.@AmbassadorRice and other hawks use sunk cost fallacy to justify staying in Afghanistan washex.am/2TufYW1
Yet one of the most emotionally satisfying but logically empty arguments frequently employed is that the White House would be disrespecting the service of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops over the last 18 years if the United States withdrew from Afghanistan.
Former national security adviser Susan Rice was one of this argument's protagonists, writing in a New York Times op-ed that Trump is cheapening "the sacrifice of the 3,500 American and NATO service members who perished in Afghanistan” by throwing Afghanistan overboard.
Yet let’s be clear about what all of these fine men and women are essentially saying: that only through continued investment in blood and treasure can the hard work of U.S. and NATO soldiers be honored.
In other words, only by magnifying the failure with more failure can the decades-long U.S. experience in Afghanistan be considered worthwhile.
There’s a term for this highly dangerous reasoning: the sunk cost fallacy.
While psychologists have different definitions, the sunk cost fallacy is a phenomenon where somebody continues to do something because he/she has already put so much time and effort into a project.
While psychologists have different definitions, the sunk cost fallacy is a phenomenon where somebody continues to do something because he/she has already put so much time and effort into a project.
Every dollar spent and every American life lost on the battlefield is used as justification to maintain a status quo that is simply not working. To quit now is spun as a tragedy. But how logical is it to honor tragedy with more tragedy?
