Gordaen’s Blog

I received an email recently with “Fwd: SMARTEST MAN IN AMERICA” being the subject. I should have known it wasn’t about any scientists or anything cool. It was simply a link to a YouTube video of a guy named Bob giving his take on the war in Iraq. He basically just slams people “of the left” and praises the US military. I tried to watch it with an open mind, but I quickly felt like debating the guy. Anyway, here are a few thoughts I had on what he said.

He talked about how the news is always showing how many have died and that isn’t the measure of whether we are winning. Instead, he proposed that we should show how many we have killed “complete with fanfare.” I’m not even going to go into why celebrating death (even of enemies) is wrong. Instead, let me ask a question. Did Germany win WWII? Unless you’re an idiot or sarcastic, your answer should be “no.” That’s strange, because Germany killed 20-30 million people. In fact, they killed more Soviet troops than the total number of Germans killed by all forces put together. Clearly, body count does not determine victory.

Victory?
What determines victory? Well, why don’t we use some of Bob’s wisdom. “…kill enough of the enemy there…” he tells us. Enough? How many is enough? He doesn’t say, but his criticism of democrats is “How can Democrats say we’re losing without telling us what the score is?” How can your argument be based on something that can be used against you in the same way? How can Republicans tell us we are winning without telling us what the score is or what the goal is? Interestingly enough, much of the Republican rhetoric has gone from telling us we are winning and need to “stay the course” to a less positive outlook.

Victory is determined by what you are trying to accomplish. What are we trying to accomplish? We can forget about the WMD, because they either didn’t exist or were moved. If they never existed, we have not accomplished anything on that front. If they were moved, we have failed in that regard. If we are there for Iraqi independence, then our leaders don’t understand what independent means. It is impossible to force anyone or anything to be independent. Imagine trying to make an 18 year old college freshman independent. Using the OIF method, we would jump to his aid, doing all of his homework, supplying him with room/board/food, and promise to not leave until he is independent. Why does that sound like such an obviously terrible plan?

It is a war of ideology (like most wars). The terrorists hate us. We hate the terrorists. We kill a bunch of them; they kill some of us; thousands of non-combatants die. The cycle continues and we only succeed in spreading hate and death. Our success depends on our affecting their concept of what is American. If we want them to not hate us (rather than trying to kill every single person in the world who does), we have to be commendable. Some of our actions in the Middle East are such as building/repairing schools, but look at how little of that we have accomplished. There are less doctors in Iraq now than there were before the war. There are less teachers.

A Different Solution
Rather than attacking Iraq, I would have proposed a full solution to the problems in Afghanistan. We already had a legitimate reason (as in the vast majority of the world agreed) to be there. Why not defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda and properly rebuild the country? We could work with the citizens to make hospitals and schools. A small portion of the billions that are going into Iraq could have gone into Afghanistan to rebuild the country. Many of the citizens would have gained a good impression of the United States. The world community would have actually approved our actions. Other countries in the Middle East would have been less hostile. A small percentage of the terrorists might have even decided that suicide bombing us is not a free ticket into Heaven. A slightly larger percentage would have decided it wasn’t worth the extra effort to go out and find US troops/citizens to attack.

Imagine that, lowering the number of enemy combatants without killing all of them! If you think that would never have a chance, consider that we have spent over $400 billion on OIF and Afghanistan’s GDI is around $32 billion. That’s 12.5 times the GDI. Since these numbers are ridiculous, let’s throw some more out there. If some “big brother” country were going to dump 12.5 times the USA GDI into our country, that would be over 150 trillion dollars. Also worth knowing is that Iraq’s GDI is around 3 times Afghanistan’s. That means we are spending more than their entire country is making. Funny that Rumsfeld originally claimed the war should cost under $50 billion.

He should have just said it will take however much it costs to “kill enough of the enemy.”