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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (126409)	12/5/2009 2:07:31 AM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542208

I remember someone on Usenet (probably an energy lobbyist) had published a tongue-in-cheek treatise about this poisonous gas that could cause explosions that was to be piped into newer houses. It went on and on about the risks but did touch upon the usefulness of the gas in meeting the energy needs of America. The readers were asked (one could say duped to answer) whether they supported this technology or not. Most people were indignant and said how this should be stopped and when asked, said, "Yes", it was just another example of corporate America preying upon people. It was, of course, natural gas. This has also been done humorously with dihydrogen monoxide. People are incredibly poor at doing human impact calculations but the truth is that there is no matter that doesn't expose us to some risk that we wouldn't experience in its absence. IF (and that is a big IF) this were to be the strategy, I'd be dancing in the streets that ONLY 800 people would die and ONLY 1500 would be wounded in 18 months. Lest anyone think I'm callous, American Heart Association says "In 2005, 652,091 people died of heart disease." If only 1% of those could be prevented by universal medical care, then 6500 people will be alive that will otherwise die. This is more than two 9/11s EVERY year for Heart Disease alone.

To: Bread Upon The Water who wrote (126409)	12/7/2009 3:25:27 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542208

Vitner, re: ME..."if I'm right in believing that a withdrawal at this time would critically limit the possibility of achieving important domestic breakthroughs on health care, climate protection, judicial appointments, restructuring of the power of lobbyists, etc, and would tear the country apart, then I can accept the cost of the Afghan surge with a heavy heart." YOU..."It's possibly an unfair question, but would you still come down on the same side if you could be fairly certain in 18 months 800 more Americans will have died and 1500 more have been wounded?" First, we're leaving out the potential benefits of capturing or killing some really bad guys there and of giving the Afghans a slim chance of putting together something that might help make their country and the world a better place. Those possibilities are, however, not very likely and your question is legitimate. Having accepted the parameters of your question, I have to say that it presents the most difficult moral choice you could have asked me to make. You could argue that those deaths would be justified if you weighed the loss of lives in Afghanistan against the loss of lives from stalling health care, failing to provide environmental protections and failing to pump new blood into a judicial system that is becoming more and more of a rubber stamp for business interests versus labor and consumer interests. That's a numbers game, however, and my instinct is to delve deeper into the justice of asking 800 men and women to die a half a world away. Why should the 800 soldiers who would die have to become pawns in a complex political game simply because the American people are unwilling or unable to elect representatives willing to make tough choices in the best interests of the people of America? Why shouldn't the premature deaths that will result from limited health care for the poor, premature deaths for those exposed to poor air, water and chemicals in the environment or the workplace and other unnecessary fatalities be borne by those who failed to remedy them by taking a more proactive role in our imperfect and sometimes corrupt democracy? In other words, why should we trade the lives of 800 soldiers to lame thinking voters in order to keep them from drinking the "Obama is weak and indecisive and can't be trusted on domestic reform" koolaid? Why trade even one life for that? I know that if one of the 800 would be the life of one of my sons or of my daughter I wouldn't think that was a good trade. I suspect that if one of the 800 lives would be the life of one of his daughters Obama wouldn't think it was such a good idea either. So, if I were making the choice I think I'd choose the least pragmatic political option, end the thing and bring them home. But I'm not naive enough to think that's how the game is played. The people in power do run numbers, do trade lives, and do make decisions that are, at best, only loosely based on philosophical concepts of justice and, in the final analysis, our soldiers are pawns. In our imperfect world I'm left to hope that their lives will be expended more wisely than Obama's Afghan decision would seem to indicate. Ed