Tactical Jenga vs. The Strategic Stopwatch

[Uboat509]

I like Jenga metaphor. As soon as I saw the title of the thread I formed a picture in my head before I even saw the slide. The way I interpreted it was perhaps a bit more abstract than others did. The Jenga tower represents the overall problem of transition and we must play the game (I don't picture a direct correlation between the removal of the blocks and specific things like troop levels and such, rather I saw it as task we must accomplish representing everything we must accomplish in Iraq). Those have played Jenga know that the early moves are relatively easy but the later moves get progressively harder and require more time to accomplish as the tower gets more unstable. The problem then becomes that we are now on a stopwatch, imposed by political expediency and John Q Public's ADHD among other factors. (I also saw the stopwatch as representing dwindling resources as well as time, by the way.) We no longer have as much time as we would like to make our moves. Unlike the normal game however, the goal is not to win by having your opponent crash the tower but have the tower still standing when time runs out (Ken's acceptable outcome vs "victory"). It is an imperfect metaphor but that is the way I pictured it.

SFC W

[slapout9]

Well lets see. Lets change the rules some. What if the Jenga tower represented the insurgency network and you have to figure out how to collapse it within a certain time frame? You would try to find a COG that would collapse the whole thing at once.... but insurgencies are more complicated than that. So the question is how could you collapse the tower in the fewest steps possible, within the alloted time and establish a secure environment. Once that is done you could do the nation building thing.

[selil]

I think we're truly missing the real meaning of Jenga in this context.

[slapout9]

The Jenga Gun all problems have solutions....all solutions cause problems.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9BmTmMEOhQ