THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Watching The Killing on AMC.

I watched Brian Schneider strike out with the bases loaded, then turned the channel to see an “urgent announcement” forthcoming at 10:30 pm.

I was where I always am.  Right here, sitting on my arse in front of this computer, posting some drivel about baseball.

Working on a military base in S. Korea…

Watching the top of the 9th, Mets batting just after the Phillies tied it up. I couldn’t believe it for a moment when they mentioned it.

Just finished watching Robin Hood: Men in Tights on Netflix when I checked out CNN.

Now that movie will be etched into my life forever.

I was just about to prepare dinner when I got a call from a friend.

I am sorry, but I won’t rejoice at anyone’s assassination.  And I don’t think anything will change just because Osama is dead.

I was watching a TV show on the DVR, and when it finished, the headline “Osama bin Laden is dead” was scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

I’ll take satisfaction at that coward’s killing.  Whether or not it makes the world a better place, I don’t know, but as the president stated, justice was done.  It was overdue, but now that piece, at least, is finished.

MGL, I was thinking of posting something similar before I refreshed and saw your post.  It feels wrong to rejoice in a human being’s assassination (no matter how many terrible, terrible things he might be responsible for).  I also don’t understand the significance people are making of this; we did not end any wars tonight and we did not end terrorism.

My wife heard it announced by Gary ("Sarge") Mathews.  (I was listening to the Mets-Phils and had left the room.)

Can’t agree with mgl here—nice to see a mass murderer buy the farm.  Hope he didn’t die too quickly.

I think calling it an “assassination” is sad. Calling him a “human being” is only correct on a technicality. I’m not some gun-toting right wing nut by any means, but a dog was put down. Does it change things? No. But the world is a teeny tiny bit better off now.

I was on my bed doing English homework when I noticed my friends posting about it on facebook

I’m with MGL. I’m not shedding a tear for Osama, but I’d be much more excited if he were captured alive and given a fair trial.

It’s not that I am not glad that he is gone or that I had hoped for a trial.  It is just that we are such a violent nation that it makes me sad and angry.  We kill Ghadaffi’s 3 grandkids and it’s no big deal.  In many ways we are no different from the groups and countries that we consider rogue. Oh, we don’t kill innocent people?  B.S.  Where did that myth come from?

We are at war and we just killed a major leader for the enemy. That is reason to rejoice.

Who cares where I was?  Is this really such a significant event?  This is not MLK or JFK.  This is not the Challenger.  This is not 9/11.  This is not even Obama’s election.

I am not sad to hear that Osama is dead, but is this really an event that changes the world?

it’s terrible that gaddafi’s grandchildren died but they were accidental deaths due to a NATO strike which was part of an international effort to stop a deranged madman from slaughtering thousands of innocent civilians. i dont think anyway is celebrating those deaths. and if they are they have problems.

i was watching the mets v phillies. this is as good a reason to celebrate as i’ve ever had. certainly better than my favorite team winning a championship or a birthday. not that im going to do anything right now, besides watch some ninja warrior on dvr and go to bed.

I learned reading this blog

Here is an interesting bit of information a little off topic:

Many people who were not toddlers in 1963 can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when JFK was killed.  Ditto for 9-11. 

At least where they thought they were and were doing.  Unfortunately, their vivid recollections, like eyewitness testimony, are not so reliable!

For example, in one study:

“Another study examining participants’ memories for the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion found that although participants were highly confident about their memories for the event, their memories were not very accurate three years after the event had occurred.”

I read about another one where a professor asked his students to write down their memories right after 9-11.  He then asked them about it once again several years later.  They were quite certain about their recollections, but in many cases the two recollections did not jive…

I would have to agree with MGL. @Ken When did the United States, or any other country, start caring about civilians being slaughtered?

We had been told for the last few years that Osama was irrelevant and catching him was not a priority.

Glad they killed him, but the dude was living in a mansion in an affluent city full of retired Generals adjacent to the capital of a country that received 10 billion in aid post 2001.  Think about it.

