> Mark Wahlberg, brother of former New Kids on the Block member Donnie
> Wahlberg.
Yep, that's the guy. Did a version of 'Walk on the Wildside' back when he was an underwear model for Calvin Klein. (Surely remembering facts like these is the reason I can't retain phone numbers anymore...)
> The post of mine you reply to below conceded this very point. (Imagine
> that... someone conceding a point in a debate.)
Yes. I thought about editing my message so as to make it absolutely clear that I was just adding my two cents to yours, but I thought that would be unnecessary. I will be more careful in the future.
>> Oh yes it does - had there been a successful internal revolution twelve
>> years ago, maybe we'd have a million less corpses on our hands.
>
> Yes, but perhaps such a revolution would've led to a brutal civil war that
> would make Saddam and sanctions look comparatively appealing. I suppose
> that might now be a live (but slim) possibility, though.
For one thing, should that have happened, it would not have been our responsibility, which is a rather important difference, specially when we are talking about the right of the US to intervene in Iraq now (or rather: escalate its intervention.) For another, perhaps one million dead in an Iraqi civil war would have create conditions upon which a real democracy could be built and ultimately led to less deaths overall. Ie. you don't know that this intervention now has meant the cessation of the effects of sanctions; it could be that the actual number of dead will be tremendous, that there will still be a civil war anyway, and so on.
(I wonder, by the way, what scenes we would witness in Baghdad if Saddam could stand up and say "I have defeated the United States"! The sanctions are gone! Don't you think there would be jubilation there as well?)
Would, could,maybe this maybe that - it's a modal puzzle from hell, which leaves me feeling that we should stick to the more obvious causal chains. An uncle might kill a nephew: that's no argument for murdering members of the family indiscriminately. A slim but live possibility thus must be considered less important than a real and grotesque course of action. Helping Saddam back on his feet in 92 and then applying sanctions, in my view, was completely unforgivable. And in my book, it becomes worse, not better, if after twelve years we decide it was all a mistake anyway and go invade. That's just sadistic.
Thiago Oppermann