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:	post by Pat Meebles nli at 2006-03-29 16:13:18

ShadowSD said:

PatMeebles said:

That's one of the worst things about war. People have to die. But leaving Saddam in power would have killed much more innocent civilians. Over 75,000 would be dead according to UNICEF (I think it was that organization), where 25,000 civilians have died since the invasion, mostly from insurgent attacks directly on the population. So while I think it's a tragedy that so many people had to die, I have to take into account that the situation is better than the alternative.

Unfortunately, far more than 25,000 Iraqi civilians have died since we invaded; the number surpassed 120, 000 a long time ago. (Source: McLaughlin Group)

Therefore, more innocent people have died because we invaded than would have otherwise. It should be no surprise: internal civil wars result in civilians enlisting as soldiers and making the choice to risk death for their country, whereas externally affected civil wars contain complexity and chaos that lead to those civilians more likely to be butchered in cold blood. There's no running away from this simple fact, which has repeated itself consistently for all of human history. We should try to base our foreign policy around facts, not momentarily convenient reasoning.

The only originaly source for a number even close to 100,000 was the lancet study. Slate tore it apart a while ago.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2108887/

ShadowSDsaid:

PatMeebles said:

Given that the cities we bombed were strategic positions that were part of the war industry, and given the prosperity and advances in Japanese society, I'd say it was worth it.

Had Japan found it's own way to democracy and capitalism, there would have been far less innocent lives lost (by the reasoning I offered above). There is no way to measure the societal impact of the loss of that many lives, but the loss itself is undisputed, whereas a hypothetical comparison of how societally advanced Japan would have been had they not been nuked is just that: hypothetical. You have at best a hypothetical assumption (that the Japanese are more advanced now because of WWII) weighed against a documented truth (the vast loss of civilian life in the atomic blasts), all in order to prove an end-justifies-the-means argument about killing civilians. Meanwhile, the terrorists use an end-justifies-the-means argument about killing civilians to murder Americans every chance they get. In a "hearts and minds" war against terrorism where we are losing neutral Muslims every day, maybe we need to reevaluate our moral thinking to purge any ambiguity that might validate the reasoning of our enemies, ultimately increasing their ability to recruit suicide bombers trained to kill American civilians.

When watching the history channel, the estimation was that taking japan through regular forces would have cost maybe 5 times the amount of lives that the bomb took. You also assume that I think WWII itself made Japan more advanced. I'm saying that because of the swiftness that we ended the war with, we were able to force the Japanese to surrender, and we forced our way of life on the population in a much "worse" way than we have in Iraq.

When you compare my reluctantly utilitarian stance on civilian deaths, to Al Qaeda's, you severely clout the reason why I bring up these statistics in the first place. Citing utilitarian statistsics wasn't a justification to go to war in the first place; merely a rejection that Iraqis are somehow now worse off. If I were being truly utilitarian, I would say it's ok to directly target civilians, as long as the total death rate wasn't as high a Saddam's, even if it's an insignificant difference. I'm not saying that at all. What I say is that we need to severly avoid civilians (which we have), and we need to advance our methods in order to flush out insurgents without harming civilians (which we have). The tragic deaths are still a tragedy (which Al Qaeda wouldn't care about, since they truly are ends-justifies-means SOB's)

PatMeebles said:

However, these two entities saw in each other a means to achieve the ultimate short-term goal: Bringing America to its knees. I'm begging you to check out the conservative blogs like powerlineblog.com, captainsquartersblog.com, and the weekly standard. These guys are keeping track of all the new documents that are being released, and so far those documents aren't boding well for the idea that Saddam and OBL could never work together.

ShadowSD:

I am very up to date with what conservatives have to say on the Iraq issue (in fact I've spent more time listening to them than anyone else, since you learn more listening to your rivals in politics, and particularly in this decade I listen more to conservatives since they are the ones with all the power). I've watched several hours of Bill Kristol (editor of The Weekly Standard) over recent years during television news debates and analysis, and find nothing new in these blogs that I haven't already heard.

I know that Bush apologists have done everything to try to scrape together evidence to justify the war after the fact. What should be a warning flag to you is the fact that neo-cons have been acting as if they're pulling teeth trying to justify Iraq ever since it happened.

