Asymmetrical Information

War supporters are much more likely to acknowledge those who died and were injured than war opponents are to acknowledge how many, many more would have been killed, tortured, and repressed without it.

The net effect of the war was a huge savings in lives and injuries. And of course, the environmental benefit is enormous as well.

Every truly honest, left-wing environmentalist must be really, really conflicted.

Both of them.

You know, of course, Jane, that you're likely to catch hell for this post. That being said and done, it's why nobody likes moral calculus. Sometimes you aren't afforded to choice between good and bad, like everything else, it may come down to bad and much worse.

Heck, that kind of dilemma has given birth to an entire genre of "What If" fiction, where the author tries to suggest possible "Might Have Beens." Whose to say that this boy wouldn't have been tortured in front of his parents for some hypothetical crime?

The obvious answer is, of course, we'll never know. We can only say that this poor boy has been subjected to a unbelievable tragedy and we can only hope that his suffering is outweighed by the suffering that we think may have continued if Hussein had remained in power.

Moral calculus is hard. But moral partial differential equations makes it look like a cakewalk.

I really enjoyed moral numerical methods, though.

Moral linear algebra is more my speed.

*crickets chirp*

I know Kuwait is paying for these boys' operations and all, but is the Red Cross, or any other charity, gathering donations to help Iraqi victims of war? Seems like a good idea; the U.S. government freeing the Iraqis from tyranny, and private U.S. citizens helping to heal the wounds.

"The net effect of the war was a huge savings in lives and injuries."

That is an interesting opinion, formed I'm sure by frequent viewing of Fox News. You do realize, of course, that the vast majority of those Saddam killed happened in the massacres of 1988 and 1991. There was no ongoing genocide. Repression, yes. Killings of political opponents, absolutely.
But we have no right to pat ourselves on the back and justify our invasion by saying there was any type of 'huge savings in lives and injuries'. That is just a last ditch justification for our invasion after we have learned that Saddam was nowhere near the threat that the administration thought he was.

Ah...the "FOX news" non-rebuttal. I thought that one was no longer in style.

Wallster - you think that the immense loss of life (or limb) in Iraq from 1991 to the time Saddam and his friends got kicked out is somehow OK because they were no longer just picking on one group? Sure, there were murders and atrocities, but at least it wasn't *genocide*, so no harm done. Wow. It would never occur to me to see the torture and killings of thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children as less terrible simply because they were carried out under the regime of an equal opportunity monster.

Of course, maybe there was less genocide because
a) many of the prospective victims were in the no-fly zones, protected to some degree by us evil Fox News-watching 'Merkans
b) everyone else was already dead. This is like saying "The hunting of passenger pigeons has really decreased." Well, duh.

Wallster, human rights groups estimate that about 100-200 people a week were going missing in Iraq at the hands of Hussein's government. In under a year, the balance sheet will be robustly positive on that score.

I think we have a duty to remember the innocents who were injured or killed in collateral damage, but that doesn't mean that the Iraqi people as a whole aren't better off.

Wallster,

I don't watch Fox News. What else are you wrong about being "sure" of? Does it upset you that all those children were freed from Saddam's prison? Does it upset you that terrorists from a variety of different terrorist groups in the Mideast have been killed or captured in Iraq? Does it upset you that millions of Iraqis celebrate that we delivered them from Saddam? Does it upset you that Iranian students have been emboldened in their demands for democracy by our presence next door? Do you hate that North Korea has seen what happened to Saddam and decided to come to the table?

Or are you really just mad because our world became much safer under a Republican president than it had been under your boy Clinton?

Stan-
That prison turned out to be an orphanage - pay attention.

I'm rather upset that your boy Bush has killed over 200 of our troops while making the world less safe, supercharging Al Qaeda recruitment while inciting much greater anger amongst Islam - all under the guise of "WMDs" or "Al Qaeda connections" that turned out not to exist.
Saddam was no threat to us, get over it. Neither George Bush nor any Republican gives a rat's ass about ordinary Iraqis, its just that without Al Qaeda connections and WMDs, "liberating" the Iraqi people was all that the hawks had left to hide that fact that they were wrong about and/or exaggerated the reasoning for going to war.

Jane - you are absolutely correct, remembering those we have killed or maimed is necessary, even though, as a whole, Iraq is better off. Which is certainly is. I'm curious about that 100-200 people a week comment, any links would be appreciated.

