Who Moved My IED?

This post by Walter Kirn, substituting for Andrew Sullivan makes an interesting connection between vapid corporate sloganeering and the Iraq War. It's also well written and disparages my current professional vector (Six Sigma) which I like. He writes:

For Iraq, I blame the managers, of course, but I also blame their reading lists. More than once, while predicting victory, Donald Rumsfeld has used the magic words "Tipping Point." This new pop formula for achieving vast results from relatively limited efforts has turned out to be one disastrous abracadabra.

He goes on:

Behind every failed war is a failed metaphor (remember The Domino Effect, the Vietnam-era version of The Tipping Point?) that mesmerized its masters into waging it, kept them waging it once they started losing it, and immobilized them with disbelief when it turned back into intellectual smoke.Behind every failed war is a failed metaphor (remember The Domino Effect, the Vietnam-era version of The Tipping Point?) that mesmerized its masters into waging it, kept them waging it once they started losing it, and immobilized them with disbelief when it turned back into intellectual smoke.

I like that line "Behind every failed war is a failed metaphor..."