Evaluation of Iraq war through group think Essay

The War on Iraq was decided by a small group of people that was headed by the President and comprised of the Vice-President, Defense Secretary, CIA Director and other senior administrative officials. The decision to go to war was a decision of a small think-tank rather than of an individual or a larger group of people. The decision of the think-tank pushing the case for the Iraq War seems to be an apt example of confirmation bias. This confirmation bias during the events leading to the Iraq War has led to a widening rift between policy makers and the intelligence community. It is widely believed that the war think-tank defied the pointers presented by the official intelligence. Instead, the intelligence available in a raw form was misused to publicly justify the war on Iraq and build a positive public perception that would endorse the war. As the Washington Post reports the discussion on the war; â€Å"The case was thin,† summarized the notes taken by a British national security aide at the meeting. â€Å"Saddam was not threatening his neighbours and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. However, the think-tank was convinced about going for a war with Iraq and it used the available intelligence to confirm its beliefs. Cognitive diversity was missing in the think-tank that drew up the plan for the Iraq War. All members involved in the decision process had same political leanings, were to a large extent a culturally homogenous group and formed a small team that worked closely with each other on various policy making issues. The team did not comprise of various political voices even though the decision to go to war impacted the entire country. It did also not take advice and heed to objections of World bodies like the United Nations when some of the member countries objected to the unilateral action of the United States and its ally Britain to go to war. The team did not invite any new members to its coterie of decision makers to infuse fresh or alternative thinking in its decision making process. As Senator Barbara Boxer said, â€Å"Iraq was a war of choice, not necessity†. The intelligence community was roped in only to substantiate claims made by the think-tank on the reason to go to war. The group behaved with a preset agenda ignoring the alternatives at hand and made biased decisions. The Iraq War is also an example of group comparison where the decisions of the individual members could have been different from the decisions of the group that they were part of. The study of group polarization began with an unpublished 1961 Master’s thesis by MIT student James Stoner, who observed the so-called â€Å"risky shift†, meaning that a group’s decisions are riskier than the average of the individual decisions of members before the group met. After the wide public criticism of the U. S. handling of the war, two prominent members of the Iraq think-tank put in their papers. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell resigned after almost 4 years of at the helm of affairs. He was seen as less supportive of the war even though he was the public face on international forums to drum up support amongst its traditional allies. Whereas Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld who took over the course of foreign policy after Powell’s exit was seen as a hardliner. It seems that the hardliners would have grown even more resolute in their decision to go to war after several rounds of deliberations that the think-tank might have had. They would have presented intelligence information and other reasons to hard sell their belief thereby subduing the reluctant supporters of the war.