HINDSIGHT BIAS

As he often does, the incomparable Jon Rauch homes in on the central distortion in the current discussion of the Iraq war:

Iraq is ridden with hindsight bias. For instance, the Bush administration should have — must have — seen the gaps in its prewar intelligence (they are pretty evident now). And the notion that the occupation could be run with a few divisions — how naive was that? And wasn’t it obvious that the military would need to patrol the streets from the day the war ended?

Hindsight bias raises false expectations and nurtures conspiracy theories. Perhaps worst, it leads to ricocheting errors as people look backward through distorted lenses and then overcompensate looking ahead.

War critics who today revel in hindsight bias might do well to recall an earlier instance: the claim that the first President Bush’s failure to march to Baghdad and unseat Saddam was a gross error. It was not. In early 1991, the smart money was on Saddam’s soon being toppled, and the first Bush wanted to avoid precisely the sort of ugly occupation that the second Bush now finds himself conducting. The second war grew partly from hindsight bias in evaluations of the first.

The solution is pragmatic muddling through. That’s what Condi is now trying to coordinate. It’s the essence of good government. And we have many months to judge its effects – with as little hindsight bias as possible.