The Winds of Change

Kind of a long post today as there is a lot to catch up on. Some of you may have noticed I said in my last post that I was going to post more regularly and all I have to say in my defense is that Verizon’s Unlimited NationalAccess broadband service has a very deceptive marketing campaign. Turns out, it’s not so unlimited after all. Never fear, however, as there are ways around that.

Turning to politics, as I am wont to do, you may have noticed a little election thing we had in the country a few days ago. Not that it came as any surprise to me, but the Democrats swept up both the House and Senate and triggered Rumsfeld’s firing in the process. Yes, we all heard Bush say this had been in the planning for weeks, but does anyone think Donald would be out of a job today if the Democrats had not made the gains they did?

Another happy by-product of the Democratic coup is John Bolton will not be returning to the UN as an American ambassador. Neither will his mustache. This has obviously pissed a lot of Republicans off, as so many things have in the last few days, including the timing of Bush’s announcement of Rumsfeld’s firing/resignation.

Along the lines of pissed off Republicans, I took some morbid glee in cruising conservative blogger and forum sites to read ongoing reactions to the election results. Some, like Rush Limbaugh, tried to jump on the bandwagon with the rest of the country by saying Republicans “deserved” to lose because they had “lost their way” and so on. Check the previous posts by those same people, however, and you will find such Pro-Republican propaganda as to make you wonder whether they were getting their checks directly from the White House.

To be completely fair, I will be up front in acknowledging that the election was not so much about the country choosing Democrats as it was about choosing anyone except Republicans. Jon Stewart, on the Daily Show, characterized it best when he described the Democratic win as “the brother who backs slowly out of the room while the other brother gets yelled at for burning down the garage.” This is not to say the Democrats winning will not have a positive effect on our country. I have already pointed out some benefits and I expect many more from them in the coming two years.

One such change is obviously in how we engage Iraq and disengage ourselves from what has become and undefinable victory. I use that last phrase with purpose as it was the subject of a recent debate between myself and an online IRC’er called “Redder”, who was not at all happy with the crow he was having to eat. Aside from the usualy “but, but Clinton..” apologetics we all hear from Republicans anytime their Dear Leader is questioned, he responded to my repeated queries for a definition of victory in Iraq with this link. I say repeated queries because each time I asked, he would respond with “I could tell you, but you wouldn’t understand” or some derivative thereof, all the while furiously Googling what I presume to be the keywords “Bush Iraq victory plan” and trying to find a website that did NOT say Bush was an idiot. After triumphantly posting his direct-from-the-horse’s-mouth link, he admitted this with “it took me about 3 secs to google search that”.

So, what was this plan for victory, as Redder, um, read it? Let him cut and paste for me:

Redder
:
warrior: Executive Summary
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Redder
:
OUR NATIONAL STRATEGY FOR VICTORY IN IRAQ:
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Redder
:
Helping the Iraqi People Defeat the Terrorists and Build an Inclusive Democratic State
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Redder
:
Victory in Iraq is Defined in Stages
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Redder
:
Short term, Iraq is making steady progress in fighting terrorists, meeting political milestones, building democratic institutions, and standing up security forces.
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Redder
:
Medium term, Iraq is in the lead defeating terrorists and providing its own security, with a fully constitutional government in place, and on its way to achieving its economic potential.
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Redder
:
Longer term, Iraq is peaceful, united, stable, and secure, well integrated into the international community, and a full partner in the global war on terrorism.




Given what Redder sees there as being a “plan” or even definition of a plan for victory, it’s clear he has never worked in a corporate environment or even one where accountability and success are measured beyond getting the drive-through order out the window in under 45 seconds. The rest of us, however, see real problems in the fuzziness of Bush’s plan, which is equivalent to a beauty pageant contestant’s confident desire to feed the world’s children.

The reason why this is no plan or definition of success is the total lack of quantifiability. Defeat terrorists? Oh? How many do we have to defeat before the ideology the terrorists stand for can be considered defeated?

Standing up Iraqi security forces? How many and in what time frame? What level of police forces are necessary on a population density basis? What goals of reduction in daily violence are in place? Is a judicial infrastructure in place to deal with what successes the security forces have?

What economic potential? Is there is a specific GDP goal, based upon historical markers and current economic indicators? By what percentage must year growth increase in order to achieve success in a realistic timeframe?

In short, none of the aforementioned “goals” meet even the most basic of criteria for performance metrics. Consider your own workplace. Let’s say, it is your job to sort widgets into bins as they come down an assembly line. In order for the company to meet its obligations, you need to sort at least 1000 widgets a day into the various bins. Now, when you first start the job, no one expects you to necessarily hit that number right away. There is a performance ramp that you will climb until you do.

However, let’s say after 90 days, that you are still only sorting 750 out the required 1000 widgets. It’s time for a performance evaluation. Your supervisor will most likely ask for your input on a plan for you to hit the goal. At this point, if you desire to keep your job, you cannot merely say you plan to “do better” or “work harder”. Instead, you will need to come up with a daily percentage increase in widgets sorted over a realistic timeframe in order to meet your quota. Realistic, in this case, probably means 30 days or so with a daily increase of X amount of widgets. If you cannot come up with this on your own, your employer will probably do it for you, if only so that a break-down in that plan along the way can be spotted and addressed immediately.

This is Business 101, folks. In the corporate world, it’s known as SMART goal setting:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Timed

By this standard of common performance evaluation, Bush fails miserably. The goals e
xpressed for Iraq are lofty and noble, to be sure, but do not meet any of the criteria for SMART goals. It’s the same, once again, as asking the beauty pageant contestant how she plans to feed the world’s children and having her reply “Umm, make more food”.

In short, Bush’s and Redder’s definition of victory is only a definition in the same way as “spherical object in space” is a definition for Earth.