Save Us From the Systems Analysts!!

Full disclosure. I'm a professional systems analyst and a pretty good one. I recognize genius in my field when I see it.

This is NOT a Quagmire!

In a different universe only slightly to the right of the one we live in, Donald Rumsfeld would have been President of the United States instead of George H. W. Bush. In the Bush II administration, there were at least three "heavyweights" who could have been contenders for the job: Rumsfeld, Cheney and Powell. Whatever you may say about these guys, none of them were stupid.

Rumsfeld was (and presumably still is) incredibly smart. However, he became the very template of the evil genius by exercising his craft in exactly the way he should have: by applying systems analysis to the US military and the Iraq invasion in particular.

This was a fascinating problem. For Rumsfeld it was the chance of a lifetime to demonstrate his genius. Of course, by reducing the problem to something that Bush could see as a "solvable" puzzle, Rumsfeld did what all systems analysts do:

• He didn't ask why the invasion was necessary or even a good idea.  That was Cheney's department.  To be fair, "toppling" Saddam had been official US policy for three successive administrations. It didn't start with Cheney. I can't resist the observation that the public reason for the invasion (Cheney) was to eliminate Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. However, Rumsfeld's plan seemed to assume no WMD's existed or at least wouldn't be used. The actual use of WMD's against an invading force was only mentioned in a monstrous aside: Franks had (maybe) enough protective gear for his own troops but not for the civilian population. 
• All human factors were ignored or assumed away. For example, one assumption was that any normal person would prefer being slaughtered by the US to living under Saddam's repressive regime. Of course this was just an assumption, not backed by a shred of evidence. The Rumsfeld method was to list assumptions then ignore them. Rumsfeld was totally blindsided when Iraqis resented being invaded and got seriously pissed off when thousands had their jobs handed to the hated Shias. Eventually, this particular blind spot became ISIS.
• Being a discipline conducted by liars and spin doctors, diplomacy is famously resistant to "systems analysis". Diplomatic pre-conditions were assumed and left to the State Department to make true. Saddam, the human being, and target of the whole project, was hardly mentioned in the analysis. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were only persuaded to go to the UN (famously full of humans) if they could be sure that the invasion would take place no matter what the UN said.
• The problem needs to be "cut out" of the real world to be subjected to analysis. This inevitably leads to off-grid assumptions, such as the assumption that Russia would not intervene or that the public (solidly against the war) would have no influence on the decision. Rumsfeld famously regarded the problem of Afghanistan "solved" so he could move on to another "triumph". Afghanistan would become America's longest lasting war and end in defeat.
• To obtain consent of congress, a shameless blizzard of outright lies was needed. By this point, everyone seemed to be drinking their own cool aid. Lying to congress and the American people was a necessary evil. We remember that a previous President faced impeachment over lying about his sex life -- obviously a deep moral failing. 
• The commander in chief, ultimately at the controls of the machine, is up to the job. In this case, the boss -- Mister Mission Accomplished -- had never seen a plan more complex than the twelve step program. He was very impressed by smart people. He always seemed to be thinking, "This is me, the President of the United States!! The Decider!" I think it's not fair to accuse Bush of stupidity. He was just a wind-up toy assimilated by the dragon. Sometimes the smarter you (think) you are, the more total is the assimilation.

Powell ultimately failed to inject the human perspective

The essence of systems analysis is, as much as possible, to turn a messy problem into a machine. Part of the problem is to at least try to make the machine intelligible to plodding minds like George Bush -- to give the "boss" the button to push. Rumsfeld worked with General Tommy Franks to boil Iraq down to an elegant matrix of capabilities versus vulnerabilities. Bush was suitably impressed although he doesn't remember much of the detail. Franks was also suitably impressed because Rumsfeld had apparently found a way to un-seat Saddam for a fraction of fraction of the time that a "conventional" attack would assume. Bush assured him that the cost didn't matter - music to the ear of a military chief.

"The Decider"

If you or I were are about to fight someone to the death, we will want to know all we can learn about our enemy. Such instincts for self-preservation, along with all other human qualities, are factored out by the analysis process.

To his credit, Colon Powell, the only member of the administration with actual combat experience found this to be utter bullshit. War is a bigger, nastier, more unpredictable business than Rumsfeld and his technocrats imagined. Experienced generals (including the Joint Chiefs) are the last ones to want war. They have seen first hand what it does to real human beings. It seems like Powell's real life experience was the reason he was pushed aside. As the machine moved closer and closer to war, Powell and Rumsfeld came close to blows.

As we follow the lead-up to the war, we see Rumsfeld making longer and longer lists of the human factors (the "known unknowns"). The lists themselves had become part of the "model". The language Rumsfeld used became more and more frustrating to his White House colleagues as he backed off further and further from making a personal recommendation. He wants everyone to see the world has he sees it -- as a machine. He bears no responsibility for the model. It is what it is. It's not his finger on the button.

Systems analysts create "dragons". The dragons may succeed or fail in their imagined purpose, but they tend to live to grow and fight another day.