[extropy-chat] The NeoCon Mind-Trick

[Robert Bradbury]

Herb Martin wrote:

> President Bush has led the freeing of over 60,000,000
> human beings.  Not bad for six years.



While it is good that many people are now "free" who were not six years ago,
I would offer this.

The Bush directly accountable death toll (to U.S. citizens) will exceed the
death toll (to U.S. and foreign citizens) due to the 911 terrorists sometime
in early 2007 [1].  In fact it is almost certain that the Bush responsible
death toll will exceed the 911 death toll by July 4, 2007 (quite a present
for the 4th of July... :-().

Now, one has to ask -- "Is the 'freedom' of 60,000,000 people worth another
~3000 U.S. lives?"

I am not saying that it is not.  One could look at the civil war or perhaps
WWII where they were clearly justified on the basis of "freeing" people.
However that was *not* the case with the war in Afghanistan or the war in
Iraq.  They were largely sold on the basis of *potentially* protecting
American lives in the future.

And IMO, if you look on balance at the amount of money spent on wars
overseas over the last six years vs. the amount of money being spent on
preparing for a "natural" disaster such as a breakout of the H5N1 virus
there is a gross imbalance of priorities.

Take a step back and look at it from an extropic perspective -- *how* many
of those 60,000,000 now "free" lives would have been lost had the U.S. not
decided to exercise the military option?  Could 60,000,000 *DEATHS* have
been prevented if the same amount of money and energy been dedicated to
something like world hunger or disease prevention? ([2] is interesting...).
As I calculate it, the war in Iraq has cost us approximately *8* full years
of NIH funding.

Those kinds of questions explain why Bill & Melinda Gates are Time
Magazine's "Persons of the Year" and *not* George W. Bush.

And for the record, I was *for* going into Afghanistan, and to a lesser
extent going into Iraq -- but I have had some time (and more information)
that have led me to rethinking my former perspectives.

Robert

1. This is based on calculations I did back in 2005.  But the rate of deaths
has not changed significantly since then and I doubt it will change before
2007 given current trends.
2. http://costofwar.com/
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