Better know what you doing .... most of all .... your enemy.
When you get a steel bar and start to put loads on it, it gets stressed. When you remove the load, it regains its former shape as if nothing happened to it. For each metal, or any thing for that matter, there is a load that will stress the system beyond a limit at which the system will not regain its former shape and it suffers a permanent deformation. This point is called the Yield Point and the stress causing it is called the Yield Stress.
Beyond the yield point, the system will never be the same again or as strong as it was before. It is stiff, less malleable, and will break at any undefined moment and load. The deformation causes the system to lose its uniform and known characteristics you are familiar with. And its behavior after that is completely unpredictable.
Some people experience this at certain points in their lives. We usually call it, nervous breakdown. If that stress is at or past the yield point, the individual becomes irrational.
This happens usually unintentionally to humans and to systems due to the ignorance of people about what or whom they are dealing with. If people don’t know the limits and properties of what they are dealing with, they can unintentionally load it beyond its yield stress and permanently deform and eventually break beyond repair whatever they are dealing with.
According to US Ambassador to UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, and Colin Powel, former US Sec. of State, that is what happened to the Iraq War on May 6, 2003.
In an Op-Ed column in the NY Times yesterday Roger Cohen reports, based on statements made by both Khalilzad and Powel to him, that on that day a sudden change of plans for Post-War Iraq governance was announced. The change created a Provisional Authority with Paul Bremer III in full charge instead of convening Loya-Jirga like conference (organized by Khalilzad and Bremer) of Iraqis to form an Iraqi Provisional Government.
Powel Says " The plan was for Zal to go back. He was the one guy who knew this place better than anyone. I thought this was part of the deal with Bremer. But with no discussion, no debate, things changed. I was stunned".
Bremer believed that running Iraq as Gen MacArthur ran postwar Japan "gave the Iraqis the best chance of a sustainable political process". Powel responds “unfortunately, yes, the way that decision was taken was typical. Done! No full deliberation. And you suddenly discover, gee, may be that wasn't so great, we should have thought about it a little longer"
Khalilzad, an Afghan-American Muslim, understands the culture, the problems and the politics of the region and of Iraq. And whom do we put in charge there after the war? Bremer, a former Ambassador to the Netherlands.
No wonder that Bremer thought Iraq was like Japan and Iraqis were like Japanese. You really have to work very hard to convince someone with that. You just have to admire that level of effort to achieve this level of stupidity.
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