Shahed Ghoreishi was a career‑level press officer who drafted a single, straightforward line for the State Department press office: “We do not support forced displacement of Palestinians in Gaza.” A short time later his proposed language was cut, and days after that he was fired — an action colleagues told reporters sent a “chilling message” through the building that veering from the administration’s framing could threaten a person’s job.
That is far more than a personnel dispute. It is a window into a deeper pathology in US foreign policy: a system — inside government and across its think tanks, media, and political circles — that too often punishes facts, rewards conformity, and makes it perilous for professionals to tell leaders what they need to hear.
Social scientists have a name for this dynamic: groupthink. Far from being an abstract academic idea, it describes what happens when teams value unity over truth. Psychologist Irving Janis, who coined the term, defined it as “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”
In other words, the stronger the pull of conformity, the weaker the capacity for independent judgment. The result, Janis warned, is a deterioration of decision-making: mental efficiency declines, reality testing erodes, and moral judgement falters.
The process is easy to spot: decisions made within small, insulated circles create pressure to conform. Those who disagree either stay silent or are pushed aside, a false sense of consensus emerges, and what Irving Janis called “mindguards” step in—members who shield leaders from uncomfortable information and preserve the illusion of unanimity. The consequences are serious. Scholars of U.S. foreign policy have linked this very pattern to disastrous mistakes, from fatally flawed contingency planning to the manipulation and misuse of intelligence that paved the way for war.
That explains why Ghoreishi’s firing should make us uneasy. It communicates to tens of thousands of public servants that nuance can be dangerous, that raising inconvenient facts is a political liability, and that professional judgment may be judged less on merit than on loyalty to a preferred frame.
Protect honest debate
Public debate only works when people are willing to risk being unpopular in order to correct mistakes. As legal scholar Cass Sunstein has noted, dissenters who bring forward inconvenient facts are “to be prized,” because even one honest voice can puncture a false consensus. But when criticism is immediately treated as a political attack, the cost of speaking rises too high, and people choose silence instead.
When organizations go after people’s motives instead of addressing their arguments, real debate is replaced by character assassination. The Ghoreishi case was not just a routine decision by a manager; it was driven by a political appointee with an ideological agenda, and it was followed by a vicious smear campaign from far-right activist Laura Loomer. The message to career officials was unmistakable: even language consistent with long-standing US policy could end a career. Such a culture silences public servants and leaves leaders deaf to the truth.
The consequences of manufactured consensus are not hypothetical. They were on full display in the run-up to the Iraq war, when insulated teams, reinforced by pressure from the top, narrowed intelligence assessments and sidelined skeptics. It was a textbook case of groupthink. Iraq proved that when dissent is punished, institutions lose the very safeguards that can prevent catastrophe.
Re‑center evidence over ideology
Good foreign policy begins with clear-eyed diagnosis and an honest weighing of costs and alternatives. Too often, though, the language of government cables and committee deliberations favors a politically convenient frame over a messy truth. The result is policy built on selective intelligence, comforting assumptions, and incomplete evidence.
Research on group decision-making shows why this happens. Some cohesion can help teams move faster, but only if dissent is protected and confirmation bias kept low. Once conformity takes hold and critics are silenced, decision quality quickly collapses. As Cass Sunstein warns, that fragile balance breaks down when powerful voices dominate, turning healthy teamwork into conformity, self-censorship, and collective error.
That is why reforming how decisions are made is urgent. Leaders should be required to hear out alternative analyses, include minority views in the record, and respond directly to objections from skeptics. These are not box-checking exercises. They are simple guardrails that make it harder for institutions to ignore inconvenient evidence before locking in a course of action.
Safeguard public servants
If we want honest debate, we must make dissent less costly. The scholarship is blunt: dissent must be rewarded or at least protected, especially when it benefits the public interest. That requires stronger safeguards for career staff and whistleblowers, real channels for internal disagreement, and institutional incentives that value critical review over blind loyalty.
But rules on paper only go so far. Culture ultimately decides whether people speak up or stay silent. In today’s climate, self-censorship is rising. Fear of reputational damage leads many to hold their tongue, and that instinct seeps into elite institutions where insiders are reluctant to challenge prevailing narratives. The Ghoreishi case makes the point: it taught public servants not just what language is permitted, but what truths are too dangerous to even raise.
Ultimately, even the healthiest institutions need outside pressure to stay honest. That is why external checks are indispensable. A free press and a Congress willing to investigate provide the counterweights to executive overreach and groupthink. These mechanisms are not partisan weapons; they are structural safeguards. By forcing leaders to explain their decisions, confront inconvenient facts, and stay accountable, they keep the system honest, and the country safer.
Why defending dissent is patriotic and vital for national security
Dissent is often painted as disloyalty. In reality, the opposite is true: telling leaders uncomfortable truths is a patriotic duty. When analysts, diplomats, or generals speak up, they reduce the chances that the nation will stumble into unnecessary wars, misjudge adversaries, or ignore the human costs of reckless policies.
That is why Shahed Ghoreishi’s firing should alarm anyone who cares about sound statecraft. It signals a climate where loyalty to the script outweighs telling the truth. And when silence becomes the safer career path, the nation loses its best safeguard against small mistakes growing into strategic disasters.
The fixes are not complicated. Institutions can create formal channels for dissent, assign rotating devil’s advocates, test plans against adversarial analysis, and shield career professionals from political retribution. These steps will not prevent every mistake, but they will make policy sturdier and leaders better informed.
History shows that even a single dissenter can break a false consensus and steer a group back toward sound judgment. Protecting those voices is not weakness; it is prudence. It is how democracies learn, adapt, and survive.
Reprinted with permission from Center for International Policy.
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