Critical thinking and the Iraq War

The Washington Post has an enjoyable blog - the Achenblog - from Joel Achenbach.

In his latest post he informs us that he has been reading a book. Always a good idea in my view. Anyway, he says:

I  was just reading a book on critical thinking, "Hoaxes, Myths and Manias," by Robert Bartholomew and Benjamin Radford, that lists the most important elements of learning how to think critically:

1. Ask questions; be willing to wonder.

2. Define your problem correctly.

3. Examine the evidence.

4. Analyze assumptions and biases.

5. Avoid emotional reasoning.

6. Don't oversimplify.

7. Consider other interpretations

8. Tolerate uncertainty.

Then Achenbach adds:

Now who does that NOT sound like?

His conclusion is:

If this country [he means the US] had thought more scientifically in 2003, and asked, what do we really know, what's the source of this information, what are some alternative interpretations, how certain are we that our plan will work, and so on, we might not be in the mess we're in.

Yes. But on the other hand they might have been.

The implication of Achenbach's post is that with a bit of critical thinking the Iraq War might have been avoided. But the opposite is also true. Simplistic thinking, or no thinking at all, might have led one not to do anything at all in Iraq and just let Saddam continue.

The fact that things have become so difficult in Iraq does not mean that the thinking that led to it was a mistake. In fact Achenbach's list acknowledges this by including the phrase "tolerate uncertainty".

I would argue that is exactly what we had to do when we went into Iraq.

Comments

[James Kennett]

And because we were foolish enough to buy these arguments about Iraq, we have now lost the power to threaten Iran, whose nuclear programme was always the more advanced.

While we try to hang on in Iraq, the Iranians and Syrians sponsor terrorism there. Why? Because they know that if the US is not forced out of Iraq, their own countries will be next on the American hit list.

Some commentators seem to think that the solution is to invade Iran and Syria. As if we have enough troops to run three hostile countries when we cannot run one.

The number of soldiers needed to quell a major insurgency in Iraq was determined by the British in the 1920s: it is one soldier for every 23 Iraqis. On that basis we need nearly a million soldiers to pacify the country [1]. We haven't got the will, or even the army, to do that. The senior military know all this, and it is exceedingly likely that they gave Bush and Blair appropriate advice before the war started.

Sorry guys. The Neocon project is over. 600,000 dead and no result. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

[1] http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/10/empire200610

[Stephen R]

I have been applying all those points raised to the dossier on WMD. As has been proven, none of the above 8 elements could have been applied - take them all one by one to the document.

Anyway, I guess Daniel might argue that the false analysis applied to the sources and evidence was justifiable based on the over-riding rightness of the Iraq campaign.

[Simon Stephenson]

I can understand how difficult it is for many people to allow into their minds the thought that the national governments of the USA and the UK may be capable of negligent and/or incompetent decision-making. I'd also agree that the less than satisfactory outcome in Iraq is not, in itself, proof that the pre-invasion thinking was flawed. It's quite possible that there was intellectual precision in everything that went on in the build-up to the war.

Is it not fair to say that the expectation of everyone is that such precision of thought should underlie all governmental decision-making? That we should expect policy to be written so as to give it the very best chance of being efficacious?

Has Iraq policy been efficacious? I'd suggest that there is room for doubt, and that for this reason we should require convincing of the flawlessness of pre-invasion thinking, and open our minds to the possibility that the invasion was a bad decision even without the benefit of hindsight.