I also, on 9/11, thought, and in fact could see, that we’d overreact. I was in a bar where the average opinion was expressed as “just bomb’em, just bomb’em to pieces.” I was there saying “bomb who?” I would have said “bomb whom” but it wasn’t that kind of bar.
But the point of my post is that no one can calculate the ramifications of actions, or inactions. Did Hiroshima/Nagasaki cost lives, or save them? That’s one of the clearest examples of “saving by killing” I can imagine, and I mean saving Japanese lives as well as American lives. Yet many auto-condemn the bombings. And they might be right. None of us can ever know.
The Iraq war isn’t nearly so clearly correct, and my guess is that it costs more lives than it saves. But I recognize that I’m guessing. This blog is about bias. How many people are willing to say that they can only guess whether the war saves or costs lives, and further admit that their guess might be seriously biased? Even the “facts” are biased. The million civilian deaths, for example. No one short of God knows how many people have died in Iraq since the invasion. No one has the facts, we only have biased guesses labelled, for propaganda purposes, “facts.” The same people who would never blindly accept a Bush Admin figure will blindly accept an anti-Bush figure. And, both sides will then forget, or guess on air, how many people whould have died, and it would have to be something of a time value calc, if Iraq had NOT been invaded. And all of this so far is without also weighing the relative value of lives, US vs Iraqi, peaceful vs. warmongering, educated vs ignorant, and so on. IOW, these are impossible calculations.
So, did we overreact to 9/11, or properly react? My point was and is that it isn’t possible to know, it’s only possible to—with bias—guess, claim, propagandize, lawyer, etc.
A few points.
I also, on 9/11, thought, and in fact could see, that we’d overreact. I was in a bar where the average opinion was expressed as “just bomb’em, just bomb’em to pieces.” I was there saying “bomb who?” I would have said “bomb whom” but it wasn’t that kind of bar.
But the point of my post is that no one can calculate the ramifications of actions, or inactions. Did Hiroshima/Nagasaki cost lives, or save them? That’s one of the clearest examples of “saving by killing” I can imagine, and I mean saving Japanese lives as well as American lives. Yet many auto-condemn the bombings. And they might be right. None of us can ever know.
The Iraq war isn’t nearly so clearly correct, and my guess is that it costs more lives than it saves. But I recognize that I’m guessing. This blog is about bias. How many people are willing to say that they can only guess whether the war saves or costs lives, and further admit that their guess might be seriously biased? Even the “facts” are biased. The million civilian deaths, for example. No one short of God knows how many people have died in Iraq since the invasion. No one has the facts, we only have biased guesses labelled, for propaganda purposes, “facts.” The same people who would never blindly accept a Bush Admin figure will blindly accept an anti-Bush figure. And, both sides will then forget, or guess on air, how many people whould have died, and it would have to be something of a time value calc, if Iraq had NOT been invaded. And all of this so far is without also weighing the relative value of lives, US vs Iraqi, peaceful vs. warmongering, educated vs ignorant, and so on. IOW, these are impossible calculations.
So, did we overreact to 9/11, or properly react? My point was and is that it isn’t possible to know, it’s only possible to—with bias—guess, claim, propagandize, lawyer, etc.