Political Probabilities

[Jack Jones]

...mounting costs (over $225 billion), American casualties (1,040+ in Iraq alone)...

Horray for ~4:15am posts!

So much for chill…

Don’t ya just love statistics. We can spin them any way we want. Let’s compare the State of California with Iraq. The two are about the same area. Iraq has 5/7 the population of California.

Although many of the American deaths in Iraq were accidental, or an act of war, let’s label all 1,040+ murders. The murder rate in California is 6.8/100,000, which means that, in the same time period, there were 3,610. Adjusting for population we see that an American was about 2.5 times more likely to be murdered in California than in Iraq.

If it’s not the human cost, then it must be the $225 billion that should dissuade us? Well, according to extrapolated census statistics, federal funds and grants expended in California during the same period have exceeded $300 trillion – that’s over a thousand times the amount spent on the liberation of Iraq!

Maybe we should get the hell out of California and leave a sovereign and secure nation in our wake.

Ok (removing tongue from cheek) this is not about numbers, nor our buddies the French; and it’s for damned sure not about Vietnam. This is about the fact that we were attacked and will be again. How many times and how vicious they are will depend on how long we allow tyrants the freedom to oppress the third world. More precisely, on how long we allow it to remain a third world.

The reason Bush is unapologetic is that the coalition of the unwilling do not deserve one. It is they who aid and comfort the enemies of freedom; it is they who want profit from absentee colonialism; it is from them that the third world should demand an apology. If, instead of bringing down every last rogue state and offering the chance for prosperity, we revert to chasing boogiemen into hiding, with the occasional capture and subsequent release when the unwilling buckle again to the boogiemen’s clones, then the third world will continue to export its pain.