on a leash and limiting their functions (to, say, making coffee at Foggy Bottom)?

Why? Because Ms. "Ready-To-Lead-On-Day-One" doesn't have much executive experience herself, and apparently doesn't know when to rely on her career Russia experts. Instead, she's allowed herself to be surrounded by Clintonista sycophants who don't know shit from shinola. And as a result, Hillary Clinton, the executive, doesn't know shit from shinola either.

If President Obama has any testicles, he'd tell Hillary to punt her private praetorian guard. Give them their walking papers, pronto. They are on the public payroll now, but they aren't serving the public interest. They are there to serve Hillary's interests, and preserve her option to stab the President in the back should she desire to run again in 2012.

You know they are running roughshod over the career State Dept. professionals, throwing their weight around. If Obama has them ousted, he'll be a hero at State. And Clinton will be a better Secretary for it.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Hillary, Leadership, Obama, State Department

How Bush was received when he spoke to an audience of Marines vs. Obama.



H/T. Instapundit

Labels: Bush, Leadership, Obama, soldiers' issues

Damn damn damn damn damn.

The Wan.

Sources close to the White House say Mr Obama and his staff have been "overwhelmed" by the economic meltdown and have voiced concerns that the new president is not getting enough rest.

British officials, meanwhile, admit that the White House and US State Department staff were utterly bemused by complaints that the Prime Minister should have been granted full-blown press conference and a formal dinner, as has been customary. They concede that Obama aides seemed unfamiliar with the expectations that surround a major visit by a British prime minister.
But Washington figures with access to Mr Obama's inner circle explained the slight by saying that those high up in the administration have had little time to deal with international matters, let alone the diplomatic niceties of the special relationship.
Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk.

Surprised at the volume of business?

What, did he think being President was simply a bunch of ribbon cuttings, photo ops, and state dinners? Well, welcome to the world of actually having executive responsibility, Mr. President.

It's kind of like campaigning, except you don't get to hire a campaign director to run it for you.

Seriously, this is one of many problems with liberals. They think government has to provide solutions for everything, and so they run themselves ragged trying to create government solutions for everything, instead of simply steering the ship and keeping government out of the damned way.

The Wan himself is more arrogant than most... though I'm sure Kerry and Gore both would have given him a run for his money.

Being arrogant, and of course having hired a romper room cabinet, The Wan feels he must micromanage everything. That's how top-level executives become overwhelmed. The feel they have to provide direction and guidance and get in the weeds on every little stupid thing, and they forget that their most important job is to THINK.

The Wan, never having held any real executive responsibility in his life, has yet to learn this lesson.

Hell, not only has The Wan never held any real executive responsibility - he's never been in a position to learn from someone who has!

Who has he worked for or been mentored by whom he could have learned from and observed in action, day to day? Governor Blago? Mayor Daley? All his role models are activists, other legislators, or terrorists.

A well-connected Washington figure, who is close to members of Mr Obama's inner circle, expressed concern that Mr Obama had failed so far to "even fake an interest in foreign policy".

This must be that "smarter approach to diplomacy" I've heard so much about.

A British official conceded that the furore surrounding the apparent snub to Mr Brown had come as a shock to the White House. "I think it's right to say that their focus is elsewhere, on domestic affairs. A number of our US interlocutors said they couldn't quite understand the British concerns and didn't get what that was all about."

That's because The Wan's administration is a government of naive and unserious people for naive and unserious people. Don't we have any protocol officers left over on the White House staff?

The American source said: "Obama is overwhelmed. There is a zero sum tension between his ability to attend to the economic issues and his ability to be a proactive sculptor of the national security agenda.

I don't know. Ronald Reagan somehow fucking managed it.

Then again, Ronald Reagan was a lot smarter than The Wan, and a better executive, to boot. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, libtards!

British diplomats insist the visit was a success, with officials getting the chance to develop closer links with Mr Obama's aides. They point out that the president has agreed to meet the prime minister for further one-to-one talks in London later this month, ahead of the G20 summit on April 2.

