From: Alejandro Dubrovsky (s328940@student.uq.edu.au)
Date: Thu Jan 23 2003 - 01:03:17 MST
On Thu, 2003-01-23 at 16:51, Lee Corbin wrote:
> Lee Daniel Crocker writes
> Alejandro writes
>
> > The immediate effect on war would be negative, assuming that some people
> > would die before they would have died if the war would not have
> > happened. How many people? No idea. Some people said 100,000 on the
> > last one, so if there's a repeat, I would consider it a big negative (if
> > a bus crashes and 10 people die is "tragedy", and 3000 on WTC qualifies
> > for "horrible, despicable event" and 6,000,000 gets a "holocaust", then
> > 100,000 probably hits around "unbelievable massacre" label or so).
>
> Don't forget the "Iraq/Iran war" level. About 200,000 thousand
> had been killed *before* the "war of attrition" began.
> http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/iran-iraq.htm
> a nice history of the whole war. In total, about a million died,
> it seems.
> > There would also be a sizable negative property score for damaged
> > buildings in Iraq, probably a sizable positive property score to the US
> > military business and to world media businesses, some points for
> > enjoyment of "marines getting some action", some for the US population
> > feeling safer, some subtracted for some of the US population feeling
> > guilty, and a sizable negative score for Iraqi suffering at the loss of
> > relatives and friends, but none of those (except maybe by the last one),
> > I would think, would put much of a dent on the -100,000 full points that
> > we started with.
>
> You also need to score (a) the relief that many Iraqis
> will feel when Hussein is gone
countered by the number of iranians that would be pissed off with him
going, and would be upset about whoever replaced him. Are these numbers
lower or higher than the ones you quote? I don't know. My guess is
that few people know.
> (b) the potential for
> many further deaths over the rest of his and his son's
> lives,
countered by the number of potential deaths caused by his replacement.
Same note as before applies.
> and (c) the (admittedly unquantifiable) benefits
> that could accrue to other nations, especially Islamic
> ones, in the region.
>
Countered, again, by the equally unquantifiable problems that would be
caused by his replacement. All of these are part of the post-war
effects I didn't know how to assign probabilities and weights to.
> > Now, since the post-war effects are unknown, and I
> > can't assign probabilities to what the possible outcomes will be (if you
> > can, please post), they would have to be given a neutral or zero score.
> > In which case the war stays at "unbelievable massacre" level, and should
> > be a no-go.
>
> Having good judgment about the myriads of factors is
> something that I believe can be left to the professionals
> who are employed by the various governments; that such
> professionals will not agree, however, bespeaks both the
> difficulty of any final say, and the ideological component,
> which is based ultimately on differing values.
>
They would use a different criteria, I imagine. It would probably weigh
more heavily the benefits to the members of whatever government they
belong to, and probably lower the benefits to the people that live in
Iraq. It's also likely to contain elements which we wouldn't care much
about like benefits of their decision to their personal career, opinion
of their superiors, since it affects their personal career mentioned
above, benefits to their personal financial situation, if any, benefits
to relatives and friends, etc. I believe we have no option but to leave
it to them, since we are completely powerless in the matter. This
doesn't mean we have to agree with their decision.
alejandro
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