Christopher Hitchens had an article on it in Slate a little while back. Unfortunately I haven't time yet to dig it up, but it was quite recent.

Funny how many children in that "orphanage" went home to live with their parents again, after being...unjustly let out.

"That prison turned out to be an orphanage - pay attention"

As reported by the man of unquestioned integrity, Robert Fisk. Still it is certainly possible it was an orphanage.

But that doesn't discount the fact that children were indeed imprisoned.

"The prison in question is at the General Security Services headquarters, which was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children — toddlers up to pre-adolescents — whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually I'm not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace. " - Scott Ritter (in his own words; http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,351165,00.html)

What a humanitarian.

Hey folks, just occured to me.

Does any of this lather of justification or recrimination have a damn thing to do with a damn thing? I mean, in a "those who do not know history..." sense, sure. But ultimately it doesn't change the past one way or the other.

At his point, we might want to think about the present and the future rather than turining both of them into the newest chapter in an ongoing struggle to show who was really right.

But then again, if all y'all would rather invest your energies into rehashing what was and wasn't said, rather than doing something about, let's say, establishing Demcoracy in Iraq, go to it.

If you're going to be doing differential body counts, you're probably going to want to include the Iraqi military deaths.

I believe this is considered the last word on the rival coverage regarding whether it was a jail or an orphanage:

http://www.timshelarts.com/dustinthelight/archives/00001759.htm

In either case, wallster, perhaps you should pay attention to what's out there?

Frex, while many Iraqis were killed long ago, the liquidation of the Marsh Arabs, to the point of perpetrating what most would consider an environmental crime at least on a par w/ the oil field fires of the '91 Gulf War, was an ongoing affair. Similarly, Uday and Qusay's little behavioral problems were hardly bygone affairs of a misspent youth.

"At his point, we might want to think about the present and the future rather than turining both of them into the newest chapter in an ongoing struggle to show who was really right."

I would tend to agree if "I told you so" wasn't the opposition's one note. Obviously this is more an emotional issue than a calm rational discussion. But you are correct nonetheless.

wallster - "supercharging Al Qaeda recruitment"?

I'm curious about that one. Your turn to provide documentation, and not some damned man-on-the-Arab-street quote, please.

There's no doubt that Hussein was bad. Hussein's displacement of the Marsh Arabs, which was ongoing until his regime fell, was a crime on par with Israel's dispossession of Palestinians (there, that statement ought to piss off both sides).

But there's also no doubt that this war was not principally a humanitarian one. If that was our goal, where were we when close to 2 million people died in the Congo?

This was a war about security and power. As it happens, those regimes that represent security threats to us are often monstrous in the treatment of their own people. But so are many regimes that don't threaten us. At the end of the day, the perceived threat justified the war, not the human rights violations.

Dylan -
"Supercharge Al-Qaeda recruitment" is actually a line Wesley Clark used last fall. With him now being considered a potential democratic presidential candidate, I'm sure you'll take his word no more than you would mine.

Other than that, I'm sorry but I don't have any updated Al-Qaeda recruitment figures in front of me right now.

Jim is closest to the truth, but still not there.

We may not be finding any (and I mean ANY) WMDs in Iraq, but we are finding plenty of huge mass graves. The man was a monster -- but there are plenty of other monsters out there with which the US shows no interest in interfering.

However, the disturbing thing about this war is the increasing probability that it has actually made things worse for US security -- and I'm not talking about encouragement of Al Qaida membership (which might have been encouraged just as much by a lack of US military action in the region). Almost half the US Army is now tied down in Iraq, a nation which (it turns out) had virtually no nuclear program after the Gulf War, and apparently not much in the way of biological weapons.

And if we don't reconstruct Iraq successfully, it may very well actually manage to turn into a WORSE state for the Iraqis themselves than under Saddam -- visualize an Iraq divided into Kurd/Sunni/Shiite sectors, with the latter two (at least) run by replacement tyrannies as ruthless as Saddam and at war with each other (or else embroiled in permanent, bloody civil war as economy-size Lebanons). Also picture the inhabitants of each sector appealing for help from outside tyrannies -- Iran in the case of the Shiites, Saudi Arabia in the case of the Sunnis.

