The fallibility of hubris
Why Experts Erred in Their Iraq War Predictions
By Ross Pomeroy
By Ross Pomeroy
RealClearScience
Wednesday marked the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Regardless of one's opinion regarding the conflict, we all can benefit from looking back at the war and learning from its successes and failures. We owe this to ourselves, to the people of Iraq, and most importantly to our veterans.
Gazing back, much can be gleaned. However, I would suggest that one of the most important takeaways is that experts, the people "in the know" whose job it is to forecast the future and to guide our decisions, are frequently incorrect.
In the early stages of the invasion and in the months preceding it, all sorts of learned individuals made a great many predictions about what an armed conflict with Iraq would entail. Many of those conjectures turned out to be wildly inaccurate.
For example, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested that the war would be cheap and would largely pay for itself. Well, according to a recent study, costs may total $2.2 trillion when all is said and paid for. Others predicted that Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard would make a bloody last stand in Baghdad and that Iraqis would set their oil wells ablaze. Neither of those dramatic events came to pass. The Bush Administration, a whole host of intelligence experts, and many politicians vehemently stated that coalition forces would discover weapons of mass destruction. None were ever found.
Our actions, both on a personal and national level, are based upon the premise that if we do X, Y will occur. Small-scale decisions are usually more predictable and have smaller consequences, but larger scale decisions are much less predictable and have potentially dire consequences should our choices prove wrong. It is our apprehension of these dire consequences that motivates us to rely on knowledgeable experts to predict what might happen.
(Continued here.)
Wednesday marked the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Regardless of one's opinion regarding the conflict, we all can benefit from looking back at the war and learning from its successes and failures. We owe this to ourselves, to the people of Iraq, and most importantly to our veterans.
Gazing back, much can be gleaned. However, I would suggest that one of the most important takeaways is that experts, the people "in the know" whose job it is to forecast the future and to guide our decisions, are frequently incorrect.
In the early stages of the invasion and in the months preceding it, all sorts of learned individuals made a great many predictions about what an armed conflict with Iraq would entail. Many of those conjectures turned out to be wildly inaccurate.
For example, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggested that the war would be cheap and would largely pay for itself. Well, according to a recent study, costs may total $2.2 trillion when all is said and paid for. Others predicted that Saddam Hussein and his Republican Guard would make a bloody last stand in Baghdad and that Iraqis would set their oil wells ablaze. Neither of those dramatic events came to pass. The Bush Administration, a whole host of intelligence experts, and many politicians vehemently stated that coalition forces would discover weapons of mass destruction. None were ever found.
Our actions, both on a personal and national level, are based upon the premise that if we do X, Y will occur. Small-scale decisions are usually more predictable and have smaller consequences, but larger scale decisions are much less predictable and have potentially dire consequences should our choices prove wrong. It is our apprehension of these dire consequences that motivates us to rely on knowledgeable experts to predict what might happen.
(Continued here.)
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