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Defeat and Over-Confidence (December 19, 2006) The self-fulfilling nature of a sense of defeat is well-known; so is the hubris of supreme over-confidence. Flyers in World war II's 8th Air Force suffered casualty rates of about 50%, as did U.S. submariners operating in the Pacific Theatre. Some survivors reported an eerie awareness that certain crews would not be returning, based solely on the actions and mood of the crews prior to departing. This foreboding of defeat is well-known in the trivial faux-combat world of sports as well. Yet the apparently opposite mood of supreme confidence leads to the same destination: defeat. Such hubris often results from a leader or leadership cocooned from reality by an inner circle of sycophants and toadies. As reported in Foreign Affairs and elsewhere, the final days of Saddam Hussein's regime were marked by pure fantasy. Telling the truth in a demonic kleptocracy ruled by terror could cost your life, so Saddam's generals continued to report one fantasy repulse of American invaders after another even as U.S. tanks were rolling through the outskirts of Baghdad. One wonders if a similar fear of political exile is powering the fantasy-world which is painfully obvious inside the White House. Here is hubris defined to perfection: the Army Chief, Eric Shinseki, who reported that 250,000 troops would be needed to secure post-invasion Iraq, was summarily sacked for daring to speak the truth to his political overlords. (This is fact, not politics; Media ignored Bush administration flip-flops on U.S. troop level increases in Iraq:) On February 27, 2003, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz rejected the claim of then-Army chief of staff General Eric Shinseki, now retired, who predicted that "Something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers ... would be required" to provide adequate security in a post-invasion Iraq. Wolfowitz said that Shinseki was "wildly off the mark," and that he was "reasonably certain that they [the Iraqis] will greet us as liberators, and that will help us to keep [troop] requirements down." Wolfowitz's position was shared by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who predicted that post-war troop levels would be lower than what was required for the invasion of Iraq.General Shinseki lost his lower leg in combat in Vietnam, but those who had "other priorities" than service during the troubled Vietnam years saw fit to fire him in a most dishonorable fashion. We are told that our nation's leadership expected Iraqi citizens to shower our conquering troops with huzzahs and garlands. What of the obvious challenges of securing a nation of three warring factions, of a nation stripped by a kleptocracy and with a poorly-maintained and recently bombed infrastructure, of a nation ruled via terror by a religious minority? Did nothing of reality seep through the fantasy-world constructed in the highest levels of our government's leadership? Apparently not. This weekend two Republicans, in independent conversations with me, dismissed the 3,000 U.S. casualties of Iraq as "less than the number of people murdered in L.A. in the same time." So the justification for holding leadership unaccountable for one fatal hubris after another is now a non-sequitur, that because battlefield casualties are less than the nation's immense murder count, then they can be dismissed? I suggested to both men (yes, they were older males) that the value of that statistic (even if true) depended on whether the dead soldier was someone you'd loved. Somehow I find it cold comfort to dismiss battlefield casualties with an airy reference to the murdered of urban America. One of our younger friends married a Marine officer, and now, shortly after the birth of their second child, he has orders for Iraq. This is not an uncommon story, and like so many other Americans--not the elites who know no one in uniform, but those of us who do--we can only hope he returns alive and with his limbs and mind still functioning. One can assume the hedge fund managers earning $30 to 360 million each for growing the wealth of the already-wealthy do not know a soul serving in Iraq. Unlike the Americans who more often than not join the military to gain education benefits they simply couldn't afford otherwise, the hedge funders are buying mansions around the globe and throwing parties which cost millions. By all means, read this account from yesterday's Wall Street Journal on the excesses of hedge fund managers. A friend of mine was contracted to perform a slice of the marketing for an exclusive resort on the Kona coast of the Big Island of Hawaii, and he toured one of the $20 million resort homes (i.e. a second, third or fourth home) being offered for sale. The Kailua-Kona airport, he reports, is often so crowded with private jets that finding space to park additional luxury aircraft is now a problem. The exclusive resort's golf club fees were recently raised, at the behest of its members, from $15,000 a month to $20,000 a month, in order to keep the rabble out. This is not satire; it's reality. Lest we forget the obvious: hedge funds create no products or services; they are entirely speculative paper operations. Those with a nose for history will recall the heady days of speculation which led up to the crash of 1929; those with a literary bent will recall The Great Gatsby. If anything characterizes the plummy world of hedge funds and their clientele, it is the hubris of over-confidence that risk has been vanquished. One wonders if the astonishing hubris of our political leadership--heedless of historical realities, and so much else--is mirrored by the hubris of the hedge fund crowd and their assumption that risk has been banished from their fantasy world of private jets, $20 million resort homes and million-dollar parties. For more on this subject and a wide array of other topics, please visit my weblog. 
copyright © 2006 Charles Hugh Smith. All rights reserved in all media. I would be honored if you linked this wEssay to your site, or printed a copy for your own use.
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