PowerPoint of Afghan War Strategy 233
eldavojohn writes "Disillusioned by PowerPoint at work? Some members of the US Military view it as 'an internal threat.' Marine Corps General James N. Mattis says, 'PowerPoint makes us stupid,' reaching the same conclusion NASA came to back in 2003. But nothing speaks to this more than the spaghetti-bowl PowerPoint slide of the US Military's strategy in the ongoing war in Afghanistan. The slide causes anyone's eyes to glaze over with confusion so much that General McChrystal jokingly stated when he saw it, 'When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war.' At my job, I know that feeling all too well."
I know that slide... (Score:5, Informative)
... and it has nothing to do with the complexity of the STRATEGY.... it's meant to give commanders an indication of the insanely-complex interrelations between various factors/actions. It's actually designed to represent the SITUATION in Afghanistan and to illustrate that simple notions of cause and effect aren't quite as simple as you'd like to believe. The slide is nothing more than a model of a very complex situation.... and it's actually a damned good one too.
Check out the larger version of the picture [msn.com] and take a look at some of the headings.
Look at the top right of the dark blue portion, where it says "targeted strikes", if you start following some of the arrows, you see (as you should expect) that targeted strikes will have an effect on "Insurgent Damages and Casualties" and that such an effect will also have an effect on "Fear of ANSF/Coalition Repercussions", which will also have an effect on "Insurgent recruiting/manpower".
There's no description of strategy there, and if you sat down and tried to think about the repercussions of specific actions taken in an area filled with insurgents and a populace that is sometimes sympathetic and sometimes not sympathetic to both the coalition and insurgents, a lot of the interrelations would seem pretty obvious - ie. if you spend too much effort killing insurgents, you run the risk of increasing their ability to recruit, because the population will begin to fear and resent you.
Don't look at the slide as a whole... just look for an entry on the slide that represents an action, and follow the arrows which show what the effects of that action are.
What a chart! (Score:3, Informative)
Wow, someone needs to learn how to use GraphViz:
http://www.graphviz.org/ [graphviz.org]
*avoid edge crossings and reduce edge length
Re:There's not really a better alternative (Score:5, Informative)
But was it the best way?
It really depends. PowerPoint (and presentation applications in general) offer a very flexible and powerful method for imparting information. You can collect disparate pieces of information together, present it in numerous forms (text, pictures, animations, etc.), and emphasize and accent, among other things. These are all very useful things to do for a variety of situations. The issue with PowerPoint (and office software in general) is the misconceived perception that it should be used by everybody. Some people know how to present, and others do not. Those who do not will make a mess out of anything, including presentation software.
With great power comes great responsibility -- Spider Man
Presentation applications, like any other flexible development environment, carry with them a responsibility that it be used intelligently and purposefully. The ability to display all sorts of information also increases the overall potential complexity of the information. The same generic set of guidelines applies, just like it always has, be it with books, technical papers, charts, graphics, code comments, or any other medium:
... I could go on, but you get the point. When used correctly, presentation software can be very powerful and useful. There is no inherent aspect of it that dumbs down presentations or people. The compulsion to "mutilate data" is something that only stems from a lack of understanding of how to present that data in the first place. Give an stupid person a tool, and he'll use it stupidly.
The slide is perfect. (Score:2, Informative)
Killing Afghanis for employment and profit, while hiding the true nature of what is being done is very complicated. The slide shows that perfectly.
This is the real underlying issue: If Afghanistan can be made safe, an oil company can become very rich by building an oil pipeline from the interior of Russia to Pakistan. A side issue is that weapons sales and war contracting are easy money. (It is the employees of the war contractors who are killed.)
To those who want to make money, killing poor and relatively defenseless people is just a cost of doing business. Especially since the U.S. taxpayer pays the cost.
"... incapable leadership and poor communication..."
Exactly.
Re:There's not really a better alternative (Score:3, Informative)
And that is exactly the problem with powerpoints - they hook up listeners to fragmented visual flow. If you can't keep their attention without that aid, then your presentation most likely sucks anyway and you shouldn't be giving it, you shouldn't be hiding behind it to mask how poor of a speaker you are.
("it helps keep you on-track as a speaker" tells everything about who really benefits from powerpoint)