Our military plans should be based on the assumption of unpredictability, rather than on carefully drawn, static models of the world.
James FallowsFor a decade or more after the Vietnam war, the people who had guided the U.S. to disaster decently shrank from the public stage.
James FallowsThe worst kind of management seeks a single optimum, a one-scale index of efficiency, like the mindless scales of 1 to 10 for grading a woman's beauty or one to four stars for a movie's appeal.
James FallowsIf you didn't know better, you might have thought in 2003 and 2004 that U.S. government strategy was being set by people trying to make enemies rather than friends in the Arab-Islamic world. And if you didn't know better, you might think that the Chinese government's approach to the Olympics is being set by people trying to make the country look bad.
James Fallows