Disordered Cogitations

Successful groups, whether they are Al-Qaeda or the Founding Fathers of the United States, tend to start out with brilliant people who have clear objectives. Those brilliant people attract other smart people by the power of their arguments.

But as an organization grows, you rapidly run out of bright people. The average IQ of any organization starts dropping, and before long, the power of identifying with a group overwhelms the power of reason.

The government of the United States is the quintessential example of an irrational organization. No matter what your political leanings, you can find mounds of examples where the government was – in your own irrational opinion – being irrational and working against its own best interests. If you think Al-Qaeda can act rationally, you are holding it to a higher standard than the U.S. government.

Our best bet is to divert their focus to more accessible targets, just as the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan shifted their focus to us. Ironically, the civil war in Iraq might have accidentally accomplished through irrational means what good foreign policy could not. Al-Qaeda is using far more resources fighting other Muslims than fighting the U.S.

Labels: Al Queda, dilbert, foriegn policy

[PermaLink] posted by acadac @ 7:38:00 AM