Monday, April 30, 2007

Systemic Accountability

A major is reporting the following government sponsored evaluation and retrospective analysis of responsibility for a major policy mistake:

The partial report by a government-appointed committee probing the XXXX War on Monday accused [the head of government] of "severe failure" in exercising judgment, responsibility and caution during the outset of the war.

The report, officially released at a 5 P.M. press conference in XYZ on Monday, says [the head of government] acted hastily in leading the country to war last [Time X], without having a comprehensive plan.

The [head of government], the report said, "bears supreme and comprehensive responsibility for the decisions of 'his' government and the operations of the army."


Democratic systems often produces superior economic, political, and foreign policy results compared to other systems because there are competing interests and accountability mechanisms that ensure that a feedback OODA loop exists so the systemic pressure is towards making new and original mistakes based on new and original misunderstandings instead of operating on a perpetual Garbage In, Garbage Out cycle.

The quoted report is from the Isreali analysis of what went wrong in their decision process and their operational process before and during their attempted invasion of Southern Lebanon last summer. This is what an effective oversight process is supposed to do; identify areas of error, assess responsibility and see how those mistakes and also best practices were implemented and figure out a way to improve probable outcomes in the future.

The Isreali political OODA loop is a whole lot shorter than the American OODA loop as we intentionally cut off the observing and orientating to face new realities sometime around September 13, 2001 until just a couple of months ago. Garbage for policy thinking went into the system and it spit out garbage that we'll be picking up for most of the next generation.

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