Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
Here's where I'm going with it, by the way. As soon as I finish the book and read Joe Collins' new monograph, I'm going to draft an article tentatively called "The Logic of Strategy and the Invasion of Iraq." The basic thesis is that there is a logic of strategy which says--to oversimplify it--that the expected benefits of an action (in terms of more security) must outweigh the expected costs and risks.
One area you might want to look at is research into decision making between loss choices and misjudgments of comparative risks. In that regard, there are some parallels between the Japanese decision for war in 1941 and OIF. In essence, leaders, when faced with a status quo situation they perceive will result in a loss, often choose very risky options to prevent that loss and also delude themselves into believing that those risky actions contain less risk than they actually do.

There's been some research on this effect I can try to dig up if you'd like.