From Baghdad to Tehran: On the Road to Gambler’s Ruin

[Roy Eidelson]

Immediately after the 9/11 attacks of 2001, President Bush sat down to play poker with the biggest stack of chips at the table, the odds-on favorite to win one of the highest-stakes games ever played. This huge initial chip advantage was built from a unified and supportive citizenry at home, a mainstream media that rarely questioned his judgment or intentions, an international community prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, and a military machine bigger than the next couple dozen countries combined. But since those early heady days, Bush and his close advisers and neocon allies have made one horrendous decision after another. The great tragedy, of course, is that the president has not been playing with his own chips. Rather, in this game his poor play has cost the lives of our courageous soldiers and many Iraqi civilians, our country's stature in the world, and our national resources much needed for other purposes, domestic and international.

Realizing how poorly they've been playing, many gamblers would recognize that they don't belong at the table--or conclude that they had entered the wrong game. Not so with the president. Rather, all signs suggest that this stubborn poker player will never learn any constructive lessons from his abysmal performance. There are at least five reasons why this is so. First, although a relative novice at the game, he has refused to prepare adequately, hasn't mastered the probabilities of various outcomes, and seemingly hasn't even tried to understand his opponents and their style of play. Second, he has cultivated and embraced an Old West saloon mentality where a loaded six-shooter and a quick draw can suddenly turn losing hands into winners. Third, he has a personal history of being bailed out whenever he has come up short in the past, whether through family connections or the highest reaches of our judicial system. Fourth, he has convinced himself that God is personally by his side, presumably carrying an unlimited supply of aces. And fifth, he is now deeply concerned about his legacy, and likely suspects that only a miraculously successful reshaping of Iraq and the Middle East can save him from being a frequent answer in "worst president ever" debates in the decades ahead.

My list is undoubtedly incomplete, but it is daunting. It suggests that President Bush will ultimately be driven to go "all in" regardless of any wiser counsel he might receive. And at the very least, "all in" means continuing to play the losing Iraq hands as he has done thus far--or perhaps with even greater recklessness and abandon. More frightening still, "all in" may mean saving his very last stack of chips for Iran. The key question today is whether Congress, acting on behalf of the American people, can muster the fortitude to pull him away from the table before it is (again) too late.

As an addendum, I've put together a short YouTube video entitled Resisting the Drums of War that describes the Bush administration’s warmongering appeals and how to counter them. It's available for viewing at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81UKnb5zJbM

[HereSince1628]

1. Persistence in error, irrational behavior, wooden headedness, mental stagnation

All names for the "sunk-cost fallacy."

Bush and proWar advocates have made it abundantly clear that they seek to avoid losing the Iraq conflict and don't want to be seen as having wasted military lives (and one would hope the lives of Iraqis). These are overt indicators that the Cheney/Bush administration has adopted irrational "sunk-cost" thinking.

On my reading about this phenomenon it seems that people who feel more responsibility for the sunk-cost are actually more likely to buy into the fallacy. This may explain much about the strength of advocacy for the war, and why a third party (Iraq Study Group) is most likely to break the nation out of the fallacy. Those most responsible for the mess in Iraq (Cheney/Bush admin, those who voted for the IWR in Congress) are likely to be the most averse to admitting the loss.

The admission of failure undoubtedly creates a psychic crisis for those who see that it would threaten the existence not only of their personal self-esteem, but also for their very existance as a member of an elite defined by political success.

It may well be elected politicians' inability to come to grips with these personal existential issues that will cost hundreds, perhaps thousands, more people (military and civilian) their lives. What else explains the refusal of the Legislative branch to reflect in its votes the prevailing will of the nation?

In this sense, if it is true, there is no honor and only shame for a politician who would protect his/her self-esteem at the cost of other peoples' lives. Failure to move to end the nation's role in the conflict seems nothing more than cowardliness in the face of embarassment.


From Wikipedia --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost--(with the usual caveats about the potential weaknesses of Wikipedia):

<snip>

Loss aversion and the sunk cost fallacy
Many people have strong misgivings about "wasting" resources. This is called "loss aversion". Many people, for example, would feel obligated to go to the movie despite not really wanting to, because doing otherwise would be wasting the ticket price; they feel they passed the point of no return. This is sometimes called the sunk cost fallacy. Economists would label this behavior "irrational": It is inefficient because it misallocates resources by depending on information that is irrelevant to the decision being made.

<snip>

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. The really unfortunate thing is that people who know better are giving him money to bet.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. The only lives spent in vain are those spent once you know the

war is lost.