On Harry's Place
How did it come to this...Playing by numbers
Posted by brownie
If there had been a rider for the Iraq war bill that tossed a billion onto buying mosquito nets for Africa, preventing a number of deaths clearly bigger than those caused by the war, would that have made it ok?
Question posed by regular commenter "soru" on a Crooked Timber thread, directed at those who now believe the most powerful anti-war argument is represented by a confidence interval.
The mind boggles. Of course it's true that Osama Bin Laden had paid for anti-malaria drugs for 4,000 people on September 10th, September 11th would still have mattered. But it's also true that the fact 3,000+ people did die is of supreme importance - the WTC was bombed in 1995, after all.
But perhaps "Soru" is onto something for the Decent Left? Will future Decency projects come to rely on a scheme similar to carbon offsets, perhaps called 'Death offsets'? Then maybe they could trade off the death of one person caused by one of their schemes by allowing another to live. Apparently the going rate to save a life is about $79 in Africa, so the deaths caused by the Iraq war could have been 'offset' by only about $50m, and thus "Soru" and others could sleep a little better at night.
Should the deaths attributed to the conflict play a role in decisions over whether it was a good idea or not? Surely they must, particularly in what was sold (once the WMDs didn't turn up) as a humanitarian war.
posted by Matthew @ 10/18/2006 08:48:00 PM
Comments: 0
