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more on "War on Terra" saves few lives, expert says
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2005 17:08:25 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Tom Fairlie <tfairlie () frontiernet net> Date: September 11, 2005 4:40:36 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: h_bray () globe com Subject: Re: [IP] more on "War on Terra" saves few lives, expert says Hi Dave, I find if difficult to resist replying to Mr. Bray, especially when he shoots off an email like this one. Again, he spouts off a series of logical stepping stones with little regard for the contextual water in which they sit. Our entry into WWII's Pacific Theater of Operations was simply a cold calculation about our "national interests"? Lincoln's address forced the British out of the Civil War? Only Tom Clancy could have predicted 9/11? Give us all a break! We (the U.S.) have been after Asian resources for more than a century and it's amusing to note how Mr. Bray boils it all down to a simple oil embargo. We had already sent the Marines to China to protect our oil interests there in 1927. Our provocation of the Japanese was hardly a simple tit-for-tat matter. This was only a rest stop on a century- long road of political chess that had us killing as many as a million Filipinos (1899-1913) at the start, 5 million Koreans and Vietnamese in the middle, and now.. who knows. I don't want to touch the Civil War recollection, other than to say that describing Great Britain's role as a sideline observer is pure fiction. Does he think that the British Empire would suffer our support of Russia so easily? The "who could have dreamed up 9/11" canard has been so overused that I'm surprised a sharp person like Mr. Bray would even use it--unless it was dishonestly used of course. We have had almost 700 hijackings since 1970, and the people paid to protect the U.S. have been working on this threat full time. The President even received specific intelligence warning him of such an attack only a month before. However, thanks to Bush, we can no longer blame anyone, so we must all scratch our heads, throw up our arms, and say it must be "God's will" or something. Ironic, of course, given the puritanical belief stretching through this administration that God must also be simultaneously on our side. Strange. No, let us not get bogged down in "apples to oranges" comparisons and the desire to wait until a comfortable spot in the future comes that is free from intelligent analysis. Let us be diligent now before our children inherit the worst mess in U.S. history. Tom Fairlie ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Farber" <dave () farber net> To: "Ip Ip" <ip () v2 listbox com> Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2005 12:54 PM Subject: [IP] more on "War on Terra" saves few lives, expert says Begin forwarded message: From: h_bray () globe com Date: September 11, 2005 1:34:49 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: Re: [IP] more on "War on Terra" saves few lives, expert says I see this as an "apples and oranges" issue, combined with the difficulty in deciding how best to fend off foreseeable catastrophes, when it's unclear how likely these catastrophes are. First, apples and oranges. I think I've explained this one. Wars aren't just fought to prevent loss of life, but also loss of national power and liberty. It is highly unlikely that we would have faced invasion from Japan if we'd let them have free rein in Asia; to avoid war, we could have turned a blind eye. But the Roosevelt administration concluded that Japanese aggression posed a long-term threat to the power and national interests of the United States. So we began to resist, by doing such things as launching embargoes of critical exports to Japan, such as oil. The Japanese responded by attacking the US. Had we not interfered with the Japanese, the attack on Pearl Harbor would never have happened. On the other hand, there's a good chance that most of Asia would now be under the dictatorial rule of Japanese imperialists. Was preventing this worth a war that killed tens of millions of people? Go figure. You pays your money and you takes your choice. But studies like this one don't provide any assistance in making that decision. It's counting apples and ignoring the oranges. The study also suggests that money spent on fighting terrorism is spent inefficiently, because a terrorist attack is far less likely than, say, a New Orleans levee breach. Well, maybe. But I write this on the fourth anniversary of an event so astonishing that nobody--except Tom Clancy--would have expected it until it happened. Since that time, we've uncovered ample evidence that terrorists worldwide are doing everything they can to kill those of whom they disapprove, in as large numbers as they can manage. The idea that, say, the spread of bird flu is a greater hazard than an attack by Islamic fanatics armed with dirty bombs requires us to assume that these fanatics are few and far between, and have no access to such deadly weapons. Such assumptions are plainly unjustified. To be sure, the maniacs have not succeeded in the past four years in pulling off an attack of similar scale. But mightn't that be precisely because of the money and blood spent on fighting them off? Some say Iraq is an irrelevant distraction; perhaps they're right. But then, perhaps they're wrong. Often, only time answers such questions. Example: Who knew at the time that Antietam would be the turning point of the Civil War? It was the bloodiest battle ever fought by Americans, and the Union gained an incomplete victory. But it was victory enough for Lincoln to transform the nature of the war by issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. That turned the American Civil War into a glorious crusade against slavery--something it wasn't up to that point. And that ensured that the Brits, who'd been toying with embracing the Confederacy, would stay on the sidelines. And that, in turn, ensured that the Confederacy was doomed. Even now, the slugging match at Tal Afar, with American and Iraqi troops fighting side by side to clear out a nest of foreign-born terrorists, may be a turning point. Then agan, maybe not. That's the trouble with wars; apart from corpses, you never know what'll turn up. Just one more reason why clever cost-benefit analyses like the one from Emory U. tend to leave me cold. PS: I've gained some insight on this in the past few months because of my subscription to the Live365 Internet radio service. There you can listen to thousands of streamed audio channels, featuring every sort of programming. One of the channels features some of the most eye-opening stuff I've ever heard. It's called WW2--The Wireless War. Some clever fellow has acquired about 60 hours of actual news and propaganda broadcasts from the war, each featuring the date on which it aired. The stuff includes William L Shirer broadcasting Hitler speeches from Berlin in the run up to the Munich conference; bulletins on Hitler's entry into Austria and conquest of France, Pearl Harbor, of course. There's even enemy propaganda, like the amazing American-born British traitor Lord Haw Haw, with his sneering, contemptuous comments on British military defeats at places like Dunkirk. Why do I bring this up? Because I've listened, transfixed, to hours of this stuff. It puts history--not just WWII history, but history in general--into a whole new perspective. What you hear are descriptions of the most important events of the 20th century, described as they happened--by people who had no idea how it was all going to turn out. That's the key. All my life I've read WWII history, as written by people who knew the outcome of the struggle. It's utterly fascinating to hear it from those who were living it, who didn't know what would happen next. I recommend the experience to you all, and everybody else, who thinks he or she can foresee the value or the cost of conflict. Hiawatha Bray ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as tfairlie () frontiernet net To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ipArchives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting- people/
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