Bad Assumptions Lead to Bad Policies

Sultan Knish

What is so terribly interesting about bad governments is that they are as self-deceiving as they are deceptive. The straightforward clarity of Orwell’s Oceania with its apparatchiks who knew exactly what the system was about and how evil it was, is woefully lacking in our own apparatchiks who assemble the most ridiculous plans out of the tissue paper of their own consensus and then goggle when it all comes apart on them. Whatever evil they harbor within themselves is outdone time and time again by their own stupidity.

Libya is a case in point. We are now loosely involved in a civil war in Libya on the side of the losing side. An engagement engineered by the brightest leaders the West had to offer. Forget dullards like Bush, Blair and Chirac– the new generation weren’t going to let themselves get caught out that way. These were sharp men, brainy boys who had gone to the right schools, Harvard, Oxford, Sciences Po. Surely they could draw on the lessons of history.