The Bushites got the US into this war (and deliberately exaggerated the evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program, as well as concealing from Congress for weeks the revelation that North Korea had restarted its own Bomb factory) because they were idiotically confident that Iraq could be occupied and reconstructed as a democracy on a shoestring. It can't (assuming it can ever be turned into a democracy at all for decades to come). We are therefore now faced with the prospect of either allowing the place to collapse back into bloody chaos -- in which the only common element among Iraqis will be hatred of the US -- or spending money in vastly bigger quantities, and tying down a still bigger portion of our military, to try to do the job right -- all in the name of vastly focusing our military efforts on what has turned out to be the LEAST dangerous member of the so-called Axis of Evil. All because of Bush's, Cheney's and Rumsfeld's idiotic overconfidence.

wallster -

Sarcasm, neato. Just relax, cowboy. If Wesley Clark said it, okay then. Hey, he probably knows something I don't - but my guess is that it was a little bit of over-the-top rhetoric. Just like everyone else does, and frankly it bores me to tears. Hell, I like Clark, and would very well support him if he runs. Just cite your ripped-off stump speeches next time, and label them as such. Someone may very well know if aQ membership has gone up or down, and why. You obviously ain't that person.

In a hostage situation, a sniper sometimes has to fire at the bad guy even though the good kid is at risk.

The sniper shoots.

Nobody questions the moral integrity of the sniper, nor do they weep that the bad guy is immobilized. And yes, they weep that the hostage suffered injury. But the anger is properly directed toward the bad guy.

Think of how many more COULD have been saved if we were able to get into Iraq sooner, rather than being held up by the useless UN, and the oh so caring about human life French.

There's a "what-if" for ya

... "never forget that the tragic costs" ... what?

You tote up a prospective balance sheet, you look at the bottom line, you decide what needs to be done, you do it, and it's done. You don't then spend eternity obsessing over just the one side of the ledger.

> But there's also no doubt that this war was not principally a humanitarian one. If that was our goal, where were we when close to 2 million people died in the Congo?

Are you advocating action in each and every such case or are you in desparate need of an argument against acting in a case where action was clearly the right thing?

The fact that we're not willing to do each and every good thing does not imply that the good things that we do are somehow wrong.

Whether Iraq was "the LEAST dangerous member of the so-called Axis of Evil" is certainly debatable, but Bruce seems to miss the point that Iraq was the one where there was a justification for intervention, French backpeddling notwithstanding. The indirect results of the invasion have been quite positive with regard to the other 2 official members of the "Axis" and the unspoken 4th member: increased internal struggle in Iran between the theocrats and the democracy-wanting youth; Kim Jong Il about-facing on his assertion that he would not engage in multilateral talks; and the Saudis quaking in their kaffiyah (I know, kaffiyah are not boots, so shut up already). Then there are the (shock!) semi coopoerative Syrians, the Hizbollah pullback, and the slowly rising credibility of Abu Mazen. Sure, this thing is risky as hell and the administration has made big mistakes. Further, there are a great many variables outside our control - Sharon, Pakistan, the Saudis. But the war-to-tame-radical-islam-and-remake-the-middle-east is a HUGE undertaking and mistake will be mad on an ongoing basis.

Honest people may disagree whether such a muscular foreign policy is wise or good/bad in certain ways. I for one think we should have made free/fair trade the guiding premise of post-cold-war foreign policy, which may have saved us some (certainly not all) of the grief we have received in the Middle East. But that was then and this is now. Once the conflict started for real we had a choice between: 1) more muscular/apparently more risky and 2) more of the same/apparently less risky (some think). Choice 2 did not seem to work before, so we (quite rationally) went with Choice 1. It is a choice I am certain President Clinton would have made as well - he just would have had better spin.

Did Jane Galt just contract "it has" as it's?!

My eyes! They have been soiled!

How about it's = it has?

Ow, reading comprehension. Well, this is what happens when I do blog-comments after 3am.

Well gee, as long as the Ba'athists kept their big masacres short and kept the masacre level at a dull roar the rest of the time then they can be forgiven...

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*riiiiiiiiiing*

*riiiiiiiiiing*

*riiii "hello? Oh, I see." Hey, idiot boy, I mean wallster, it's for you, it's the clue police, they have a warrant and they're organizing a swat team, I'd suggest you turn yourself in immediately.

Oh, and wallster, did you ever stop to consider that once you've killed a kajillion people in one massive orgy of death you tend to run out of people you -quote- need -unquote- to kill for a while? I don't really see how getting all your killin' done at the earliest convenience really makes it any better.

</snarky>

Any way.....

