A top official involved in the “War on Terror” has officially said that the USA did torture a POW. Finally. Slate has some good analysis of the impact of the news.
The question in my mind is what happens regarding the punitive enforcement of the Geneva Conventions. Will it just be a few low-level soldiers who take the blame or will the leaders who created the atmosphere and approved of the actions share the blame? If I work on a video game that is a failure, is it my failure or the failure of the organization?
I started looking to HBS for some good articles about how organizational leaders should take responsibility for both the successes and failures of the organization they run. There are many such discussion, including some about Churchill taking responsibility for WWII failures. Here’s my cherry-picked quote:
And yet the temptation to skirt or deflect blame can be great. We all know of managers who’ve had successful careers based largely on strategies of avoidance.
At the moment, many people are upset that banking executives are not suffering along with the organizations they ran/run; that sounds to me like they have insulated themselves to the downside such that they can take responsibility for success and shun responsibility for failure. Will the outgoing administration be granted a similar insulation from the negative consequences of their policies?
I won’t post again regarding this topic because I don’t enjoy considering it. This either.
[Why did MSNBC run the story and then pull it? They don’t seem to understand that information on the web shouldn’t just come and go from day to day. Blaming Washington Post is just another form of not taking responsibility.]
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