Musings for ANZAC Day.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
This is a recipe for commitment bias.
Well worth keeping in mind, as Australia moves to follow the 'merkins in withdrawing from Afghanistan.
As a start to understanding why people get locked into losing courses of action, let’s look first at what a purely rational decision-making approach would be. Consider, for example, the decision to pursue or scuttle an R&D or a marketing project. On the basis of future prospects, you’d have made the initial decision to pursue the project, and enough time would have passed to see how things were going. Ideally, you’d then reassess the situation and decide on future action. If you were following a fully rational approach, whatever losses might have occurred before this decision point would be irrelevant for your reassessment. With a cold, clear eye, you’d view the prospects for the future as well as your available options. Would the company be better off if it got out, continued with the project, or decided to invest more resources in it? You’d treat any previous expenses or losses as sunk costs, things that had happened in the past, not to be considered when you viewed the future.
Leaving aside the questionable motives for entering into what became our longest conflict, I wonder what role the ANZAC myth played in keeping us there.
Comments (12)
In 1974 I went to a dawn service. There was a small group of onlookers and the conversation there was how many more years do you think this ritual has left before it is obsolete.
Today the ANZAC day dawn service is a jam-packed, vibrant circus and seems to be key part of contemporary Australian identity. It's a Grand Final and Show Day combination. And we even have an off-shoot pseudo event, Anzac Day Eve. Our version of Trump - John Howard - was instrumental in fostering a kind of retro-nativism where Don Bradman rides Pharlap along the shore of Gallipoli beach. It still seems abrasive to me. I think it all sits in the jingoistic tool box with the notion that Aussies are good soldiers who can help export civilization and mateship to the rest of the world.
Yes, part of the myth.
Is that a good thing?
My bias is not to invade countries or have military action celebrated in ways that do not interact with history, so no.
You?
In regards to the sunk cost, the purpose for the expense was to establish a political culture in the face of another that opposed that development. After twenty years, there are many Afghans who invested in the alternative who will go down when the Taliban return.
So, there are myths but also the development of relationships after so much time to consider.
Damn little.
The primary objective at the time seems to have been for the purpose of getting recognition as a player in "international security" and all you got was a bumper sticker.
It's the thirst for religion and ancestor worship.
Specifically, it ought to be a day of rage, reflecting on the horrors of imperialist ambition, our slavish aping of European - and now American - power plays, and on Australia's shameful and irredeemable colonial past. Never again indeed.
Yes.
It's a great thing when people are thought to be as good competent soldiers and the people to be determined to fight thanks to the past actions of their grandparents and great grandparents.
The actual reality might be different. But the myth is good for deterrence, to keep the peace.
Quoting Banno
That the Americans don't start thinking you are showing them the finger and starting hating you as the do the French. (Remember "Freedom fries")
You still have their troops, btw. Just like us and the Swedes, who aren't even allies of the US. Actually there's now far more troops from other countries than from the US in Afghanistan.
And the Taleban is more stronger than ever, what else?
What? Who has who's troops?