Sergei Bourachaga’s latest essay concerns the recent controversy over the CIA’s treatment of Islamic terrorists, setting the current crisis in the context of the history of warfare.

Clausewitz, the CIA, and Islamic Terrorism

by Sergei Bourachaga

A few weeks ago a close friend of mine, a visiting guest lecturer from Europe, invited me to attend a presentation at a local Canadian university addressing the impact of nanotechnology on human health, and how it will affect the future of our planet.

To test the level of sophistication of his audience made up of university students, professors, faculty members, bureaucrats, and politicians, he randomly selected fifteen individuals from the audience and asked them the following question: “What is your opinion about the “Dunning-Kruger” software used by most companies in the nanotechnology field, and how it will change the storage of data on imbedded microchips already in use on smart phones recently sold on the Canadian market?”

Several interesting details emerged from the answers received.

• All fifteen respondents belonged to two distinct ideological camps that shaped and colored their responses based on political beliefs that had nothing to do with the scientific facts of nanotechnology or the “Dunning-Kruger” software. All fifteen spoke with an extremely self-confident zeal as if they had an exclusive monopoly on sound knowledge.
• Hierarchic/individualist right leaning respondents more favourably disposed to experts in positions of scientific or political authority trumpeted nanotechnology and the “Dunning-Kruger” software as the cutting edge technology that will eradicate all the evils (war, hunger, pollution…) faced currently by mankind.
• Egalitarians/left leaning collectivists took the opposite stance, insisting that nanotechnology and the “Dunning-Kruger” software are nothing but new technological advances designed to consolidate the power of the elites ruling our society, by providing unlimited access to valuable data on the most intimate aspects of an individual’s day-to-day interaction with his environment. In other words “Big Brother” will know more and more about who you are and what you do on an average day.

After collecting all the answers my friend spent approximately twenty minutes talking about nanotechnology, conveying to the audience mostly old bland information collected from a variety of sources on the internet. A significant number of attendees left after listening for a few minutes, and by the end of the lecture only a handful of students were in the auditorium out of respect for the guest lecturer, but definitely not because they were learning something valuable from the experience.

The entire previously mentioned scenario was a setup planned by the Psychology Department of two universities (one European and one Canadian). The guest lecturer/expert in nanotechnology was a psychology professor whose knowledge of nanotechnology was limited to superficial information gleaned from the internet in a couple of hours of surfing. The “Dunning-Kruger” software was a figment of someone’s imagination. No such software existed and the name had no association with any R & D company or manufacturer in the field of nanotechnology.

What really exists is the “Dunning-Kruger Effect”, first identified by Professor David Dunning and his graduate student Justin Kruger, who jointly published a research paper in 1999 that casted a serious doubt on the conventional wisdom that “Education is the natural antidote of ignorance.” Both researchers introduced significant evidence pointing out that often education can trigger in an individual an illusory confidence that reinforces his/her biases, hampers his/her understanding of facts, and paves the way for disastrous outcomes, especially if the individual is an authority figure with serious responsibilities.

Dunning and Kruger were supporting an argument often made by Professor Albert Einstein about universities that mass-produced graduates who can memorize and retain tremendous amount of information to pass exams, but fail to develop logical faculties that can be successfully used to solve complex problems. Einstein always insisted that “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.”

Dunning and Kruger provided a list of characteristics that one frequently encounters in individuals who suffer from the “Dunning-Kruger Effect”. It starts with an obvious incompetence, and a blindness that prevents them from gauging the depth of their ignorance and the disastrous consequences associated with their ignorance. What differentiates these ignorants with university degrees from uneducated folks who have never received a formal education is that their scandalous incompetence does not leave them perplexed when confronted with disastrous results. Instead, with a self-righteous bold confidence they try to sell you nonsensical explanations that seem to them to be authoritative knowledge.

Another distinctive feature of individuals who suffer from the “Dunning-Kruger Effect” is their natural disposition to import knowledge from certain settings into ones where it is totally inappropriate. For example, taking moral values or rights enshrined in the Constitution to protect the citizens of a State, and applying them to ongoing warfare to protect the foreign enemies of that State. It is not surprising to see a politician who suffers from the “Dunning-Kruger Effect” twisting facts and warping basic rules of logical reasoning to protect his sacrosanct beliefs. Any attempt to challenge his ideological sacrosanct commitments will easily bruise his fragile ego, and he will rely on all kinds of extreme measures to defend ideas and principles he holds dear, including measures that will guarantee the gradual destruction of the institutions and agencies entrusted with the protection of the State from internal and external enemies.

The previously-mentioned details were very obvious in the crusade launched by a group of elected American politicians to hold the CIA accountable for acts of torture used to extract information from Islamic terrorists fully committed to the destruction of America in particular and Western democracies in general.

The formal education of those US politicians who started the witch-hunt, never exposed them to the crucial principle that politics on the international arena between state and non-state actors is based on pragmatism and realism. A realism that clearly states that a “Nation State” cannot coexist with others if it does not exist first. Thus the primary concern of the State is to protect itself from internal and external enemies, through the use of power and warfare where no rules are adhered to if they pave the way to the destruction of the State. In other words, if America is forced to choose between becoming the victim of Islamic terror or exercising torture to defend itself against Islamic terror, the choice should be very simple. No politician in a position of power should compromise the very existence of a country to uphold moral principles that hinder the full neutralization of the enemy, especially when the enemy at stake has displayed a consistent contempt for the sanctity of any human life. All politicians dealing with threats that can seriously harm lives and property should anchor their plans in the basic principal that politics on the international scene is AMORAL.

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