Reflections after Reading Robert Gates' Memoirs
OK, you're at a meeting of the Security Council and the problem is terrorists. You propose dealing with them one at a time, as they appear. Somebody calls yours a "whack-a-mole" strategy. Where does that put you?
In a game arcade, obviously. Nob pops up out of one of the holes,
whop with a mallet. Faster,
faster, whop, whop, whop, so many holes, everybody's laughing, you get all
sweaty, and no matter how good you are you can't keep up. Even if you win all you get is a
stuffed panda.
Where are the guys who named your strategy? At a lectern setting forth a
"comprehensive plan," before a screen with a pointer, tracing
worldwide contributions, or at a blackboard chalking in combined operations,
ending with a Power Point listing of concomitant threats that must be removed.
If only your friend could have gotten in first with
a different characterization. Say
"drill-a-lion" strategy.
You're in a weedy blind, with a 30-06. The menacing beast leaves his lair, shows a flank, pow! The gun bearer stands by with a reload,
in case bwana needs it. Meanwhile
the other guys, with their shotguns, are blamming away at the whole savannah,
with lines of trucks to keep the ammo coming.
No, nobody's going to pick up on
"drill-a-lion." They like
the picture of you running around your yard with a spade, whacking rodents. Can you turn the tables? "You guys want to tear up the whole yard. With a lot of expensive machinery." That won't fly, not until they discover
that moles can move to another yard, which will also have to be torn up.
So the better strategy is rejected because, at the
tipping point of the discussion, an effectively belittling expression is
introduced by advocates of the worse strategy.
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