Really Bad Idea

   I was talking to a friend the other day and we were amusing one another with who could come up with an example of surviving a really bad idea.  I ventured, that about twenty-five years ago a friend of mine rushed over to my house to tell me he just spent a load of cash on a new invention, a CD player, and to come by and listen.  I did and when he told me how much he spent I was stunned.

“Do you think I made a mistake?” he asked

  I replied, “Well this CD technology is pretty new; just remember when BETA movies were the rage, might be a flash in the pan.”

  He felt dejected because he put great worth in my opinion…

Who’d a thunk then that CD’s were in fact the wave of the future?  My friend laughed at the tale then said, “Yeah that was a bad call, but not near as bad as Ala Ad-din’s.”

  I had to ask, ”Who was that?”

He smiled while he chuckled saying, “Exactly.” 

  I figured his point of bringing up the obscure leader was that he did something that ended up erasing him from history.  Later that day he emailed me the history of Ala Ad-din with a message attached to the end. “Learn from History and make your enemies carefully”

ALA AD-DIN MUHAMMAD II

  The Khwarezmian Empire stretched from the Sea of Oman to the Oxus River and encompassed what sociologists refer to as “Greater Iran,” incorporating parts of modern-day China, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, but you can be forgiven for not having heard of it before today as its 200-year history ended as the result of a single spectacularly bad decision.

  Legendary Mongol ruler Genghis Khan came across Muhammad II’s territory relatively early in his career and decided to play it safe, sending in a trade mission of Mongol and Muslim merchants to explore diplomatic and commercial possibilities. Muhammad’s governors, nervous over the reputation of the Mongols along with exaggerated accounts of their brutality, arrested the merchants and seized their goods.

  Khan, who was way more diplomatic than people generally gave him credit for, sent three envoys to Muhammad to offer him an easy out—blame the arrest of the merchants on the local governor, chop off his head, and everything would remain cool, then the discussion on trade opportunities could continue—but the paranoid Khwarezmian ruler instead had all or most of the envoy and merchant mission killed.

It was at this point where the bad decision began to pay its dividends: After having two reasonable proposals rebuffed in the most insulting way possible, Genghis Khan decided to make an example. So he released 200,000 of his elite Mongol troops and stormed Khwarezmia. Led by several of Genghis’ greatest generals with standing orders to kill everything in their path—the great cities of Khorasan in particular was to be scoured of all living things down to the family pets, (oh poor fluffy what did he ever do to deserve such a fate?) Muhammad II ran from hiding place to hiding place before finally dying of pleurisy on a remote island off the Caspian Sea.  Probably whispering on his death bed, “Why or why didn’t I take door number two?”  Oh wait, that’s another story.

  So yes, there are ample examples each of us could cite in our very short time on this globe in which perfect hind-sight would tell us “ah-ha, that’s where the error rest.”  Playfully I must mention, there are no mistakes if you’re able to look back on them; If they were really mistakes you’d be gone.  

Drum Roll for Frederick  Nietzche  “ That which does not kill us makes us stronger”