Cost Benefit Analysis of an Experiment
As of yesterday May 11, 2004, 772 U.S service people have died in Iraq.
I was thinking about that figure the other day as I was watching about 13 or 14 dead people’s faces flash before me on TV. Hardly a day goes by were there aren’t at least one or two shown at the end of the news broadcasts. I don’t really have a comment on the right or wrong of our nation building experiment in Iraq. It’s too late for that. I had an opinion 18 months ago when we as a nation were thinking about conducting that experiment . I even wrote my congress women about it. (Barbara Boxer, Barbara Lee, and Diane Feinstein) They sent me their opinions back. Two (the Barbara’s) agreed with me, Diane did not. Senator Feinstein said she had special knowledge that I did not. So, she had to disagree with me. –It turns out her special knowledge was wrong. I haven’t asked what her opinion is now.
But I have a question or two for her now. It’s more an open question for all of our leaders we elect. What is the limit of Americans we are willing too kill, one or two daily, to stop the occasional terrorist attack? There were 2948 people killed by Al Qaeda on 9/11. George Bush told us that the reason we needed to invade Iraq was to stop Saddam Hussein from giving weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda. If Al Qaeda got those weapons they’d use them on New York and kill a million people! Now, if Saddam had just had those weapons to give. But he didn’t so the people of New York are relatively safe. But that aside, now we are now bringing, ah…ah… Democracy and stability to the region. So what if it costs us a few lives a day? One of my less enlightened co-workers said, “Hell, that many people get shot on the streets of Oakland a day.” I wonder if the administration thinks that way? I hope not.
But back to the experiment limit question. Today May 12, we have American Service Personnel body count of 772. We won’t discuss the other two-three thousand injured or maimed. We also won’t discuss the 20, 000 or so Iraqi’s also killed. We won’t discuss the fact that for every one or two Marines that die, 10-15 Iraqi’s die a day. Sometimes a hundred Iraqi’s with well placed car bomb. I know, I know, we aren’t planting the car bombs. We are just the catalyst in the experiment. You can’t blame the catalyst for a reaction, just for enhancing it. So we’ll ignore the dead Iraqi’s. They are just a by product of the reaction in our experiment that creates democracy. So let’s just look at the dead American by products. We have 772 going up at an average of 2-4 a day lately. When do we decide this is a bad reaction? 1000? 2000? 2948? At 2948 we will have killed more Americans than Al Qaeda. What do we do then? Declare war on ourselves to save democracy?
I was thinking about that figure the other day as I was watching about 13 or 14 dead people’s faces flash before me on TV. Hardly a day goes by were there aren’t at least one or two shown at the end of the news broadcasts. I don’t really have a comment on the right or wrong of our nation building experiment in Iraq. It’s too late for that. I had an opinion 18 months ago when we as a nation were thinking about conducting that experiment . I even wrote my congress women about it. (Barbara Boxer, Barbara Lee, and Diane Feinstein) They sent me their opinions back. Two (the Barbara’s) agreed with me, Diane did not. Senator Feinstein said she had special knowledge that I did not. So, she had to disagree with me. –It turns out her special knowledge was wrong. I haven’t asked what her opinion is now.
But I have a question or two for her now. It’s more an open question for all of our leaders we elect. What is the limit of Americans we are willing too kill, one or two daily, to stop the occasional terrorist attack? There were 2948 people killed by Al Qaeda on 9/11. George Bush told us that the reason we needed to invade Iraq was to stop Saddam Hussein from giving weapons of mass destruction to Al Qaeda. If Al Qaeda got those weapons they’d use them on New York and kill a million people! Now, if Saddam had just had those weapons to give. But he didn’t so the people of New York are relatively safe. But that aside, now we are now bringing, ah…ah… Democracy and stability to the region. So what if it costs us a few lives a day? One of my less enlightened co-workers said, “Hell, that many people get shot on the streets of Oakland a day.” I wonder if the administration thinks that way? I hope not.
But back to the experiment limit question. Today May 12, we have American Service Personnel body count of 772. We won’t discuss the other two-three thousand injured or maimed. We also won’t discuss the 20, 000 or so Iraqi’s also killed. We won’t discuss the fact that for every one or two Marines that die, 10-15 Iraqi’s die a day. Sometimes a hundred Iraqi’s with well placed car bomb. I know, I know, we aren’t planting the car bombs. We are just the catalyst in the experiment. You can’t blame the catalyst for a reaction, just for enhancing it. So we’ll ignore the dead Iraqi’s. They are just a by product of the reaction in our experiment that creates democracy. So let’s just look at the dead American by products. We have 772 going up at an average of 2-4 a day lately. When do we decide this is a bad reaction? 1000? 2000? 2948? At 2948 we will have killed more Americans than Al Qaeda. What do we do then? Declare war on ourselves to save democracy?
posted by Stan at 4:44 PM
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