I am tired of hearing people use "you can't change human nature" as a reason to support bad policy. That's just intellectual laziness speaking. Yes, man is an animal. A SOCIAL animal. In part, that means that we are competitive and selfish, but it also means that cooperation is just as fundamental in our makeup. It's completely a matter of choice which road we take.
Never mind the soon-to-be-dead bodies, let's talk about return on investment. The monetary cost of this war is estimated at 80-100 billion dollars for a best-case scenario, if the campaign is short and decisive. And that doesn't count reconstruction costs in Iraq which will be likely be several hundred billion more. Now, the United Nations (UNICEF) has estimated that unmet global needs for basic food, healthcare, sanitation and education could be addressed for around 40 billion. Even if their estimate is off by a factor of ten, can there be any doubt that this would be a better investment in our long-term security than what we are now embarking on? Shared prosperity is the only real deterrent to war over the long haul.
Please don't delude yourself that you're a realist and I'm a bleeding-heart pacifist. On the contrary, in general I'm a vile-tempered misanthrope and from what I've seen, most of the people who are supporting this power grab are simply ill-informed (hey, we can still be friends... I know your intentions are good.
) Unfortunately, our social-animal nature also makes it easy to herd us into groups and lead us around by the nose. If I have a tendency to rave (and I do), it's because I'm so frustrated at seeing this tactic succeed time and time again.
P.S.
JackDynne, you want to know where those anthrax letters came from? Unknown, but we are pretty certain where the anthrax itself originated. Genetic analysis indicates that it likely came from a single U.S. military source: the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md. and may have been processed at the Dugway Proving Ground military research facility in Utah. --http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A49502-2001Dec15?language=printer
It may or may not be significant that the anthrax letters were sent to
Democrats and members of the "liberal" media rather than to representatives of the party in power. Ya think Saddam or Osama have a special hard-on for the Dems? It is true, of course, that both of them used to work hand-in-glove with the Bush gang....
