Logic Times
Comments
Page Two
Fuzzy Moral Math
8: Mike Miller
February 22, 2005 11:47pm EST
Excellent analysis in "Fuzzy Moral Math." Earlier, I had written a shorter piece addressing the subject: Iraq Deaths: Tragedy Tinged with Hope.
Just wrote and update with an excerpt from yours: Mike's America (Feb. 22nd entry).
Good work.
{Aslan: Thank you, Mike. Some excellent observations in your commentary as well.}
9: Martin Shoemaker
April 12, 2005 2:48am EST
Shameless plug: we did a similar calculation -- different methods and inputs, but the same fundamental point -- over a year ago.
Keep up the good work!
{Aslan: Damn! I thought I had an original there. You certainly get credit here. I guess great minds think alike, even if mine was slower…}
10: Martin Shoemaker
April 12, 2005 6:05pm EST
Well, I wouldn’t call my mind GREAT. But stubborn and muleheaded, yeah.
Please note also the link at the end of our post: LDL707 beat us both to it. But that link no longer seems to work. (For that matter, neither do most of our links to State Department documents. Their site has been massively redesigned and updated since our post, and most of the source documents have just disappeared.)
I think your numbers are more "promotable" than ours. We intentionally included Saddam’s wars, because we believe that, had it not been for international sanctions, he would have conducted more wars. The "body count" folks were all for sanctions when the alternative was war; but let us not forget that before the invasion was considered, most of those same people were agitating for lifting the sanctions. So we believe more wars would have resulted from their plan. But since your numbers don’t include the wars (as best I can tell), yours are harder for people to dispute with the fallacious argument that "those were all one-time events!"
11: rammer
April 12, 2005 10:53pm EST
I don't agree with subtracting the lives saved from the lives lost, but as for adding up the total in each column you are doing things about right. Methodologically, let me offer our take on the lives saved in a little something called the NoBody Count.
{Aslan: The great thing about blogs is that there is no hiding from facts, as with the MSM. Thanks for the heads up, rammer.}
12: sspeairs
October 22, 2005 7:02pm EST
High level of agreement here, but I wish to add some comments concerning the anti-war crowd (however recycled they may be). It is an error to assume a steady state situation for the start of the Iraq war. How many UN Declarations had Saddam defied in part or in whole? The Oil-for-Food scandal and the motions of some of the other UN Security Council nations give rise to significant doubt about maintaining effective sanctions for much longer. If no sanctions, is there much doubt that Saddam would return to his normal behavior towards both his "citizen/slaves" and his exterior enemies? I'm convinced that it is just this “what-if” thought that led the President to understand that this was a case of now or worse later. Hint for the disputatious - Was it better in September 1939 than March 1936 or September 1938 or March 1939? When, in recent memory, has the UN stuck firmly to a deadline that actually made a difference?
{Aslan: Excellent point because even to this day, those who oppose the Iraq War talk about a "rush to war" or "not letting the process work," obviously failing to factor in that the process was completely corrupt and, as the Duelfer Report stated (and you reiterated), Saddam’s whole strategy was to retain the capacity to restart WMD programs.}
13: Peter Bland
December 26, 2005 1:04am EST
Something that has always bothered me about the myopic views most "anti-war" types demonstrate towards out military. They assume that we are incompetent.
On the one hand, we are accused of "genocide" by some in the "anti-war" crowd. They assume that we want to kill people at random for no other reason than the pure joy of slaughter. Forgotten is the sheer excellence and power of our military. If we really wanted to, we could obliterate the entire country of Iraq and all of its citizens. Even without using our nuclear arsenal. This is an extreme view, one not common even in lefty crowds.
On the other hand many, many more actually believe that we intend to bomb the enemy, but OOps! we scroowed it all up and killed a bunch of people because we are so dumb. Culled from the dregs of the ghetto and without our high-school diplomas, we can't help but throw high explosives around. "Gee, Sarge, I thought you said grid TA-123456. You meant TA-123457? Sorry about that!" I cannot speak of the Air Force, but I know that the Forward Air Controllers in the Marines are all pilots themselves. That means that they have to get at least a bachelor's degree, then go through OCS and The Basic School, which is about a year and a half. Then they have to go through pilot training, another three years or so. Then they have to sit in the cockpit for at least a year. THEN they are qualified to call targets to the other pilots on the ground.
Such a level of training would get "Dr." or "PhD" placed in front of anyone else's name in any other profession.
I must insist that, while it is true people have been killed in this war, the number would be far greater if our forces did not operate under Rules of Engagement and laws of war that limit the terms of our warfighting. Something that would be obvious to anyone who actually talks to a veteran of the Iraq War over a glass of beer.
Unfortunately, the left is so lost in their '60s hippy melodramas that they are unable to perceive that their ideology is no longer viable in this current conflict. Sad, really. They fail to see our staggering successes because their minds have been clouded with bong resin and Joan Baez songs. They fail to see through the filter of media negativity. Excuse me, but the current war in Iraq is not the same as the Vietnam War, much as these aging hipsters try to make it that way.
{Aslan: Peter, well said! The elite media does indeed believe, in lockstep, that our military is, as you say, “[c]ulled from the dregs of the ghetto and without…high-school diplomas.” Did you notice that, for a brief and electric moment, the embeds during the Iraq War invasion saw the breathtaking quality of our military – and then, like a dreamer seeking the comfort of his dreams, it was collectively suppressed and then buried amidst the exploitation of Abu Ghraib? Abu Ghraib was a tonic that re-established their lack of faith in the military.}
14: Barbara Smith
April 10, 2006 10:26am EST
Thank you for reminding people why we do this. My son was in Iraq for the invasion. He has since been promoted to Sgt and has decided to make the Army his career. The decision was not a foregone conclusion. After his service in Iraq he spent time in non-com school and trained a team at Ft Knox. He was still unsure about what he wanted in life.
Then he came down with cancer (easily treatable, thank God) and recovered after a year at Brooke Army Hospital. While John was treated for cancer at Brooke, he spent a lot of time with the wounded and their families. Men and women with seriously damaged bodies, lost limbs, dreadful burns, and other, even more horrible things I can't talk about. He knows the worse that can happen in the battlefield. It was at Brooke that he decided to make the Army his career.
Today he is in college and is getting married this month. My relief was beyond words. When he was diagnosed, I went into shock with the realization that my young son could survive Iraq only to be brought down by cancer - the horror that killed both my parents many years ago. But his recovery and excitement about the future had wiped away all the stress of the deployment and the cancer, and I was looking forward to all the excitement of watching a son setting up a life and a family.
Then, John called to tell me not to be taken by surprise if he were to return to Iraq. He will be training men in Kentucky this Spring. It was likely that those men would eventually be sent to the Middle East. And he made it quite clear that he would not let his men to into Iraq without him. He wants to go.
My son may not survive me, but he, and others like him, are the real hope of America. They know well the threat we face, that we have to stop the killing and the barbarity at the root or that root will implant itself in our very own backyard. There are deadly enemies out there who want to enslave us and they must be killed, rooted out, and utterly destroyed. I am horrified that I could lose my child, but, just the same, I am terribly proud of my only son.
{Aslan: I am humbled by your words. We all are proud of your son. We are grateful, too.}
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