Good. I hear Target's having a sale on American Flag-themed bathmats!


Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Britain, Government, Leadership, Obama, stupid

When it comes to executives,"More analytical" does not mean "smarter."

Labels: Bush, Leadership, management, Obama, Politics

"It's duty, honor, country, stupid!"

For the president, the civilian who stands at the beginning of the chain of command--who, by his constitutional authority as commander-in-chief really resides on the far side of the gap--making the leap is an obligation, not an option. He, above all, should speak to his troops in the language of duty, honor, and country which is their native tongue but seems to be such a foreign dialect to a detached, cool, post-modern politician. President Obama must not simply bind up the soldier's wounds or care for his widow, but lead him.

Labels: Army, Leadership, Obama, soldier's issues

Say it ain't so!

The “snooty” attitude of bankers and financiers who thought they were cleverer than everyone else is largely to blame for the global credit squeeze “disaster”, Germany’s finance minister has said.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Peer Steinbrück played down the impact on Europe’s largest economy of the turmoil but said steps had to be taken to raise risk awareness.

German proposals before the squeeze for increasing transparency had been “mocked” and sometimes deliberately misunderstood as an attempt to impose regulation rather than voluntary codes, Mr Steinbrück said, but were now winning support.

In a swipe at finance industry leaders, he said the “quality of managers” had proved a weakness. “The snooty attitude that we have sometimes seen – under the motto of ‘we are cleverer than the others’ – ended in disaster,” he said.

The finance minister said the bankers were "unable to cope with the complexity of the products in which they were investing."

That's ridiculous. There's nothing "complex" about collateralized mortgage pools. Even if you've carved them up into a few tranches, strips, etc., these are very basic investments that any experienced banking professional ought to be expected to understand.

Regardless of how they're tranched off, either the borrowers repay their loans and they are correctly underwritten for risk or they are not.

In an environment where half of new loans originated were interest only loans in some markets, and in which the waiter at the local Longhorn was hawking mortgages when he brought you the side order of broccoli, and X percentage of these loans were "no docs," and/or adjustables sold to people with no assets in an environment where homes had already far outstripped their intrinsic worth based on rental values, these bankers were more than "snooty." You can be prudent and still be snooty. These bankers were negligent.

They applied not the slightest due diligence on behalf of their investors.

And their idiot boards of directors, eager to keep up with the next bunch of idiots on the block, prevented any prescient managers they had from rolling back their exposure to the riskiest loans (though once the money is lent, there is no eliminating that stupidity. It can only be transferred from one institution to another).

Here's a passage from a terrific book called The Warren Buffett Way, by Robert Hagstrom:

"The final justification for the institutional imperative is mindless imitation. If companies A, B, and C are behaving in a similar manner, then, reasons the CEO of company D, it must be all right for our company to behave the same way. It is not venality or stupidity, Buffett claims, that positions these companies to fail. Rather it is the institutional dynamics of the imperative that make it difficult to resist doomed behavior. Speaking before a group of Notre Dame students, Buffett displayed a list of thirty-seven failed investment banking firms. All of these firms, he explained, failed even though the volume of the New York Stock Exchange multiplied fifteenfold. These firms were headed by hard-working individuals with very high IQ's , all of whom had an intense desire to succeed. Buffett paused; his eyes scanned the room. " You think about that, " he said sternly. " How could they get a result like that? I'll tell you how, " he said, "mindless imitation of their peers."


Emphasis added for emphasis.

I might add that military officers, and those responsible for promoting them, should likewise take note.

We need a broad spectrum of military thought and leadership styles. We were not well served while kinetic thinkers ruled the officer corps while counterinsurgent theorists like Nagl and Petraeus were the exceptions and dissidents.

It's likely too easy to go overboard with Petraeusism, too. Petraeus seems like the right man in the right spot for this war.

