"Today, over sixty-one thousand Iraqis are alive (and free and perhaps voting) because of American policy."
I don't subscribe to the body-count calculus of war. Really, Hitler only wanted to kill 12 million Jews, plus a few million more gays, Gypsies, and other "undesireables." Left to his own devices, Hitler would have killed far fewer people than ended up dying because nations and people chose to fight him.
Of course, that leaves out the 100 million Slavs Hitler would have enslaved and dislocated to make labor and room for his "Greater Germany" in European Russia. Body-Count Calculus leaves out a similar fact in Iraq : No matter whether the war has claimed more Iraqi lives than it saved, today's Iraqis are free.
The US (North and South) lost 600,000 lives in the Civil War. Had we let the South go its own way, all those lives would have been spared. But slavery would have lived on.
I do not subscribe to the body-count calculus of war -- but sometimes it sure is nice to know.
*But slavery would have lived on*>>
Actually, I have to disagree somewhat on the last point. There is evidence that a lot of social and economic forces at work during the time of the antebellum south would have led to an eventual evaporation of slavery anyway. So it's theoretically possible that 600,000 lives were lost "for no good reason"
That being said, it's still clear to me that the American Civil War was completely necessary and justly prosecuted by the Union forces. When it comes to the essentials (ie. freedom and recognition of basic God-given rights regardless of skin color) you can't exactly write up an amortization table charting the agregate nominal supply of dead soldiers versus the level and intensity of slave suffering. Some things are worth fighting for (or against) at all costs.
So yeah... I guess I don't subscribe to the whole body-count calculus of war either.
Shameless plug: we did a similar calculation -- different methods and inputs, but the same fundamental point -- over a year ago.
The NoBody Count
Actually, I think you SHOULD subscribe to the body-count calculus, or else offer an alternative way of judging whether a war was "worth it" or not.
How many have to die in Iraq before it is NOT "worth it"? If American deaths, or total deaths, is not the main way of deciding this question, what is?
By a similar logic, all anti-war folk, especially anti-Vietnam war folk, should be answering the question: how many SE Asians have to die after the US leaves, before it becomes a bad decision to leave?
(I claim the Killing Fields and Camps shows that leaving was a bad decision.)
