Resource Allocation - Making a Hash of the Sausage

There will always be more identified risks than there are resources to address them. That's why smart people have to make smart decisions about resource allocation.

October 01, 2004 — CSO — Good decisions require assessing the extent of each risk, estimating the positive value (both short- and long-term) of addressing it, calculating the necessary costs and related risks it entails (factoring in the so-called law of unintended consequences), and anticipating the possible bad consequences of failing to address it. Also required is a clear-eyed inventory of the thingsperhaps numerousthat cannot be done because this is being done instead.

Much has been written lately about the decision to invade Iraq. Debate about that decision and its ramifications lies at the heart of the current political campaign, with partisans of Bush and Kerry staking out starkly different positions: 1. Saddam, a vicious and dangerous tyrant, was clearly enmeshed in the global terrorist conspiracy and therefore had to be removed to enhance our national security; and 2. Saddam, though no doubt a vicious tyrant to his own people, was in no way a credible terrorist threat to America, thus making the war in Iraq a tragic and costly diversion from the more important fight against al-Qaida.

National correspondent James Fallows tackles this controversy head-on in the October issue of The Atlantic (www.theatlantic.com). Fallows argues, in what amounts to a reportorial cost-benefit analysis, that the Iraq war has made America less, not more, secure. He even posits that "among national-security professionals there is surprisingly little controversy" about that assessment: "They tend to see America's response to 9/11 as a catastrophe." Even those who may differ about the wisdom of invading Iraq, writes Fallows, agree that the war "has increased the threats America faces and has reduced the military, financial and diplomatic tools with which we can respond."

One anonymous source, a senior figure from a military think tank, is blunt in the way only anonymous sources can be: "[T]he Administration is full of [it]. In my view, we are much, much worse off now than when we went into Iraq. That is not a partisan position. I voted for these guys. But I think they are incompetent."

Fallows writes that dating from the beginning of 2002, the war on terrorism narrowed to focus on preparing for war in Iraq. The cost of this preoccupation (or pre-occupation, as the case may be) was borne mainly in Afghanistan, from which "attention and money were drained toward Iraq," giving al-Qaida time, space, and a climate of escalating chaos in which to lick its wounds and begin to reconstitute. But there were other costs too: an inability to devote the resources needed to inspect more than 2 percent of the 9 million shipping containers offloaded in U.S. ports each year, a failure to adequately support first responders, and the crowding out of "efforts to design a broader strategy against Islamic extremists and terrorists."