Some sad responses here.  Bin laden dying is a good, no great thing, and to compare the US policy towards killing innocents to that of terrorists is so ignorant it makes renders one of your posts pointless.

I also in more agreement with MGL than I am not. I’m glad he’s dead, but I was shocked to see the streets outside the White House so full last night. It reminded me of the celebration we’ve seen on TV by terrorists after one of their acts of violence. I was equally shocked because this will have little or not impact on terrorism. It’s like the drug war. One soldier is taken down and another one steps up. Bin Laden is gone and another will step up. He’ll probably be angrier at the West and more violent than the one before him.

I see this as a moment to be satisfied, but not one that deserves celebration. How exactly are we better than them if we too celebrate the deaths of human beings?

It is made less satisfying with what is happening in Libya. Governments sending arms to the rebels to fight the military was a disastrous idea in the 1980s when we armed bin Laden. Do governments in this world ever learn from their past mistakes?

I was sleeping in Rome...woke up to a few texts telling me the news

*****

This man killed thousands of innocent Americans, how can you not rejoice in the fact that we got some revenge, even if it doesn’t end the war on terror?

"I am sorry, but I won’t rejoice at anyone’s assassination.  And I don’t think anything will change just because Osama is dead.

* * * *

The news said that Osama refused to surrender and was killed in the ensuing gunfight. So, ‘assassination’ as a word choice reveals more about the pre-conceived biases of the poster than about the (apparent) reality of what occurred. And as to the general point, sure it would be nice if we all lived peacefully in Shangri-La, but this is the real world. And in this real world, Bin Laden had it coming.

And who really knows if anything will change. A movement losing its inspirational leader could indeed start losing its focus and weaken. (OTOH, it might get worse for a while due to revenge efforts.)

We know where this guy was when the event took place:

http://www.mediaite.com/online/pakistani-twitterer-sohaib-athar-unknowingly-live-tweets-assault-on-osama-bin-laden-compound/

and I was sitting here at the computer, working on Oliver, my wife watching the WWE.

10 years ago I was sleeping, awoken when my wife called upon reaching her work. I spent the rest of the morning staring at the TV.

I know that it’s weird to be happy that someone is dead, but bin Laden not only commited many terrible acts, he would have probably committed many many more if we hadn’t stopped him.

By killing him, we’ve hinderd a terrorist organization’s ability to carry out their intentions of killing thousands of innocent people. And I think that’s something worth being happy about.

And as someone who’s married to a Muslim, my wife and I are relieved that this evil individual will no longer bring disgrace and negative publicity to the Islamic faith.

As for if I’ll remember where I was, probably not. I was in my car driving home from dinner. Not particularly exciting.

So, MGL, do you not think that intent should figure into this discussion?

As in, one entity kills innocent people intentionally, by design, while another entity endeavors to reduce the deaths of innocents to the minimum level possible, by design.

Does that not matter?

Is killing bin Laden really going to be something that people remember where they were? I find that hard to believe. I’ve never heard anybody talk about where they were when Hitler killed himself. Why would we remember where we were when bin Laden died?

I’m guessing the “where were you” with OBL will be remembered to the same extent to OJ’s chase.  It’s a shared community experience via technology.

Watching Vinny score the OT winner against Washington, then turning to Sunday baseball, then getting a call shortly there after, saying to watch the news, from my Dad.

I seem to have lost a post - abbreviated recollection

we stopped intentionally targeting civilians sometime after World War II.

Bin Laden declared war on the US, we now returned the favor. Justice has been done.

As in, one entity kills innocent people intentionally, by design, while another entity endeavors to reduce the deaths of innocents to the minimum level possible, by design.

When the earthquake hit Japan, a plethora of Americans voiced happiness for it as “retribution” for Pearl Harbour (a military base) to say nothing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki (civilians.) That was .. something.

Re: Memories.  I read similar things to MGL and also find it very interesting.  One of the other things found in these studies is that the “vividness” of the memory doesn’t seem to matter.  That is that memories that are reported as being “very vivid” are not more reliable than normal memories.  In many cases memories of where the person was during an event get conflated with where they were when telling someone about the event, or with other events.  It still remains “vivid” but not accurate. Very interesting stuff.