As for myself, I can honestly say that the issue was very serious to me and did, on occasion, intrude on my thoughts and disrupt my sleeping habits, enjoyment of entertainment, etc.

If Wes Clark made his statement last fall, isn't that before the war? I maybe getting my timeline screwed up, but Clark saying it might happen isn't proof that it did happen.

I wonder if the football referred to in the article is the English kind or the American kind.

Try this:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/09/1060360553355.html
It describes a girl born without any limbs, which
the article says is a common occurence in the Iraq
areas in Saddam used biological and chemical weapons.

As this week is the anniversary of the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan, it is timely that Jane reminds people of the "tragic costs it's inflicted on thousands of innocent people." But it is also worth remembering what was the final outcome of US military force in Iraq. Consider these three countries that have seen major US military involvement:

Japan
Korea
Vietnam

It seems clear to me that the eventual benefits to the countries in questions have a direct relationship to how successful the US military was in each conflict. While there were thousands of innocents killed in Iraq, US experience in past conflicts would seem to indicate an overwhelming victory is worth the long-term cost.

Here is a brave woman who quite dramatically will "never forget the tragic costs inflicted on thousands of innocent people." 'Cuz she was there helping them for several months.

"We're all glad that Saddam Hussein is no longer," she says. "We never went in in support of Saddam Hussein. Never, ever. The goal and the purpose was the protection of the innocent Iraqi people who have had many wars and years of sanctions and are tired and devastated. And now they are wondering, 'What is the future?' And I can only hope, from the bottom of my heart, that these people have a chance for a better life."

Fippinger knows the horrors Hussein perpetrated on his people, but she also feared the horrors of war. Horrors she would see firsthand when she went to Medical City, a complex of hospitals in Baghdad, shortly after the bombing stopped. She volunteered at one that had essentially been turned into one big emergency ward. The place, she says, was overrun by injured civilians, understaffed, desperate for supplies. They gave her and another volunteer a tiny room for sleeping and put her to work. She stayed around the clock for a week.

"It's just sobbing doctors," she says, "because there was so much death, so much horror. . . . It was just death after death after death. From babies to old men and women, the whole range. Amputees. Arms gone, legs gone. Children filled with shrapnel from cluster bombs."

The telling of this part of her story is the most painful. Her voice ranges from ragged grief to controlled outrage. Her words are punctuated by soft crying and huge, wrenching sobs.

"I've never seen in all my life such horrors," she says. "But I'm sure I'll see them for the rest of my life."

She did anything they asked. She scrubbed down operating rooms, cleaned beds. Most times, that meant simply flipping a blood-soaked mattress so someone else could bleed on the other side. The worst moments came, she says, when she had to help restrain patients who needed amputations, their pain and screams an agony to hear. Afterward, it would fall to Fippinger to dispose of their useless limbs. In those conditions, that simply meant adding them to piles and piles of rotting flesh.

Behind the hospital, there were vans equipped with air conditioning, where bodies would be stored until claimed for burial. Only there was no more air conditioning. The families came anyway, searching relentlessly through the piles for relatives, parents, children.

These are images she cannot forget.

She remembers the pregnant woman who had lost one arm when a missile hit her home. The other was so badly mangled it had to be taken as well. The baby -- near full-term -- was delivered by Caesarean. The child was okay, but after the birth there was nothing but the sound of crying in their room. Crying, and crying, and crying. Not from the child. From the mother.

"She cries, cries all the time, because she has no arms to hold her baby," Fippinger says, and she is lost to another bout of weeping. "It just goes on and on and on . . ."

She remembers the man at another hospital -- in Hillah, 55 miles south, where Fippinger and other shields ventured for a day trip in mid-war. The man stood next to his dying wife, tears rolling down his cheeks. It was early April. She says a civilian location had been bombed, sending floods of wounded Iraqis to the hospital. Six of the man's children were dead. His wife was about to join them.

The man looked at Fippinger, then asked, in English:

"Where are you from?"

"America," she answered.

And the man just stood there, his cheeks covered in tears, his eyes uncomprehending.

And this is what she gets for her compassionate volunteer help in literally rebuilding the lives of the Iraqi "collateral damage"? I'm sure there is probably a fund to help with the costs of fighting this fine. I'll see what I can find out if anyone is interested in contributing.

