He's entirely right that mass passion constrains leaders and compels escalations of commitment and leads to the sunk cost fallacy; elite leaders can reign in those tendencies by imposng rational willpower but they don't always or perhaps even can't always. Sometimes at least they clearly can. But yeah, war quickly becomes irrational once the killing starts (plans never survive first contact w/enemy...)
I like how he said that democracy can take root in a society if it is educated and enlightened. The bush administration thought it can impose democratic ideals on Iraqis but the majority of the Iraqi society is illiterate, still being brainwashed by its clerics and imams...Middle East and some parts of the world are still living like Middle Ages Europe eg. when that Shiite cleric Sadr called for Shiite's to take up arms against the Baghdad government thousands of his followers answered his call and led to dozens of American armed services casualties...and made worse by the sacking of thousands of Nationalists Baathists in the Iraqi government after the 2003 US led invasion...collapse of the civil service-sanitary & water supply etc, and dismissal of the pre 2003 Iraqi Army Officer Corps...putting on the streets some pissed off individuals who had the knowledge and experience of fighting...put to good use by Al Qaeda and the Iraqi Insurgent groups after 2003...!!!
Meli Matanatoto Do you consider yourself educated or Enlightened??? The bush administration went to iraq to promote democracy??? You're my friend one brainwashed blind individual
@Meli the invasion of Iraq was carried out at the behest of Israel. The plan for iraq, from the beginning, was to dismember the country, thereby paving the way for the creation of a new country called kurdistan. See: Oded Yinon plan, A clean break: a strategy for securing the realm (Israel), see also: col. Ralph Peters Map of the new middle east/map of blood.