Ryan,

It’s pretty disingenuous to elevate the idiotic comments of a few people in the aftermath of the Japan earthquake, while ignoring the overall response from this nation, which can only be described as overwhelming empathy and assistance.

If you want to permit freedom of speech, and derive all the benefits it bestows on your society, you have to tolerate (and in fact, defened the expression of) such vulgar displays.

Next, if you want to bring the last months of WWII into the discussion, fine, but a better event for your, “point of view”?, might be the fire raids on Tokyo in March, 1945, which were true examples of area bombing.

As for the atomic bombs, horrible as their effects were, they gave the Japanese an acceptable pretext for surrender which they otherwise could never have done, shortened the war and in doing so saved far more lives than they themselves took.  Crack a book and read up on the Battle of Okinawa, and then multiply the misery by 50 to 100 or more, and you might have a reasonable estimate of the carnage that would have ensued had the invasion of Japan gone ahead.

I was eating dinner with the family last night and was fully unplugged from technology until going to bed.  Some tried to reach us by phone, but they were in places that we weren’t able to hear or the batteries where dead.  So, I awoke at 6:30 in the morning with my 1 year old throwing a fit to hear my mother in law tell me they got him.  I then spent the morning watching the TV until I had to come to work.

As for memory correctness: I would like to what kinds of rates that are involved for various kinds of memories.  For example, I remember with 100% certainty the basic facts of when I learned of 9/11.  18 at the time, and not yet shipped of to college, my dad came in to wake me up and said something to effect of “you need to see this” in a very sober tone and offered no other details until I made it down stairs.  I then arrived in front of the TV just before the second plane hit the towers.  Now memories regarding other things surrounding those few facts are some what fuzzy, and I’m certain if asked to write a paper at the time and now I would fill in details that would certainly not be true, but the basic story would be accurate.  I remember later that day going to the gym, and I remember uncertainty if we were going to be able to fly me down to college, as all except for emergency and military air traffic was shut down for a number of days (I don’t remember the exact number, but we were eventually able to fly about a week later).

As for “celebrating” Osama’s death, well, we need to understand the emotional release this is for the country.  On that day in 2001 we were struck by a nameless, faceless enemy that ended up killing thousands of civilians.  Eventually Osama became the most prominent face attached to those attacks, he likely helped to fund, train and organize those that carried out the attack, and even accepted responsibility for them a few years later.  We are not so much celebrating his death as we are celebrating the justice and vengeance being brought to those responsible for the acts of 9/11.  Yes, it was somewhat poetic that a Navy Seal put a bullet through his brain, his body captured, confirmed and dumped at sea.  What all that does is just expedite the feelings of release we’d all have had he been captured, tried, convicted and killed.

Now, I guess to an extent I can only speak for myself, but I am not celebrating his life being lost.  I’m celebrating justice being done to him, which happens to include his death, mostly likely do to his refusal to give up arms.  On 9/11, I remember being horrified at the what I was seeing, the feeling of helplessness, uncertainty in the future, and pure rage against whoever had organized it.  Today, after Osama’s death, while this doesn’t prevent another attack of that kind, it does put some closure on all those emotions of 9/11.  And it also does serve as a demonstration that should anyone do this in the future, we will eventually get you.  Opinions might differ on whether or not “getting” Osama in this way will enrage his followers and make an attack more likely, or if it will serve as a sober reminder that no one is out of our reach should anyone think of doing this again.  But, one thing I do not think is up for debate is that justice needed to be done and it was.  That I will celebrate.

Greg,

“As for the atomic bombs, horrible as their effects were, they gave the Japanese an acceptable pretext for surrender which they otherwise could never have done, shortened the war and in doing so saved far more lives than they themselves took.  Crack a book and read up on the Battle of Okinawa, and then multiply the misery by 50 to 100 or more, and you might have a reasonable estimate of the carnage that would have ensued had the invasion of Japan gone ahead.”