But we have other wars to fight. And we need a diversity of opinion and approaches as well. Kineticism has not been discredited. We may well need to get uberkinetic on someone's ass very soon.

And what's beyond counterinsurgency? What's the post-Petraeus approach? Do we need to look at retirees from the Clinton era OOTW people? Is that the next phase in Iraq? Do we then gather our kinetics and our counter-I's? Do you pair kinetic commanders with counter-I deputy commanders? Can you synthesize them?

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: business, investing, Leadership, Real Estate

Purple Avenger, over at Ace's, lets me have it with both barrels, in the comments section.

I was kind of proud of the "long shot" pun at the end. Get it? Snipers? Long shot? HAR!!!

A couple of points I'd like to bring out:

1.) It may not have been necessary to kill this insect to take him off the battlefield. He was already called out and was in the process of being questioned by police when he was shot.

2.) We don't know what the rules of engagement were. (The specifics would be, properly, classified, and if I knew what they were, I wouldn't discuss them here.)

3.) We don't know what the orders were.

4.) It's not a team of lawyers bringing the charge - it's a commander. Longtime readers will be aware that I have long been vigilant, rhetorically, about protecting the authority and freedom of action of commanders at every level.

5.) Longtime readers are also aware that I have been rhetorically vigilant about enforcing the law of land warfare among our ranks. In fact, my oath requires me to do so.

I'm not saying this three star isn't wrong. He may well be. I'm just not willing to jump to a conclusion of bad faith on anyone's part at this point. I'd rather ascertain the facts in a courtroom than the comments section at Ace of Spades.

Splash,

Labels: Army, law, Leadership, soldiers' issues

I thought this was very good advice from Career Builder.

It's even more important in the civilian sector than in the military, naturally. When a leader arrives in a new unit, he or she has the luxury of knowing military doctrine and the framework of regulations. And that doctrine and regulatory framework is the same throughout the Army, for example, though there are adjustments made for reserve vs. active duty components.

I'm transitioning from command of an infantry unit to command of an MI unit. And the way I implement things is very different, because I have a younger and less experienced, but more highly educated 'client base,' if you will. I communicate differently. But my policies are the same, and the standards regarding training and personnel management are identical.

Where policy in a new unit has strayed from Army regulation, I can feel confident making the change immediately, and I have a safety net and common framework for communication with which to impart my decisions - and the logic behind them.

Civilian organizations are all radically different, with radically different corporate culture and missions. The transition is much more difficult - and made more difficult still by the absence of positive leadership role models in some organizations.

The stakes are raised in the civilian world by the absence of a supporting channel for communications - the equivalent of the NCO corps, which acts as a heat sink and stabilizing force, and eases the volatility of changes in command.

It also makes sure that very young managers - commanders and platoon leaders - have access to advice and a reality check from more experienced leaders, even if junior in rank.

That said, I'd like to modify this passage:

Trap No. 2: Always having "The Answer" Too many leaders either come on the scene with "The Answer" (a predetermined fix for the company's problems), or they reach conclusions too early in their tenure. Many fall into this trap through arrogance or insecurity.

"Staffers become cynical if they think their leaders deal with deep problems superficially, making it difficult to rally support for change," Watkins says.

Defense: Embrace and express a spirit of inquiry, even if you're confident that you understand the organization's problems and the best approaches to dealing with them, Watkins advises. Give primacy to learning over doing.

"Time spent carefully diagnosing the organization's strengths and weaknesses is seldom wasted. The key is to be systematic and efficient at learning, establishing and refining an agenda, and adopting methods for gaining insight."

Absolutely true. But on the flip side, a leader must be able to recognize when nobody on the team has the answer.

In such instances, rather than accept paralysis, the successful leader must, in the end, be confident enough and have the balls to say "Ok, gang. Here's what we do."

And leaders of leaders will have the sense to empower their subordinate leaders to do so.

Splash, out

Jason

Labels: Leadership, management