It will come as no surprise to anyone when I admit I don’t know the first thing about military or geopolitical strategy. But I’m just having trouble imagining that a recently leaked strategy document on the war in Afghanistan makes use of the right tools to present its findings.
Of course, the strategy plan created by the PA Consulting Group was, as far as we can assume, presented primarily in PowerPoint. And PowerPoint wasn’t used in this case as a word processor the way it often mistakenly is, but to tell a story graphically with minimal explanatory text. Normally, that would be something I would applaud, until you take a look at the deck, and its main slide…
Yes, it does seem like something from The Onion, but MSNBC says it’s legitimate, and you can download the whole presentation from their site here. Perhaps this is a brilliant plan, but if it is, I hope the intended audiences can get past the format to take it seriously. And if anyone out there is familiar with war planning and can tell me that this is the way generals win wars, I’ll be happy to learn something!