O'McSomething,

You actually believe this woman? Heck, why would a "staunchly antiwar" person lie to justify her illegal trip? Note that there's no names of doctors and patients that she wept with to corroborate her story (she didn't write down any of these people's names to help them and lead the press to them in the future?). The give away line is "Children filled with shrapnel from cluster bombs". How did she know that the injuries came from cluster bombs? This piece is pure anti-war propaganda, in my opinion.... and I wouldn't give a dime to "support" her. BTW, if her story is even remotely related to reality, she sure failed in her mission as a "human shield"

Wesley Clark is to the War on Terrorists what George McClellan was to the Civil War -- a general of middling tactical competence with no strategic vision, who wants to be President.

If you listened to Clark's analysis during the war it was obvious that either he was incompetent or lying. (He played up the "pause" to resupply, the one just before we took Baghdad, as a strategic American defeat -- one that revealed that we had far too few troops committed and proof that we were going to get bogged down in trench warfare at the end of overexetended supply lines.)

*Anyone* who takes ol' Wes's proclaimations as Gospel is either sadly underinformed or a few cards short of a full deck of 52.

Wallster wrote

"Supercharge Al-Qaeda recruitment" is actually a line Wesley Clark used last fall. With him now being considered a potential democratic presidential candidate, I'm sure you'll take his word no more than you would mine.

I did a google search to find out when these comments were made by Wesley Clark and in what context. The only thing I could find was a reference to them post from a pro-Dean blog dated 02/22/2003 which didn’t even have a link to the comments but we can infer from that they were made well before the war resumed in Iraq.

It’s pretty clear though from the date that this was his “prediction” about what might happen if we resumed the Persian Gulf War with Iraq not an analysis of what did happen. I’m curious, since you’ve decided to hang your hat on this fellow’s predictions could you enlighten us as to what other predictions he made about what would happen if we resumed hostilities with Iraq and whether or not they came true as well so we can all gauge Wesley Clark’s credibility?

I stole a quote from Wesley Clark to indicate to some pro-war jackass (not that all pro-war peoples are jackasses, but this guy was) above another of the ‘downsides’ to this war. Anyone who does not fully realize (and admit) that our invasion of Iraq, which was seen as imperialistic and unjustified by the vast majority of Arab citizens, serves to greatly improve the recruitment of Al Qaeda and other Anti-American terrorist groups, is incredibly naïve, not playing with a full 52, or just blatantly lying.

Robin – “killed a kajillion people in one massive orgy of death you tend to run out of people you -quote- need -unquote- to kill for a while? I don't really see how getting all your killin' done at the earliest convenience really makes it any better.”
Following your logic, if Saddam killed everybody he needed to kill back in 1991 and 1988, then he wasn’t going to need to kill anybody else going forward. If that were true, it would further enhance my point that we aren’t saving as many Iraqis as the pro-war side claims.

Look, obviously Saddam was a bad guy, did some horrible things to his people (and others), and will deserve whatever horrible fate is in store for him when we get him. But Jane was exactly right in pointing out that we need to look objectively at the costs of our invasion in addition to the benefits. It seems to me that, given the failure to find WMD’s to date, the pro-war side has resorted to trumpeting the great good that we did by “liberating” Iraq as justification for the invasion. The mass graves that are mentioned at every opportunity were mostly filled in 1988 or 1991.

Thorley – did Clark predict that we would have found WMDs within three months of the end of major combat operations? Shall I assume that you have dismissed the credibility of those that did?

Wallster wrote:

I stole a quote from Wesley Clark to indicate to some pro-war jackass (not that all pro-war peoples are jackasses, but this guy was) above another of the ‘downsides’ to this war. Anyone who does not fully realize (and admit) that our invasion of Iraq, which was seen as imperialistic and unjustified by the vast majority of Arab citizens, serves to greatly improve the recruitment of Al Qaeda and other Anti-American terrorist groups, is incredibly naïve, not playing with a full 52, or just blatantly lying.

Really now and other than a partial quotation from Wesley Clark (which you haven’t provided a link for) do you have anything at all to back up this claim? By “anything” I mean something other than referring to those you disagree with as "jackasses" and an argument that consists of “if you don’t believe me you’re either lying, naive, or nuts” in lieu of presenting any actual evidence to back up this claim.

Thorley – did Clark predict that we would have found WMDs within three months of the end of major combat operations? Shall I assume that you have dismissed the credibility of those that did?

Please refresh my memory and provide a full quotation (along with a linkable citation) of who it was that made that prediction so we can verity its authenticity and its context in lieu of what was predicted by whom, why it was predicted, and how that prediction stacks up against other predictions made by the same person.

