ROI4WAR
Scott Adams (Dilbert author and self-described lousy politician) asks if a strong economy is not a sufficient deterrent against aggressive states.
As with many things he posts, it is impossible to tell if he’s merely playing Devil’s Advocate here or being serious. But I took the time to say something about it:
I think we (The U.S. and China) have nukes pointed at each other simply to say “we’ve got nukes pointed at you, so don’t start anything funny”. Other than that, there’s no conceivable situation that ends up with the US and China shooting each other. Like Y2K, there’s too much money to lose if the worst case comes to pass.
As far as an ROI on Iraq, it’s a very long term play, which is something that Americans are not very good at conceptualizing. Most Americans don’t plan past dinner tonight, so looking out 20, 50, 100 years is pretty much not a consideration.
In all seriousness, the ROI argument when applied to WWII doesn’t look good until 20-30 years after the war ended. But I think you’ll agree that things are much better in Europe and Asia as a result of our investment of blood and money to take down two vicious empires.
The long-term goal of the Iraq war is a good one. Whether it is attainable is something that only time will tell. But to write it off as an impossibility is to write off the future of a third of humanity. I’m not entirely sure that’s what we want to do.