{"id":546856,"date":"2010-04-29T08:49:02","date_gmt":"2010-04-29T12:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tlt.fandm.edu\/?p=1657"},"modified":"2010-04-29T08:49:02","modified_gmt":"2010-04-29T12:49:02","slug":"enemy-lurks-in-briefings-on-afghan-war-%e2%80%93-powerpoint-%e2%80%93-nytimes-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/546856","title":{"rendered":"Enemy Lurks in Briefings on Afghan War \u2013 PowerPoint \u2013 NYTimes.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal<\/a>, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we understand that slide, we\u2019ll have won the war,\u201d General McChrystal dryly remarked, one of his advisers recalled, as the room erupted in laughter.<\/p>\n

The slide<\/a> has since bounced around the Internet as an example of a military tool that has spun out of control. Like an insurgency, PowerPoint has crept into the daily lives of military commanders and reached the level of near obsession. The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft<\/a> presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

\u201cPowerPoint makes us stupid,\u201d Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,\u201d General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. \u201cSome problems in the world are not bullet-izable.\u201d<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

via Enemy Lurks in Briefings on Afghan War – PowerPoint – NYTimes.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul last summer that was meant to portray the complexity of American military strategy, but looked more like a bowl of spaghetti. \u201cWhen we understand that slide, we\u2019ll have won the war,\u201d General McChrystal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2951,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-546856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2951"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}