Me: "But there's also no doubt that this war was not principally a humanitarian one. If that was our goal, where were we when close to 2 million people died in the Congo?"

Andy Freeman: "Are you advocating action in each and every such case or are you in desparate need of an argument against acting in a case where action was clearly the right thing?"

"The fact that we're not willing to do each and every good thing does not imply that the good things that we do are somehow wrong."

Me again: No, I am not advocating that we take on the mantle of ending every injustice in the world.

What I am saying is that we cannot claim that ending injustice was the primary reason for our invasion. It was not. On its own, this does not make the invasion immoral, nor does it diminish the fact that we have removed an evil man from power.

However, many hawks point to the human rights crimes committed by Hussein and then accuse anti-war people of heartlessness or hypocrisy for being willing to stand by while such atrocities occurred. My point is simply that we allow atrocities to be perpetrated every day. That's a sad reality of life.

When we go to war, we tend to do so for non-altruistic reasons. Iraq was no exception. This does not mean no good can come of war. But it is patently false to promote the notion that we went in for humanitarian reasons.

Advocates for war got us into Iraq because they were worried about what evil Hussein's regime could someday do to us and our allies should it acquire powerful weapons--or should it turn out to still have powerful weapons. And because they felt that, by March, there was no time to lose.

THIS, and not the human rights situation, is what got us into Iraq. If other nations had graver human rights problems but were less of a threat, they were ignored. This order of priorities isn't pretty, but it is probably the wisest. I don't dispute this. There need be no shame in it. Hawks should be able to recognize it too.

> What I am saying is that we cannot claim that ending injustice was the primary reason for our invasion.

That doesn't follow from what Jim originally wrote - he's moving the goal posts.

Me, I don't care much about intentions; I care about results. That being said, I don't think that I'm going too far out on a limb in claiming that "they did the right thing for the wrong reasons" is not going to fly in the 2004 elections.

Why not? It reminds folks that the alternative is "we'll do the wrong things for the right reasons".

> then accuse anti-war people of heartlessness or hypocrisy for being willing to stand by while such atrocities occurred. My point is simply that we allow atrocities to be perpetrated every day.

Adding consistency to that mix doesn't help....

For quite a while, we've heard certain folks argue that they're good. But, when given an opportunity to demonstrate this goodness, they had more important things to do.

Andy -

I think Bush will win in 2004. And I voted for him in 2000. I'm not making the case against him or the hawks in general.

In my first comment, I wrote: "At the end of the day, the perceived threat justified the war, not the human rights violations." In my second, I wrote: "we cannot claim that ending injustice was the primary reason for our invasion." Those goalposts look pretty fixed to me.

You go on to imply that the decision to wage war on Iraq was about demonstrating goodness. I disagree. Andy, if you yourself had to rank the causes of war, would you put our security above or below freedom for the Iraqis?

There is nothing ignoble about acting in one's own security interests. Assuming that the hawks were right about Iraq's threat to us, then going to war to avert that threat was proper. Why insist that we did it mainly for other reasons?

The decision to go to war was not a chance to demonstrate how good we are as a people. The /way/ we conducted the war was, to the extent that we aimed to protect civilian life and to now help build a free state. But the decision to fight and the conduct of battle are two very different things.

The decision to fight didn't rest on any altruistic impulse, and need not. The benefits that may flow to the Iraqi people as a result of the war are no less real because of this -- but they were not the primary determinant of whether or not we would put American lives at risk.

O'McSomething,

She AIDED THE ENEMY.

She violated UN and US sanctions and went and helped the enemy.

Her prize for such wonderful actions should not be fines, it should be a firing squad.

If, by her actions, she afforded Hussein one iota of comfort, if her actions succored that horrid regime for even a fraction of a nanosecond, she deserves to be shot, as a traitor.

It is one thing to dissent, entirely another to offer yourself as cannon-fodder for the enemy.

Wallster wrote:

Anyone who does not fully realize (and admit) that our invasion of Iraq, which was seen as imperialistic and unjustified by the vast majority of Arab citizens, serves to greatly improve the recruitment of Al Qaeda and other Anti-American terrorist groups, is incredibly naïve, not playing with a full 52, or just blatantly lying.

