Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Strong Horse, Dead Horse, Wagging Dogs, Sharpened Razors


As usual, Mark Steyn nails it...
The belated dispatch of Osama testifies to what the United States does well – elite warriors, superbly trained, equipped to a level of technological sophistication no other nation can match.

Everything else surrounding the event (including White House news management so club-footed that one starts to wonder darkly whether its incompetence is somehow intentional) embodies what the United States does badly. (Mark Steyn – OC Register)
Two questions trouble thinking Americans:

1. Why did we get Osama Bin Laden when we did?
2. Is President Obama purposely screwing things up?

We Got Him!
There are many corollaries to the first question: Was Osama already dead, and we just held that knowledge in our back pocket to wait for the opportune time? Did the raid even really happen, or was it faked?  Is Osama still alive?

Al Qaeda answered the last question in the negative, essentially confirming the official story.
“Occam’s Razor is a principle that generally recommends selecting the competing hypothesis that makes the fewest new assumptions, when the hypotheses are equal in other respects” (Wikipedia)

Occam's Razor says the most plausible answer is the official story. Intelligence has been working this for years, and the time became ripe a month or so ago. That doesn't disprove other theories, it's just that this is the most plausible one.

What do you get when you take a community organizer from Chicago...

The second question can also be explained by Occam’s razor. Barack Obama had nothing in his past experience, training, or education that even remotely qualified him to be president, so his poor performance is no surprise.

He compounded our nation’s ills by surrounding himself with pointy-headed intellectuals who share his embarrassing poverty of real-world experience. National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon may be a fine man, but his foreign policy experience consists of being a lawyer on the periphery of US diplomacy. The administration is full of people like him.  No wonder President Obama is screwing everything up.

Hanlon’s Razor also comes to mind…
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” (Wikipedia)
This paragraph of the Wikipedia article is also instructive…
A practical observation on the risks of stupidity was made by the German General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord in Truppenführung, 1933:
"I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities.
Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!"
I’ll leave it to you to decide if the paragraph fits, and if so, which part.