Is Iraq worth 2,000 GIs? 10,000?
How do you value any action but to put in in some sort of context? The only context I can think of to determine the amount of lives and dollars a particular action would be worth would be to compare it to the cost of other actions, and the benefit derived from it.
Korea, for example, cost 54,000 american lives, eventually resulted in a democratic and capitalist S. Korea, but has required an American presence for 50 years. On the other-hand, it also resulted in an isolated and dictatorial N. Korea with nuclear weapons, and a starving population. Was the loss of 54,000 american lives in three years, and a cost over 263 billion dollars in today's currency not including the 50 years of occupation worth it? (http://www.cwc.lsu.edu/cwc/other/stats/ warcost.htm) Do we include the loss of 150,000 chinese, 290,000 N. Koreans, and 220,000 S. Koreans as we do the math?
I would say that the existence of South Korea as a democracy today probably is not worth the cost we paid to make it happen. We have no vital interests there. As a showdown between the post WWII victors, it may have prevented further encroachments by showing we were willing to fight, but in retrospect, I am not sure it meets the cost benefit analysis. If south Korea was swallowed by N. Korea tomorrow, we could buy our DVD players from someone else.
Compared with Iraq, where we do have vital interest regionally, and where 70% of the world's oil reserves are contiguous in three countries, it would seem to me that the cost at Korean War levels would be acceptable.
Anybody think Korea was worth the cost, but Iraq is not?
posted by Jrudkis @ 11:24 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Hindsight and foresight are two different things. Perhaps S. Korea was not worth it. Iraq is a different kind of question given that we’re still not sure of the outcome.
The question of something being worth it in the sense of a cost-to-benefit ratio may not necessarily be applicable to war. War, in my mind, is something you don’t enter into unless you feel the cause is worth expending all your resources to fight it. In that case, the benefit has to be seen to outweigh any cost, making a cost-to-benefit analysis moot. This is, of course, a foreword-looking decision, so you may decide after entering into a war that it is not worth continuing after new information comes to light and circumstances change. But the willingness to give up everything for a war should be a prerequisite for starting or joining it.
Other actions, military included, may be more subject to an analysis based on a cost-to-benefit ratio. Such an analysis would determine the appropriate level of support in sending troops, money, supplies, diplomats, advisors, etc. for some international effort not requiring the commitment that war does. But all-out war is separate and distinct from other projections of force or influence, at least in the American system. It’s a special and unique action in that sense.
So, my answer on Iraq, regardless of my answer or lack thereof on Korea, is that it should have been considered to be worth any price before it was started. Otherwise, the goal should have been achieved in another way or abandoned.
Thanks for the very good response. I agree that war is not to be taken lightly, but I do think there are wars that we can enter into without being willing to mobilize the entire nation to win it. The first Gulf War, for example, was worth a Korea like investment, but certainly not a WWII investment. I don't think we needed to be willing to go that far at the outset in order to determine whether it was worth trying. I think we should have had a reasonable amount of investment. At the time, prior to the war, the Army was estimating 30,000 dead. Apparently, prior to the war the calculus was that was worth it. We also had the ace up our sleeve, which was to nuke Baghdad if they used chemical weapons, which Bush I said he would do.
And I do think the Calculus has to be made regardless of outcome, so the actual outcome of Korea is less important. What would we have gained had we taken all of Korea? Even if we had done that, I don't think it was strategically valuable enough gor the cost.
But certainly during the Korean conflict, after the Pusan Perimeter, and after the Chinese poured over the border, the outlook much much more grim than we have currently in Iraq. If we had the saturation media then that we have today, I think we would have evacuated Pusan rather than stay and fight. Maybe that would have been better.
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