Interestingly, you have excluded any possibility that the "man on the Arab Street" -- while quite possibly despising the actions of the US -- might look at the unprecdented nature (and consequences) of Afghanistan and Gulf II in the post-Cold-War world, and rationally conclude that the cost of becoming a destructive nuisance against the US will, from here on out, be excessively high.

Since you have written off in broad brush anyone willing to entertain a view other than your own (including this reasonable possibility) as being ignorant, nuts, or dishonest, I can reasonably assert one of three things:

1. You don't recognize any of this context, and are ignorant.

2. You recognize this new context, but are arbitrarily claiming the average Arab has no capacity at all to react rationally in light thereof, and thus, are nuts.

3. You recognize this new context and have a reasonable refutation to offer, but chose ad hominem in lieu of adequately explaining your own position -- and are therefore a dishonest debater.

If you don't like those judgments, then tone down your own rhetoric a bit and allow room for reasonable people to reasonably disagree.

Man on the arab street: You know, I was fine when America brought troops into the holy land, I didn't mind when they propped up the oppressive zionist dictatorship whose internal economy consists entirely of the blood of arab babies, and its none of my beeswax that they flaunt their cosumerist, secular society and tempt our youngsters with their unseemly displays of ill-gotten wealth, while encouraging the treatment of women in an obscenely sexual manner, but by gum when they go and remove a guy who was not only a blasphemer but also probably lobbed a few missiles into my country, at minimum, that's just going too far! What can I do?

Osama: Join me, apparently Saddam and I hated each other, but you can still avenge his death by martyring yourself on my behalf.

Man on arab street: that makes a ton of sense! I think I will!

Several thousand repeats of that scenario being unlikely, and any empirical evidence to the contrary being nonexistent, why, exactly would someone who was "playing with a full 52" think that the invasion of Iraq has supercharged al-quaeda recruitment?

> You go on to imply that the decision to wage war on Iraq was about demonstrating goodness.

Not at all. I'm pointing out that the goodness forseeable and achieved is consistent with what some people have claimed to be their highest priority. But, when the opportunity knocked....

I don't insist anything about reasons because, as I wrote, I don't care about reasons - I care about results.

Iraq alone isn't sufficient. And, if it turns out to be the end and not the beginning, it will have been a mistake.

And yes, the decision to prosecute the war was an instance of goodness. That goodness may not be a benefit received directly by Americans, but that doesn't mean that goodness didn't result from the decision.

Anony-mouse:

"If you don't like those judgments, then tone down your own rhetoric a bit and allow room for reasonable people to reasonably disagree."

Well said. My inflammatory post was in response to an earlier poster who said something to the effect of "not playing with a full 52", who obviously could stand to read your advice.

By the way, given that we are both reasonable people, let me say that its not that I believe that "the average Arab has no capacity at all to react rationally in light thereof, and thus, are nuts", but rather that a small percentage of those on the arab street are not rational or indeed "nuts", and are the ones we need to be concerned about. People who are willing to kill themselves by flying into a building cannot be depended upon to act rationally. Someone who is enraged at US policies and is willing to die to harm Americans (and get his 72 virgins) is not likely to be dissuaded by fear of US response.

The 'strong-horse' theory doesn't work as well when trying to intimidate lone wackos who don't mind dying anyway.

Thank-you, I found that post a bit more informative.

As a counterpoint: People who fly planes into buildings rarely do so on a whim, else they would only be accessing Cesnas and the like, which could be moderately destructive if an explosive payload could also be accessed, but probably not sufficient to bring down something like the World Trade Center. So, they need sponsors and organizers willing to host terror but not directly perpetrate (and die for) it.

Now, if the organizing parties (Taliban...House of Saud?) had good reason to believe that a large terrorist attack (9/11) -- instead of being prosecuted through usual channels with a handful of underlings being picked up and tried for murder etc. (WTC1) -- would instead result in rapid, unprecedented wars designed to exterminate terrorists (Afghanistan) and violent despots (Iraq), might they instead start distancing themselves from known terrorist organizations (Al Quaeda) and leave terror to the small-timers?

Small-timers can be destructive if they succeed, but they typically have specific disadvantages compared to large, well-funded organizations.

"It is one thing to dissent, entirely another to offer yourself as cannon-fodder for the enemy."

How is that any different? It looks like symbolic speech to me.

And it wasn't even particularly good symbolic speech, that I'm aware of. I probably saw at least 50 hours of TV coverage of the war in Iraq, over the 3 weeks of fighting. I don't recall a single interview with a piece of cannon-fodder.

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