No kidding.  My grandfather was home training for the invasion of Japan when those bombs dropped.  My father’s life, as well as my own, very likely would not have been had those bombs not have been dropped.  It was a horrible moment in history, but it was war.  Americans were dying and no one knew what it would take to get Japan to surrender.

I did not express a “point of view” on the war; I was talking about the emotional reaction to the Japan Earthquake, which, for many people, was spite over an event which, in your words, “was war.”

I’m happy to not personally know any American who was happy over the Japan earthquake for idiotic revenge reasons for something that happened 70 years ago.

In a nation of 308 million, I’m sure there are bound to be a few people like that.  But no more than people who hold many other contemptible points of view.

I think buried in Wally’s post was an important point: This was “emotional release” for people in this country.
People act on that in different, sometime perplexing, ways.

I do hope those that do act out raucously think twice before chastising the way Palastinians might celebrate their next victims or some such.
Jingoism is jingoism.

Watching baseball, what else?

Greg, or anyone else on “his side”, I’m not up to engaging in a discussion about which is worse, killing civilians because you are evil (terrorists) or killing civilians in the pursuit of righteousness (the U.S.).  I am a pacifist, period…

MGL, please define ‘pacifist’ as you intend it to be understood, relative to the real world that we live in.

MGL, that’s OK, we don’t have to have that discussion, but I do want to clarify my position (I won’t call it my side, because I really don’t like being lumped with others and prefer to have my viewpoints regarded as personal, and not something issued by “the team").

I do regard terrorists and a well-meaning government as different, and hugely so.  Intentions are important; terrorists kill people on purpose, as abundantly as possible, while the U.S. government kills innocent civilians reluctantly, as infrequently as possible, despite individual efforts, collective policies and purpose-designed technologies that are aimed at reducing such deaths to the absolute minimum.

If the end result is all that matters, tell me who is worse: the anthrax bomber who killed several people back in 2001 (death by disease), or the makers of flu vaccines, which also kill several people every year (death by disease)?

Well, which is worse?

I don’t know that the US government kills innocent civilians “reluctantly”.  They did invade Iraq, and they did kill innocent Iraqis.  And I don’t think that’s an exception.

The US government first of all is not a monolith, but a collective of thousands of people, all individuals. It’s not The Borg.  So, you will get them involved in human rights violation and murder just as a matter of course.

Even in the Bin Ladin case.  The question on the table was: “how many innocent people are we allowed to kill before we kill OBL?” They invade his compound, and somehow a woman (his wife?) was used as a human shield.  And in order for the soldiers to now preserve their own life, they had to kill her in the course of their mission.

I’m not saying it’s right or wrong.  If OBL is allowed to kill indiscriminately, and the “good guys” are only allowed to shoot to kill when they are 100% certain of not killing innocents, then they will never shoot OBL, while OBL kills innocents.

So, it’s a “kill a few innocents now, to save more of them later”.

That’s life, that’s war.  But let’s not pretend that the government (USA or otherwise) somehow is being righteous in its actions.

But, if we’re the ones killing the accepted “bad guys” aren’t we by definition being righteous?

Tango, I think you’re missing something.

You characterize it as “kill a few innocents now to save more of them later.”

You should say “put your own life at risk to kill many bad guys, regretfully killing a few innocents, to save many innocents”.

I would argue that risking one’s own life to save the lives of innocent others is righteous.  The fact that in doing so, sometimes other innocents die, is tragic, but that doesn’t negate the altruism of the overall act…

Heard about it at work. Didn’t have the impact that I thought it would.

I basically wondered if it’s going to lead to increased attacks on the US, and then continued working.

As for the Challenger, I was in a 7th grade classroom where my teacher was a finalist to go with the crew as an educator. When the shuttle exploded, she absolutely lost it and went home for a few days. That was a big deal.

I guess some of OBL’s presence has been lost now that the leader of Iran has replaced him as the perceived nut that poses the biggest threat to America.

Given our investment into the situation, there has to be some form of justice and justification in his death. I feel good for our military men and victims of 9/11.

