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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JSwanson who wrote (68356)	3/7/2003 1:20:18 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

I am sorry, JS, but you have missed my point. There is a difference between having expectations of costs and saying that those costs are not justified. Looking back at WWII, it is clear that US had pondered the issue well and had very good ideas about what to expect. As it turns out, the outcome exceeded those expectations. This is what enables us to look back and say not only we did the right thing, but we did it the right way too (with some notable exceptions). In the US many, many dollars are spent hunting for drugs, drug producers and dealers in the US and abroad. Despite having Local, State and Federal police numbering in the tens of thousands looking for these drugs, anyone can go and buy their drug of choice in any city in America. Which is precisely why we can have a debate whether or not we should continue this approach. Now if we had no stated goals and no statistics on drug abuse and no idea how much drugs are on the streets and what the root causes of the drug problem (on both supply and demand side) are, then we'd never know if we need more enforcement, less enforcement, or a totally different approach. Let's take an extreme case for Iraq. Say we nuke Iraq so much to turn its sands into glass and kill its entire population. The nuclear radiation and population loss would certainly diminish the threat of Iraq and its alleged WMDs for a long long time. It would also have the additional effect of reducing proliferation of WMD. Do you think that is exactly what we should do tomorrow? If your answer is no, then you must have expectations as to what a desired outcome is beyond removing Saddam. Furthermore, you implicitly acknowledge that there are other desired outcomes beyond removing Saddam and threat of a nuclear Iraq. I am simply asking what those desired outcomes are and what are we willing to pay for them. Then at least we will know how to evaluate the progress of war. ST