Things I Haven’t Heard Anybody Say About Iraq

We’ve been in Iraq for quite a while now and people have widely differing opinions about this issue (as usually happens). I don’t have a strong opinion (as usually happens), but I’ll explain why. I just wanted to share a few thoughts you might not have thought nor heard anybody else say either:

1) Many of the people who think we should leave use as a reason that we never should have gone, or that our reasons for going were bad or misguided. This is really a poor argument – how we got to where we are is irrelevant for the purposes of deciding whether or not to stay. What matters is that we reassess at every point what the best course of action is and act on that course. If you buy stock because you think it will go up, and then it goes down, should you automatically sell it? Of course not - just because your prior decision was wrong does not mean it is a bad idea to own that stock right now. And to those people who are against the war simply by virtue of being against all wars, I’m sorry. Unfortunately, war is a reality of the world in which we all exist right now – I don’t like it any more than you do, but it’s true. Idealism is great and all, but it doesn’t get the job done most of the time.

2) Most people forget that they do not have nearly as much information about Iraq as the people making the decision to stay. I’m not saying that Bush has done the right thing by keeping our troops there this whole time – I’m just saying that the few bits of information we get from the media (most of which it seems are chosen by the givers with the purpose of making us believe one thing or another) about the war are a poor basis for making a vehemently-backed judgment about this subject. As much as we might not like it, the people in charge really are going to be able to make a better-informed decision about this than you and I. And yet, virtually everyone you talk to thinks they know what’s right, and they all seem to be quite confident about their position.

3) There is a hidden benefit to staying that I haven’t really heard mentioned. One of the sobering realities of the world right now is that there exists a reasonably sizable group of people who would happily blow themselves up in a crowd of civilians of some other nation or ethnicity (e.g. Israelis, us, to name a few). Now, during this war, some sizable number of these people died fighting our soldiers who have Kevlar vests, machine guns, military training, and all that jazz. Part of the problem with the coverage of this war is that I have absolutely no idea how big a number this is. Are we killing 10 such people for every one of our soldiers that dies, or is it 1:1? Surely this is a good thing for the world as a whole that many of these people are no longer living, since if they were not busy fighting against our troops they would be off making other mischief elsewhere. Again, there really no way of estimating the value of this benefit, but surely it is a positive thing.