From: Andrew Clough (aclough@mit.edu)
Date: Thu Apr 10 2003 - 22:22:14 MDT
First, I'd like to begin by agreeing with your assessment of Bush's
diplomatic abilities. He doesn't seem to have done a very good job at all
of getting international support/approval of this, and I think that many
presidents could have done better. I'm sure that there we will miss scores
of opportunities to gain the approval of the Iraqis and help them towards
an ideal democracy. Our mismanagement might result in starvation. Our
soldiers might be prejudiced against Arabs. Our leader's speeches might
slander the efforts that the Iraqis make in bringing themselves towards
democracy. In short, we might do just as bad a job of occupying Iraq as we
did of occupying Japan after WWII.
As you might guess though, this doesn't mean I think that everything will
turn out badly. I don't trust Bush to do a good job either, but I do trust
most Iraqis to be sick of wars and dictators, and they are the ones who are
really going to have to put their country back together.
For more information on post-war Japan, I'd recomend reading "Embracing
Defeat" by John W. Dower.
At 10:44 PM 4/10/2003 -0400, you wrote:
>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.
>
>--
>Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
>Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity. Don't assign
to stupidity what might be due to ignorance. And try not to assume you
opponent is the ignorant one-until you can show it isn't you.
-M.N. Plano
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