Why Is No One Talking About Casualties?

Arianna Huffington ^ | 7 October 2002

[kaboom]

"OH ...EYE... EL!!! It's all about OH... EYE... EL!!!"

Are you sure that the motive isn't something else? Consider the possibility that the President doesn't want to see one of our cities instantly incinerated. Perhaps if we all bury our heads in the sand, all of our problems will go away.

[A_perfect_lady]

Here we go again. I think she took the dire predictions we heard about regarding the "fierce Afghani warriors" and just substituted Iraq for Afghanistan.

And Beenliedto, I couldn't tell if you were being sarcastic or not but I'll take you at face value: I'm willing to fight for oil. Our whole economy is built on oil. Frankly, I don't need any other reason and if Saddam is fixing once again to find a way to control the region's oil, I say we take him out and anyone else we have to.

[fogarty]

Perhaps. I was thinking they might avoid Baghdad altogether and just take the country's infrastructure and resources. Seige warfare has worked before, and could work again.

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

If oil was the motive, then we would have taken up Saddam's offer of increased oil supply for loosening the embargo...

[alloysteel]

Arianna Blatherington is confusing the ends with the means. She is worrying about the intermediary situation, on the way to trying to improve the situation. Yes, some casualties will be incurred, this is the face of conflict. But WHY should the casualties either be avoided, at any cost, or should these same casualties be accepted in the name of a greater good?

Saddam is a potential danger, and one that destined only to grow, unless steps are taken to defang the rattlesnake. The analogy goes much further, in that going after al-Qaeda, is like taking the rattles off the tail of the snake, but the snake is still live, and with an even worse attitude than before. The head of the snake must be smashed, and the corpse made non-poisonous.

[finnman69]

When this all done, and it turns out her hysterical claims were way wrong, this will be funny to read.

[Cato]

A big "I agree with you all BUMP"!

[Uncle Miltie]

"Why Is No One Talking About Casualties?"

Because the casualties in battle will be lower than the casualties of a nuclear first strike by Saddam.

Tick tock, LET'S ROLL!

[xJones]

Sherm, here's a good opening to call me a nitwit (ouch! already) but why not smart-bomb to rubble every one of Saddam's palaces, all their communications centers, military installations, etc. and then see what happens? We're told that Saddam has deep hidey holes buried far underground. Unless he has alternate tunnel exits, the rubble might make escape difficult for he and his *friends*. Why the need for hand to hand street fighting, at least at first? If the Iraqi populace hates his dictatorship as much as we're told, millions of dropped leaflets afterwards, encouraging the Iraqi people with our peaceful intent toward THEM, might be very helpful to get them stirred up on their own.

[Remole]

Arianna is not on my "must-read" list, but the point she raises is, for me, the only matter of debate in the prospect of war with Iraq. I think that an attack upon Iraq is justified by the criteria of sufficient authority and of the need for a casus belli (both holdovers from Gulf War I); the only issue for me is the Prudence of carrying out a frontal assault if it might mean large numbers of American casualties by means of WMD. I can live with thousands of American military casualties; I can live with thousands of Iraqi innocent casualties. What bothers me is the prospect of TENS of thousands of casualties as a result of Saddam using WMD.

[VOA]

Because the casualties in battle will be lower than the casualties of a nuclear first strike by Saddam.

Well said.
And dropping plenty of messages (and sending e-mails) to let Iraqui military and civilian
personnel know that they better hope they perish if they unleash non-conventional weapons
or face the hangman's noose after a post-free Iraq tribunal would be a good idea.

[TheDon]

That's what came to my mind as well. Let's be sure there are no more on our shores!

[Larry Lucido]

What bothers me is the prospect of TENS of thousands of casualties as a result of Saddam using WMD.

Fair enough, but I think Brad Cloven answers that quite well with his post 28. I find it interesting that having and not having WMD's are both simultaneously asserted as reasons to leave Saddam alone.

[Plutarch]

This is the Free Republic! We will not tollerate questioning Republican administrations!

Especially if it is her. She never made sense to me when she was ostensibly a conservative, and now that she is in a camp of her own she is insufferable. She is now one of those Kevin Phillips, RINO pundits that the media foists on us to "balance" their lefties.

[Plutarch]

Was A. Huffington around during the first Gulf War? Everyone was "talking about casualties" then. I'll bet Huffington she wasn't talking about casualties then, because then she was conservative!

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[A Vast RightWing Conspirator]

Try to imagine her talking as you are reading this.

[KDD]

I agree.

Oil is enough of a reason. A even better reason is that an America friendly government in that particular region is important to National Security. Look at Iraqs land position relative to all the trouble spots in the M.E. Saddam is not our friend. Too bad for him.

In the Far East?

China must be contained. Military bases in Iraq would be in good position to keep an eye on our trading buddy in the the Far East.

[paul51]

The ignorance is getting tiresome

[Nick Danger]

Will the deaths number in the hundreds, as was the case in Desert Storm and as would be again if Saddam collapsed like a cheap umbrella? Or will they be closer to the 10,000 to 50,000 some experts have predicted?

We don't know, Adrianna. No one knows. The future hasn't happened yet. The only thing we do know is that the same experts who are telling us 10,000 this time told us 10,000 last time as well. So even though they call themselves experts, they aren't any better at knowing the future than anyone else.

Asking people to tell us the future in advance is not a reasonable thing to do. It is an obstructionist tactic, and a dishonest one.

What makes it doubly dishonest is that you have not also asked, anywhere in your article, how many Americans might die in a chemical or biological attack on an American city, or in multiple, simultaneous attacks on American cities. This is the tradeoff Americans must make, and they must do so with imperfect knowledge. None of us knows for sure whether Saddam will supply terrorists with weapons or know-how from his arsenal. None of us knows whether they would be able to get them into the country, or deliver them effectively. We hope not, but we don't know. What we do know is that if they succeed, they could kill upwards of 100,000 Americans on a single day... and that's with what they have today. If they acquire nuclear weaponry, all bets are off.

Against this horrifying prospect we must weight the dangers of war. There will be casualties; for sure the number will not be zero. Maybe it will be hundreds... maybe thousands. No one knows.

No one knows either side of this. We must guess, hopefully in an informed way. Some will look at Saddam Hussein's track record and conclude that he cannot be trusted with such weaponry. Others will see a man who is belligerent, but not insane, and who can be deterred. No one can possibly know which side is right.

One thing we can do is assess the penalty for being wrong. If we trust deterrence and that turns out to be wrong, some six-figure number of Americans will die, almost all of them innocent civilians. If nuclear weaponry is involved, we might also have large areas of geography that will be uninhabitable for hundreds or thousands of years. Either way, we will then have the same war that is being proposed now.

Or we can have the war now, and skip the part about the hundred thousand dead American civilians.

Or, we can sit back and wait to see what happens. If you're wrong, Andrianna, you'll be very, very wrong.