5 ms·

I'm not sure I'm hearing you right. Say you're President. How many lives would an act of pre-meditated terror have take to be worth your while? 10000? what i

I'm not sure I'm hearing you right. Say you're President. How many lives would an act of pre-meditated terror have take to be worth your while? 10000? what if it were 100 a day for 100 days? Still less than car fatalities in a year. 9/11 happened.. ho hum.. call me when it's over

mikeash 13y ago
"9/11 happened.. ho hum.. call me when it's over" Imagine what the world would be like today if the US government had somehow managed to take this approach in 2001. (I say "somehow" because even if Bush and everyone around him wanted to do it this way, people were calling for blood.) Here's what I see: 1. Al Qaeda remains a global nuisance but ignorable. 2. The governments of Iraq and Afghanistan remain more or less like they were. The population of those countries is probably differently off than they are in reality, but not necessarily better or worse. 3. The US federal debt is several trillion dollars lower. 4. The US economy is doing better. 5. No PATRIOT act, nobody rotting away in Guantanamo, somewhat less ubiquitous surveillance. All in all, sounds like a big win. Do you disagree?
- lnanek2 13y ago
  Don't wars help the economy?
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Eisenhower certainly didn't think so, and he lived through the main example people bring up to support it: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
    - mpyne 13y ago
      That implies that the people who push and pay for guns and rockets would ever allocate that money to food or clothes, if it wasn't spent for the former. As far as resourcing goes food and clothing is as easy a problem to solve as the U.S. will ever encounter; it is the will to solve it that is necessary.
  - regularfry 13y ago
    I'm finding it hard not to call this a broken window fallacy.
- gngeal 13y ago
  The population of those countries is probably differently off than they are in reality, but not necessarily better or worse. The Afghani probably wouldn't be as high on heroin as they are now.
  - jnbiche 13y ago
    It took me a while to parse your sentence, and to figure out who the "they" was referring to. In turns out that in English and in many Middle Eastern languages, "Afghani" is the singular form of the demonym of Afghanistan. This mirrors the singular demonym of many other Middle Eastern countries (e.g., "an Israeli, "Yemeni", "Iraqi"). So "the Afghani" refers to a single person from Afghanistan. It took me a second reading to figure out that you meant the people of Afghanistan, in plural. The commonly accepted plural form in English is "Afghans" [1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectival_and_demonymic_forms_for_countries_and_nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectival_and_demonym...
    - gngeal 13y ago
      Oops, you're right - I guess I fell too much in love with -i as a plural suffix. I don't know where that came from.
yeezusnice 13y ago
I was trying to be sarcastic :) as if 9/11 was such a low number of fatalities that it wouldn't we worth addressing..
flyinRyan 13y ago
If it was happening every day it might be worth considering. But a one-off of 10k wouldn't be worth my time either. The proper response to 9/11 was what Norway showed us: "this is terrible and we're going to grieve but we're not going to change anything".

mikeash 13y ago

"9/11 happened.. ho hum.. call me when it's over" Imagine what the world would be like today if the US government had somehow managed to take this approach in 2001. (I say "somehow" because even if Bush and everyone around him wanted to do it this way, people were calling for blood.) Here's what I see: 1. Al Qaeda remains a global nuisance but ignorable. 2. The governments of Iraq and Afghanistan remain more or less like they were. The population of those countries is probably differently off than they are in reality, but not necessarily better or worse. 3. The US federal debt is several trillion dollars lower. 4. The US economy is doing better. 5. No PATRIOT act, nobody rotting away in Guantanamo, somewhat less ubiquitous surveillance. All in all, sounds like a big win. Do you disagree?

lnanek2 13y ago
Don't wars help the economy?
- mikeash 13y ago
  Eisenhower certainly didn't think so, and he lived through the main example people bring up to support it: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
  - mpyne 13y ago
    That implies that the people who push and pay for guns and rockets would ever allocate that money to food or clothes, if it wasn't spent for the former. As far as resourcing goes food and clothing is as easy a problem to solve as the U.S. will ever encounter; it is the will to solve it that is necessary.
- regularfry 13y ago
  I'm finding it hard not to call this a broken window fallacy.
gngeal 13y ago
The population of those countries is probably differently off than they are in reality, but not necessarily better or worse. The Afghani probably wouldn't be as high on heroin as they are now.
- jnbiche 13y ago
  It took me a while to parse your sentence, and to figure out who the "they" was referring to. In turns out that in English and in many Middle Eastern languages, "Afghani" is the singular form of the demonym of Afghanistan. This mirrors the singular demonym of many other Middle Eastern countries (e.g., "an Israeli, "Yemeni", "Iraqi"). So "the Afghani" refers to a single person from Afghanistan. It took me a second reading to figure out that you meant the people of Afghanistan, in plural. The commonly accepted plural form in English is "Afghans" [1]. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectival_and_demonymic_forms_for_countries_and_nations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_adjectival_and_demonym...
  - gngeal 13y ago
    Oops, you're right - I guess I fell too much in love with -i as a plural suffix. I don't know where that came from.

yeezusnice 13y ago

I was trying to be sarcastic :) as if 9/11 was such a low number of fatalities that it wouldn't we worth addressing..

flyinRyan 13y ago

If it was happening every day it might be worth considering. But a one-off of 10k wouldn't be worth my time either. The proper response to 9/11 was what Norway showed us: "this is terrible and we're going to grieve but we're not going to change anything".