Answers We Can Live With?

"To find a fault is easy; to do better may be more difficult."

    - Plutarch (46-120 A.D.), Greek essayist & biographer

Jane Galt has penned an interesting post about the 9/11 Commission at her weblog Asymmetrical Information. She is disturbed about the tenor of the hearings and the way in which they will be accepted:

"...everyone, conservative and liberal and Democrat and Republican, seems to be assuming that there is some answer they will find that will tell them how we could have averted 9/11."

She feels the problem with commissions is that they find what they are tasked to look for, this one being no exception. She also feels that we're seeking reassurances that similar attacks can be prevented in the future when the truth is perhaps that they can't:

"The energy expended trying to blame this failure on someone...seems to me to express an underlying conviction that of course someone could have stopped this--it's only a question of who. For the commission, especially, it's an unacceptable answer; they simply cannot turn to a frightened American public and tell them that it's really too bad, but we live in a scary world."

She goes on to suggest (1) that governments rarely impose massive upfront costs to minimize improbable threats, (2) that political will for taking pre-emptive action against the Taliban was practically non-existent pre 9/11, and (3) that in hindsight, people almost always delude themselves into thinking they could have correctly predicted outcomes. Each of these points is elaborated on in some detail in support of her view that taking "costly, fruitless measures to reassure ourselves" could end up working to our detriment.

It's an interesting post with lots of comments. Take a few minutes and read the whole thing.