> > Luke Weiger wrote:
> >
> > > the
> > > fact that US intervention likely helped alleviate the famine
> >
> > What's your evidence for this?
> >
> http://www.coxnews.com/washingtonbureau/staff/coker/010602AFGHAN-HALL.html
>
> >>"I don't think we averted a famine," Nigun Ogun of Save the Children
told
> reporters last week. "I would say that the problem has been averted for
two
> months -- no more."<<
>
> Well, gee, if the problem is averted for the next two months, and the next
> two months after that, and...
Your evidence that the US intervention helped alleviate a famine is: An article quoting the Bush administration's claim that a famine was averted, alongside quotes from independent aid agencies who disputed the claim. Weak tea.
There was never going to be an actual famine in Afghanistan unless the US caused one with its bombing campaign. The very worst fears about the effects of the bombing campaign did not come true, due to the milder winter and the Taliban's early retreat - something no one in the administration had predicted or expected in October.
When the World Food Program spokesperson was challenged about the "averted famine," she said that she meant we won't be seeing people keeling over and dying of hunger in the major cities. Well, on Sept. 10, that thought had never even entered people's minds. It was only something that might have happened if the bombing had gone on through the winter and spring - a possibility that US officials were quite conciously trying to prepare world opinion for back in the fall.
However - there is no doubt that a large number of people in Afghanistan died or will soon die because food aid that would have reached their villages had there been no bombing never got to them - or because they had to flee their villages. The WHO representative in Islamabad estimated back in November, after the Taliban fell, that 42,000 *additional* people would die over and above the normal winter mortality rate. 42,000 people.
But I know we're not supposed to get crudely empirical when we could be debating grand abstractions about fighting terrorism.
Seth