From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Apr 10 2003 - 20:44:46 MDT
And now, having earned goodwill, watch as the Bush administration blows it
all on a series of sheerly stupid and arrogant moves that turn every Iraqi
against us and permanently sours the whole Middle East on democracy and
America. If Bush could manage to waste all the goodwill of 9/11 from the
educated citizens of liberal democracies, imagine how easy he must find it
to rape the tentative welcome of a people still nervous and unsure. The
worst possible move at this point would be for Bush to send in Christian
missionaries, turn the oil pumps over to US companies, and appoint a group
of Iraqi theocratic dictators to misrule the nation for them, so there's
probably at least a 30% chance that's what we'll see.
Perhaps I am being too pessimistic. But it is part of the reason I
opposed the war; the US government may have the sheer military might to
win, but I don't think that Bush has the competence to do anything good
with a victory.
Things go wrong easily enough even without human stupidity. I don't trust
Bush to do anything right. Taking Bush into account, I see this whole
situation turning bad. It doesn't matter how awful Saddam was, how good
the US is, etc.; a positive outcome for a war requires more intelligent
process control than we can rely on from this administration. I suppose a
good outcome is still possible, but it doesn't seem like a wise gamble
with Bush occupying the White House. Look at Afghanistan; it seemed like
a good guess that Bush would swoop in, bomb it to rubble, and then leave
it without adequate rebuilding or policing, so that it would go back to a
hellhole ruled by theocratic dictators a few years later. This guess
seems to be turning out correct.
I suppose Iraq, with its rich oilfields and literate populace, may be
something that the Bush administration actually cares about enough not to
simply abandon, and that there will be enough competent subordinates
somewhere that things will turn out okay. But again, it just doesn't seem
like a wise gamble.
Why is it that US troops aren't stopping the looting? It seems like a
very poor sign of things to come, but perhaps there is a good explanation
I am not familiar with.
-- Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/ Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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