Just So You Know: I'm against the war

Freedom is priceless. So, by that definition, I suppose it's worth
$350 billion (http://www.costofwar.com) and at least 55000 lives
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Casualties_of_the_conflict_in_Iraq_since_2003), but I still have a
hard time believing that the threat to Americans (as in the
hemisphere, not the USA only) from terrorists was higher than, say,
drunk drivers, who kill many more healthy people in random, senseless
acts of violence than do terrorists. In fact, drunk drivers in the
USA killed more than 8200 people in 2004 alone. (http://
www.alcoholalert.com/drunk-driving-statistics.html)

You know, I bet one could implant special chips in the flesh of a
drunk driver that would set off special traffic cop chip scanners,
and I further bet that one could pay for enough chips for every drunk
driver convicted for the next ten years, and for enough chip scanners
for every traffic cop in the hemisphere, and all the necessary
training and software, and for the lawyers needed to win the
inevitable legal battles, and it would still be less than $350
billion. Plus, an extra 55,000 innocent people wouldn't need to die.

I'm not against the Iraq War because I think war is never justified.
I happen to think that war is almost never justified. It's just that
I'm not convinced that the world's richest people couldn't swing a
better deal.

Naturally, I assume that the Iraqi regime, or anyone allied with it,
really didn't have WMD that posed a clear and present danger, and
that our intelligence about their capabilities and plans didn't
totally suck.

But, you know, what about negotiation? What about "hearts and minds"?
Heck, it seems like we could have just BOUGHT Baghdad (and then sold
it back).

My pet theory is that Al Qaeda's revolutionary plan was to provoke
the USA into invading Iraq and did so by a combination of
counterintelligence and one terrible kamikaze mission, thus setting a
precedent that, whenever anyone can scare the USA badly enough, it
will respond by lashing out irrationally, vomiting up huge gobs of
money and killing tens of thousands of innocents - and will badly
weaken itself in the process. Ultimately, the USA will be weak enough
for another power to knock it out.

Al Qeada also died in the process, which makes provoking the US into
a self-destructive fury also a sort of huge suicide mission. I guess
they are hoping that their spirit will live on and the idea of
suicide attacks against the USA will be picked up by freelance cells
of bored, angry young men with Internet connections and a common
language.

Luckily for us, an evil genius like Osama bin Laden, or whoever it or
they was or were, only comes along once in a blue moon.

Even luckier for us, its a stupid strategy. Even if all those bored
young men blow themselves up and kill a bunch of innocent people, it
still won't be enough to cause the USA to fall apart. Drunk drivers
can't do it; why should they?

And even if they find their Holy Grail and somehow detonate a WMD in
the USA, it still wouldn't be enough. Japan took two direct hits with
nukes. Entire German cities were flattened overnight by Allied
firebomb attacks. How did Germany and Japan do?

No, what we really need to worry about is if the next Osama bin Laden
cooks up another mess and causes us to attack yet another country for
no reason. We do that enough times, and we just might cook our own
goose.

The bottom line is that the wealthiest among us have the most to
lose, but the costs aren't being borne proportionally to the
benefits. For the many of us who aren't the wealthiest, we're getting
ripped off. This war was a murderous waste of money - mostly our
money. And to protect what, exactly? You? Me? No. Our "way of life."

Meaning what exactly? That'll be a topic for another day.

It may be true that in a democracy, the rich always win. But it is
also true that the rest of us have our choice of rich people, and
friends of rich people, to lead us and represent us. We need to pick
ones that MAKE SENSE, unlike this stupid war.

Conclusion: The Iraq War is a bad deal. If you are going to vote for
a friend of the rich, vote for a reasonable one.