I'm tempted to quote Zell Miller: "Do you know what a metaphor is?" But in the interest of cordial debate, I won't.
Oops.
I'm sure you have other reasons for opposing the war, but I'll just stick to the one you mentioned in your post - the deaths of 10,000 other civilians and who knows how many Iraqi soldiers.
Actually, IraqBodyCount.net puts it at between 13,000 and 15,000 civilian deaths since the beginning of the invasion. I can't vouch for their methods, but that's what they say.
Here's my question for you: what if that rate of death actually represents a decline in the non-natural/accidental death rate? What if more people were dying under Saddam's regime than have died during and following the invasion?
Here is an article that discusses (rather imperfectly, I think) casualty statistics in Iraq both before and after the invasion:
Along with other human rights organizations, The Documental Centre for Human Rights in Iraq has compiled documentation on over 600,000 civilian executions in Iraq.
Saddam was in power for 24 years: that's 25,000 executions per year.
By yours and Iraqbodycount.net's estimates, more people are alive in Iraq today because we invaded and deposed Saddam.
4 comments:
I expect that the Atomic Bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved many lives, both American and Japanese.
Of course not, but the mere recitation of statistics do not necessarily give the whole picture.
I'm saying two things:
one, stopping this guy who was waving around his fake gun that we didn't know was fake required an invasion, which was necessarily going to cost lives;
two, you can't simply look at that cost alone - you have to compare it to the cost of pursuing a different option. The cost of not removing Saddam was a higher number of lives, plus the potential of terrorists armed by a future Iraqi WMD program.
Yeah, the old, time wasting, and interminable argument of the "what if"s.
This is the reality. Deal with it instead of waving your jaws at each other.
GWB and his gang of thugs decided that it was in their best interests to take out the minor thug who lived two blocks away. Good idea? Bad idea? That doesn't really matter.
What DOES matter is what is done next... That is where the debate should lie.
What is done to GWB for his action - re-elect or dump him - is another decision. My preference (seeing I have no say) is re-elect him, get him and his gang to sort it, then on the last day of his Presidency charge the lot of them with war crimes starting with the illegal and unjustified invasion of another country.
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