Certainty and absurdity
Brad DeLong notes that Norman Geras appears to have no concept of probability. Geras says:"The sole convincing moral case against the war would have had to demonstrate, either for a certainty or else as being highly probable, that the consequences of a regime-change war... must be a state of affairs even worse than the one the war was supposed to remedy...There was no persuasive moral case against the Iraq war."
Whereas De Long notes:
"The right standard is, "More likely than not to make things worse"
In other words he is saying that intervention requires that the expected outcome is better than the expected outcome of non-intervention, i.e it is 'more likely than not to make things' better. Geras however, I think, is arguing that the spread of outcomes is heavily skewed, such that the worst disaster under Saddam is much, much, worse than the worst disaster under the occupation forces. And it is not the expected outcome what matters, but the worst case outcome.
Aside from the worrying onus on those opposed to regime change, the major complaint I have though is that taking Geras's statement and adding a few words rather changes its whole nature:
"The sole convincing moral case against the war would have had to demonstrate, either for a certainty or else as being highly probable, that the consequences of a regime-change war by the Bush Administration... must be a state of affairs even worse than the one the war was supposed to remedy or one not as good as any other feasible option was as likely to deliver and there were no more as likely moral uses for the $200bn proposed cost"
That more Iraqi civilians are being killed per month by the occupation forces than in Saddam's final few years makes one wonder, to put it mildly, if there werent' better otpions.
posted by Matthew @ 10/25/2004 10:01:00 PM
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