Looking at the world the last 10-15 years through the prism of Bin Laden and our deteriorating relationship with the Mideast, it's instructive to note a large failure by the Clinton team:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A64828-2002Jun29

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2002/01/osama200201

While I've seen mention of these failings before, I attributed much to venemous, hysterical anti-Clinton sentiment. But having read a good deal of the failure in Rwanda recently, and just having observed the A- and B-teams in the White House under different administrations, I think there are some important lessons to learn.

First, all these organzations are built with careful, self-serving, ambitious people, and they break into different groups and defend their positions tooth and nail, whether right or wrong. 

All decisions have political consequences, and elections are always around the corner.

Understanding human motivations is difficult, especially across cultural barriers, and it's hard to get past mistrust, especially when that mistrust is deserved.

Progress in one area usually means risk in another area, and people in government are frequently risk-averse, either by nature or by direct order. (Bradley Manning sadly - or gladly, depending on perspective - didn't take orders.)

Whatever arrogance spoken, the information diplomats are working with is frequently crap. Like our excellent snake-oil salesman Don Rumsfield said, you can't just wait for a good product to sell - you go to battle with the crap you were dealt. That's not just in the case of WMD's in Iraq. I've been there from my first job with government - making up statistics to support a foredrawn conclusion that everyone knew was best anyway. At least in my case it was failry obvious, except for how much it would cost. In the case of African or Mideast hot spots, it's simply that none of the information is reliable, so you 1) go on gut instinct or experience, 2) put a stake in the sand and that's it, 3) choose whatever gets you promoted, 4) find an ally or spout a position that sounds clever. (a few other choices as well).

In write-ups of Rwanda and Sudan, a few people have admitted their mistakes - these are not typically "bad" people, but people with complicated roles, few resources, and limited options. But there is no way to correct their mistakes or fix it so it doesn't happen next time - no one can force politically unpopular, difficult choices into the system. The system is designed to reinforce decisions that have been made and bring consensus.

Post-9/11 we talked about information sharing, and other Shangri-La stuff, but it doesn't actually happen. The Japanese design poke-a-yoke systems that get around human error by having only one proper, easy way to do something. (e.g. a plug that can be inserted only one way). Government doesn't usually have these, or they get re-purposed for some partisan or self-aggrandizing view, or they simply haven't been designed to actually work.

So we got it so wrong with Bin Laden in Sudan (where he at least was under observation) or post-9/11 (where he was on the run and making our lives hell). In one case, it looks like we couldn't find a way to trust our proclaimed enemy, and in the other, we used our distrust to create a completely different system, one antithetical to our supposed values and courage.

In both cases, it looks like the winners of the day (and the losers long term) won because of their clarity in action, their recalcitrant view in the debate. Richard Clarke was known as a good arguer, so held on well at State - while backing wrong sides on both Sudan and Rwanda. Some of the diplomats didn't know, and didn't take such a strong position. But weak, equivocal opinions never win. Deciders want decisions, and a decision usually favors the information you know over what you don't - i.e. what you should find out, or safer vs. riskier. This is nothing new - in Saladin's time, the hard-edged war mongers won their opinion over the more liberal equinanimous advisors. They were on message, even without Fox News.

We maintain the illusion of being in control by shutting out what we don't know. Despite a changing world, we great each new cataclysmic event with a strategic nested in previous strategies, attitudes, soundbites. For a supposedly thinking race, we're rather boring and plebian in our analysis of news. I got a kick out of the first comment I saw on the recent tornados: "worse than Katrina or 9/11". Humorous. I wouldn't have thought of them having anything to do with these events, but given a lack of imagination, it's easier to recycle the past.

Kurzweil's view of the Singularity notes the technological exponential growth of invention. But it would be hard to say that we're using technology in an exponentially more useful way, especially in areas like government and diplomacy and war-making.

And despite Kurzweil hinting at it, he doesn't really note a way that humans are to tie into this increase in technological advancement - we enable, they grow without us? I do kind of agree with his aging observation that the world's wealth wants to grow much faster, that it's on an exponential growth curve that we don't recognize yet (with possibly some setbacks from the last decade).

But like all our assumptions out of the box, the box is an illusion. The government doesn't know what it's doing, our technology doesn't know what it's doing, we don't really know what we're doing. We continue to grope around blindly, despite the growth of new tools. When will it pay off in a meaningful, focused way? Or as Buckminster Fuller asked, when will we start working directly towards meaningful progress, rather than having progress occur orthogonal to us, despite us?

Osama Bin Laden was killed 2 days ago. But in 3 parallel universes, he didn't have to exist, he didn't have to go postal, we didn't have to be traumatized by him and abandon all our moorings. As we progress towards a technological singularity, we can try progressing towards a mental one, a physical one, a whole-organism one. What are basic ways for innovation to fit into real human growth at an exponential rate? How do we latch human intellectual thought onto technological growth, rather than directing and reacting to human events much as they did in Saladin's day? How do we ourselves achieve exponential learning?