chefmike
12-31-2006, 01:11 AM
The Most Expensive Arrest and Execution Ever--Worth It?
Mark Green
Reading of Saddam's execution tonight, I'm reminded of all those debates over consumer regulation I've had with smart conservatives -- most memorably Antonin Scalia several times in the '70s. Sure safer cars and cleaner air are good things, BUT AT WHAT COST? Because there's "no such thing as a free lunch," Green, where is your cost-benefit analysis?
So before Bush & Co. do their version of a Terrell Owens dance in the end zone, it would be good if they first did a cost-benefit analysis of the capture and execution of Saddam. Let's see: the BENEFIT: -- he's gone; the COST -- up to 600,000 dead Iraqis according to a careful Johns Hopkins study; 3000 dead Americans; 20,000+ maimed and wounded Americans; an out-of-pocket cost of $400 biliion, toward a likely total cost of ( counting debt service, disability care etc.) of $2 trillion over time; a war lasting longer than WWII -- and, oh yes, a rise in terrorism and terrorists as well as the plunge of popularity of the U.S. around the world, making it far harder to organize coalitions to fight such international scourges as terrorism, global warming, AIDS etc.
Other than George, Laura and Barney, is there anyone who really thinks that this cost-benefit ratio was worth it? Where can I read apologies from Wolfowitz, Feith, Kristol, Perle for willfully ignoring these monumental costs to our blood, treasure and name?
And this is no mere after-action report, with 20-20 hindsight. Folks like Zinni, Scowcroft and so many others chronicled in Tom Ricks's book Fiasco warned of such plausible costs but two consequential armchair warriors -- Bush and Cheney -- weren't counting. Any argument can sound convincing if you ignore the costs and exaggerate the benefits. And when Congress in a pre-war hearing asked about the costs of a first-ever American invasion and occupation of a Muslim country, Rumsfeld blithly said they were "unknowable" -- and the Congress, a pathetic West Wing of this White House, in effect said "ok."
In terms of lives lost, monies spent, good will squandered, terrorists multiplied, can readers please let me know if there's ever been a deliberate decision with a worse cost-benefit ratio in American history than the arrest and execution of Sadam Hussein? Perhaps experts at the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation, who specialize in demanding such calculations before government regulatory decisions are made, could now provide an answer to a question they apparently never asked before March 19, 2003.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-green/the-most-expensive-arrest_b_37441.html
Mark Green
Reading of Saddam's execution tonight, I'm reminded of all those debates over consumer regulation I've had with smart conservatives -- most memorably Antonin Scalia several times in the '70s. Sure safer cars and cleaner air are good things, BUT AT WHAT COST? Because there's "no such thing as a free lunch," Green, where is your cost-benefit analysis?
So before Bush & Co. do their version of a Terrell Owens dance in the end zone, it would be good if they first did a cost-benefit analysis of the capture and execution of Saddam. Let's see: the BENEFIT: -- he's gone; the COST -- up to 600,000 dead Iraqis according to a careful Johns Hopkins study; 3000 dead Americans; 20,000+ maimed and wounded Americans; an out-of-pocket cost of $400 biliion, toward a likely total cost of ( counting debt service, disability care etc.) of $2 trillion over time; a war lasting longer than WWII -- and, oh yes, a rise in terrorism and terrorists as well as the plunge of popularity of the U.S. around the world, making it far harder to organize coalitions to fight such international scourges as terrorism, global warming, AIDS etc.
Other than George, Laura and Barney, is there anyone who really thinks that this cost-benefit ratio was worth it? Where can I read apologies from Wolfowitz, Feith, Kristol, Perle for willfully ignoring these monumental costs to our blood, treasure and name?
And this is no mere after-action report, with 20-20 hindsight. Folks like Zinni, Scowcroft and so many others chronicled in Tom Ricks's book Fiasco warned of such plausible costs but two consequential armchair warriors -- Bush and Cheney -- weren't counting. Any argument can sound convincing if you ignore the costs and exaggerate the benefits. And when Congress in a pre-war hearing asked about the costs of a first-ever American invasion and occupation of a Muslim country, Rumsfeld blithly said they were "unknowable" -- and the Congress, a pathetic West Wing of this White House, in effect said "ok."
In terms of lives lost, monies spent, good will squandered, terrorists multiplied, can readers please let me know if there's ever been a deliberate decision with a worse cost-benefit ratio in American history than the arrest and execution of Sadam Hussein? Perhaps experts at the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation, who specialize in demanding such calculations before government regulatory decisions are made, could now provide an answer to a question they apparently never asked before March 19, 2003.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-green/the-most-expensive-arrest_b_37441.html