| | I generally don't comment on foreign policy issues, because I can usually see both sides of the debate, and don't have a clear unambiguous view of what should be done. But something that needs to be considered, and virtually never is, is the law of unintended consequences. Whenever physical force is used to solve social problems - and this includes retaliatory force as well as aggressive force - there are almost always unanticipated, unintended consequences, and these can often make the initial problem pale by comparison.
Usually, when government acts, it focuses exclusively on the expected benefits and almost entirely neglects or minimizes the projected costs. But every action has both benefits and costs, and no action is worth taking if the costs outweigh the benefits. You always have to ask yourself, is it worth it? What am I giving up in order to gain the desired goal?
In Vietnam, for example, we lost 50,000 American lives and a staggering diversion of resources that could have been devoted to productive purposes - to improving our own lives and wellbeing. Those were the costs. What were the benefits? I'm not sure that there were any. Did we realize that before entering the war? No. Did we have any idea of the problems we would encounter? No, because the disastrous results that we experienced were unanticipated, unintended consequences.
I don't know how many people here have directly and personally witnessed the grisly effects of war. But even if you haven't, you know they are horrible, and should be avoided, unless absolutely necessary, in the same way that violent revolution should be avoided, unless the only alternative is to live under a dictatorship. This is why a government as imperfect as our own is better than an ongoing civil war. So what do we have to gain by becoming embroiled in a never-ending war in Iraq? Whatever it is, the costs almost certainly outweigh it.
Do we really think that we're going to be able to replace Saddam's government with anything even close to a constitutional republic? We can't force our model of government on a society that doesn't have the philosophical understanding to accept it. There aren't enough "peace-keepers" in the world to do that. If most of the people there don't believe in it and don't want it, you won't be able to coerce them into accepting it. The best you can hope for is a democratically elected theocracy. Will this kind of government serve our interests better than Saddam did? Granted, he was a monster, but the people who replace him, even by popular vote, are unlikely to be much better, if that. Look who replaced the Shah in Iran?
Of course, no one ever thinks about these sorts of things before declaring war. War is the province of governments, and governments typically believe that social problems can be solved at the point of a gun. They don't imagine that there could ever be negative consequences, and if they do, don't care, because they can always pass them off onto someone else. Just look at the unintended consequences of price controls - shortages and surpluses - of the war on drugs - organized crime and a dramatic increase in the murder rate, the cost of interdiction, of fighting drug gangs, of enforcement and incarceration. What are the benefits? A reduction in the use of drugs? I don't think so. But governments never think of this, even when they have ample historical precedents to guide them, viz., alcohol prohibition.
It is the same with the decision to go to war. Apparently, we learned nothing from the Vietnam War. As George Santayana notes, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Yes, the way this war is being fought can be criticized, but that's hindsight. You can't always anticipate the problems, and with war, the problems can be very great, which is why you should enter into it only as a last resort.
Another problem is, of course, the fact that once you've become involved, you can't just pull out, because things aren't going well. If you're going to enter a foreign war, you had better be damn sure that you're going to win it, and that the benefits of victory are greater than the costs. Getting stuck in a quagmire from which it is not politically feasible to extricate yourself is a very real and grave danger. You need an exit strategy, just as you do in the stock market; otherwise you risk profound and substantial losses. If you have no exit strategy, you are courting disaster.
Do we have an exit strategy in Iraq? If we do, it's been very well camouflaged. What you are witnessing there is the classic ineptitude of government and of government planning and execution. National defense is frequently touted as one of the reasons for governmental intervention. We must force people to support the government via taxation and military conscription, it is argued; otherwise we will have free riders who don't contribute their fair share; nor will there be enough money or volunteers to support our troops. Nobody ever bothers to point out that when you can force people to do your bidding, you have something called a "forced rider" problem. People are being coerced into supporting something they don't value; they are being sacrificed to the whims of government planners, and the sacrifices can be very great indeed.
Of course, our leaders don't have to bear the personal consequences of their decisions to send our youth to die in foreign wars. If they did, I think their decisions would be very different.
As for oil and our need for it, if we eliminated environmental restrictions on such things as offshore drilling, we could make a significant contribution towards our supply of oil right here on our own soil. Without our patronage, corrupt governments in the Middle East, like Saudi Arabia, would be far poorer than they are today and would eventually collapse, as new sources of energy are discovered, and oil is no longer considered an indispensable natural resource. Without the environmentalists getting in the way, we could eventually supply enough of our own energy needs to eliminate our dependency on the Middle East entirely.
- Bill
|
|
