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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: quehubo who wrote (88962)	4/1/2003 9:46:03 PM
From: Sarmad Y. Hermiz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>> I would not trade the lives of 50 US soldiers to save 1,000 Iraqi civilians More than 50 US soldiers have died already in Iraq since March 21. And as far as we can tell, no-one is being saved. Just death all around. And very likely, an attempted occupation will just continue this attrition.

To: quehubo who wrote (88962)	4/1/2003 10:12:00 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Seems like you are contradicting yourself. If you would not make such a trade, then why are you there? The only self consistent answer is because you think you are saving even more American lives. You would like to see Iraqis be better off, but that is not your primary concern and you do not really care if in the process of saving Americans you kill every Iraqi on earth. They don't matter. They are less valuable. They are not as human to you. This is the essence of the problem. Now in this case, because we have formulated it as a life and death situation, you can find some justification, albeit it is very thin to kill so many to save so few. But let's move away from the extreme. Let's say we have a choice of two governments. One is a nationalistic government dedicated to the well being of Iraqis. Such a government, knowing the grave consequences of supporting terrorism against US, will not want to hurt its people and would be a civilized world citizen. BUT, at the same time, the only reason they are not doing so is because it is not in their interest. Their priority is their own people. So they are going to do what they can to prosper and that means they will give their oil contracts to the lowest bidder. They will buy arms only as much as they need and they buy it on its merits. They will install telecom and cell phone and network standards only on the cost benefit basis. They will refuse to attack their neighbors if they do not have to. I can go on and on. Such would be the behavior of a good government and they are really not so bad for us either. Our second choice for the Iraqi president, is an ambitious man. He loves power. We promise him we'll help him make Iraq the best country in the middle east and in the process help him create a great kingdom, if he does as we tell him and he agrees. So now we have a choice of someone who is committed to giving all the oil contracts to US companies. He will buy his armaments almost exclusively from US. He will base his TV, cell phone, and networking infrastructures on US parts. He will be willing to go to bat for us and put those pesky Wahaabis in Saudi and the Iranians out of their misery. This guy is great for us, but may have prisons full of political dissidents. Which one of these two do you think we'll put in power? The one who is most concerned about his own people, or the other guy who is committed to us? Yah I thought so too. Of course it would be nice if this second guy was a humanitarian and believed in democracy, but guess what? Nobody can serve two masters. Sun Tzu