And yet if such exalting evidence had existed sooner, it would have already been released to the media by the Bush Administration, as this government's main focus from 2002 to present has been pulling teeth to justify the invasion, and so they wouldn't have passed up the opportunity to offer evidence that backed them up as soon as they had it. Again, common sense test. Just look at the strain of those trying to make the case, balanced with how long it has taken for supportive evidence to dribble out, and something is clearly fishy.

If that's your opinion, then you haven't really been paying attention. The fact is that the evidence was strong, since everyone believed it. The fact is that the government hasn't had the resources to translate the millions of documents recovered SINCE 2003 (so they wouldn't have been presented in 2002). Negroponte owned the documents, and stalled in releasing them until now. His reasons for not releasing them have gone from "nothing interesting" to "far too interesting to declassify." And right now, all the info from the documents has provided tons of evidence for the invasion; you don't have to pull teeth to extract pro-war supporting intel from these documents.

ShadowSDsaid:

PatMeebles said:

That article doesn't give support of the study. You might want to look into the arguments for and against this paper a little more.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/013517.php

That article just proves my point. What Allen Dershowitz wrote to suggest the paper's writers are Anti-Semites simply because they criticized Israeli foreign policy is just unbelievable and reprehensible. (I say this as someone who generally agrees with Dershowitz and thinks he made several brilliant points in an eloquent debate of secularism vs. religion that I watched in its entirety; compared to this matter though, he was doing a better job convincing me OJ was innocent.) Dershowitz wrote:

"The wrenching out of context is done by the hate sites,and then [the authors] cite them to the original sources, in order to disguise the fact that they've gotten them from hate sites."

Dershowitz is suggesting that the fact that certain arguments and figures exist on Neo-Nazi hate sites as well as in the paper automatically means the paper got its information from those Neo-Nazi sites, and implies that the paper condones all the attitudes of that site.

No, Dershowitz is saying that academics took already-out-of-context quotes from neo nazis and quoted them as documented fact.

ShadowSD:

Meanwhile, many critics of illegal immigration use arguments despite the fact that the same arguments are also exploited by white supremacists; not all critics of illegal immigration are white supremacists, nor do they get their arguments from white supremacist sites. Many of the corrupt and rich have for years used the same tax cut arguments word for word still used by honest fiscal conservatives; not all supporters of tax cuts are rich and corrupt, and not all fiscal conservatives get their arguments from the rich and corrupt. Someone who likes Korn may use the exact same argument for liking heavy music as the people on rttp (getting your aggression out, for example); does that mean that people here are going to stop using "getting out aggression" as a reason just because they hate Korn with a passion? Not all metal fans who enjoy getting aggression out like Korn, nor do they get their arguments from nu-metal fans simply because both groups used "getting out aggression" as their reasoning. There are always people you find reprehensible who may end up using the same arguments as you, but if the specific argument you are both saying is ultimately true, then you shouldn't distance yourself from that fact, because the many huge differences between you and said reprehensible people LIE ELSEWHERE and deserve no minimizing (by stressing differences that don't exist). To silence yourself in order to distance any and all of your beliefs from someone revolting may be politically correct, but it is intellectually repugnant.

Point taken. But these people directly quotes nazis and put it forward as fact. I don't quote from the corrupt, I don't quote from Korn fans, and I don't quote from nazis, unless I'm making fun of Infoterror.

ShadowSD:

Meanwhile, the piece by Caroline Glick gets angry, attempts to discredit the study without presenting a shred of objective evidence, and finally only challenges one point about the Harvard paper intellectually:

"The paper's first footnote maintains,'The mere existence of the Lobby suggests that unconditional support for Israel is not in the American national interest. If it was, one would not need an organized special interest to bring it about.' Every semi-sentient person with even an incidental knowledge of American politics knows that there is no area of human endeavor that is not represented by a lobby in the US."

Which is absolutely true. But read that again. It's entire logic in terms of discrediting the paper is based on a semantic slight of hand that hopes you won't have the patience to give it a second look.

That's not the only article on it. The authors refuse to debate the validity of their claims. They try to act like they never wrote it, even when Jews want to debate them openly in public (so much for Jews silencing critics). This whole idea that Israel controls US foreign policy is ludicrous, with our support of a two state solution, our economic assistance to Palestinians before Hamas took power. What about the fact that Israel was one of the most anti-soviet countries during the cold war in a region where the soviets wanted to take over? Shouldn't that mean something other than Jews controlling the world?