From Nuremberg to Washington
By Maya, in General -# 3 - RSS
As a kid I always hated when my parents used over and again the same argument: “You should do it this way. Believe me, I’m older, I know more, I’ve done those mistakes before”. Actually I think all kids have hated this argument. Later I found out I was lucky to beneficiate from the experiences of my parents to make sure I won’t make the same mistake. Take advantages of the errors of the past. Evolve. You are not the first of your kind. That’s what we call Learning Effect.

A great Spirit of our time, Noam Chomsky, wrote a short, but meaningful article, published on Palestine Chronicle. I can only encourage you to go and read it.
His point has nothing new: he states that the US-UK coalition went to Irak for bad reasons. What is noticeable is the parallel he makes between the Rules of International Law drawn at Nuremberg’s trial and the current line of defence of Washington. Quoting US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor for the US at the famous trial :"If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us. (…) We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well." Anyone heard of that in DC. Donald? Georges?
On the same topic was this interesting article written by Rami G. Khouri for the Daily Star (Lebanon). In an attempt to explain the failure of the post-invasion of Iraq, Khouri provides some major management mistakes (Donald this is partly for you, again):
- insufficient amount of troops to secure Iraq after the fall of Saddam
- poor prediction of the post-war situation, based on over optimistic projections
- underestimation of the strength of Iraqi nationalism
- reliance on an Iraqi Diaspora who had been living abroad for years and, as an obvious consequence, lacked the knowledge and the credibility back in Iraq
Once more those simple lessons are nothing but a surprise for highly trained generals in DC. How could simple facts like those be forgotten after the failures in Vietnam or Somalia?
I’ve never been president but I’m quite sure the Learning Effect works the same. For example, if your Dad had already fought a war in the same country, you can probably use this experience to improve your personal achievement.
As a politician looking back should provide you two kind of information. On the one hand, moral boundaries, given by the thoughts of hundred of philosophers, politicians, academics before you, which will help you decide whether your behaviour is appropriate or not. In our case: should we go to Iraq given the Information we had up to this point?
On the other hand, knowledge background which will provide you clues about how to do what you have decided to do. That is, at least not doing again the same mistakes you did (or someone else did, this works too) in the past, and, possibly, include deduction and induction along with imitation within your thinking process. We call it the Learning Effect.
Looking back, you will be lucky enough to find people telling you what to do and how to do it. But as a child I could not understand that.
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