Greg, how about:

put others life at risk to maybe kill a few bad guys, regretfully likely killing a few innocents, to probably save many innocents

The soldiers are altruistic, no question.  It’s those that give the orders that are not so clear cut.

I will remember where I was because, like Tom said, I shared in the news via technology. I was at my friends house and we were just hanging out and flipping through the stations when I saw the breaking news of a presser by the President at 10 (which became 10:30 then 10:50 then “in mere moments” which were almost 40 minutes...).

In the time that I first learned about his address to the country at around 9:50, it took about 35 minutes before the Bin Laden news to break where I watched various news reports (Fox News was the most entertaining because of Geraldo Rivera’s incredible over-the-top-ness) talking about a possible Libya or Syria announcement or something of that ilk. It wasn’t until around 10:50 I think that most stations started reporting the Bin Laden rumors were confirmed (with Geraldo saying something like “Oh, I just thought about this! What about it being about Osama bin laden?!” as if I were to believe he doesn’t have a producer in his ear giving him the confirmed reports, but I digress...).

From then, the details that turned out to be a bit wrong came in of him being killed in an airstrike to being killed a week ago and needing DNA tests pushed the announcement back a week, to the guy who live tweeted the attack unknowingly to finally the President’s presser.

So I’ll always remember where I was—or at least where I learned all of my news from for a good 2-3 hours—because of the Twitter explosion that happened. Stepping back and thinking about it, I found it rather remarkable even though I’m in my mid-20’s and should be “used” to interconnectedness of the world now-a-days.

A few innocents?  Are you kidding me?  Do you know how many civilians have been killed in Iraq since 2003?  According to Iraqbodycount.com it is over 100,000.  I don’t know how accurate that is, but if it is even close.

A Pacifist is someone who does not inflict violence on anyone unless they are attacked directly themselves, or someone in their presence is directly attacked, and there are no non-violent alternatives.

When I say a few innocents, I mean it proportional to a few bad guys.  So, if 100,000 innocents were killed, then that means say 20,000 to 500,000 bad guys.

I think when you engage in war with the idea that you won’t take innocent lives, intentionally or unintentionally, you are setting yourself up to struggle to meet either goal.

You’ll make it more challenging for yourself to win the war, and it’s impossible not to take innocent lives when using explosive devices, fighting in populated areas, and/or fighting enemies that use citizens as shields or camouflage, etc.

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Hiroshima/Nagasaki are interesting situations, because they were not primarily military targets. That’s the troubling aspects, for us and our position.

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I think nations should be reluctant to engage in war, but once the decision is made, then you fight to win. By that I mean you get it over as quickly as possible. The longer a war goes on, the more civilians will die.

I have always found it rather strange, and at times conflicting, that we basically have rules of war ... as if it were a civilized activity or sport. As if every nation followed those rules, a body that could effectively enforce those rules, etc.

How many innocents will be killed in the coming years because of the innocents killed in this war by the military? There’s no end point to all of this violence. The innocents lost in Iraq or Afghanistan create extremists who then kill innocents and the military responds later by attacking them and killing more innocents.

A few innocents aren’t being killed. Many innocent people are being killed. Some have died, some will die soon and others will die later on, but it’s not a few. Unless someone stops the cycle of violence this continues forever.

Tango, where are you coming up the 20K to 500K numbers? We’re not sure how many members there are in Al Qaeda, but in 2009 Obama said there were less than 100 of them left in Afghanistan. How many innocents have been killed since then?

I’d be surprised to find out that more terrorists have been killed over the last decade than innocents have been killed by the military. If the numbers MGL provides are close to accurate I think we can safely say that the government has killed more innocents than the terrorists have. As a result, we’ve created more terrorists who will kill more innocents.

We’re not any better than these terrorist organizations. Just because we plan to kill many innocents over many years while they try to kill as many as possible at once doesn’t make us any different.

MGL,

I’m not sure I’d trust that number within an order of magnitude.  Now, 10,000 or 100,000, that’s still a lot of people.

So, the question to you, and to everyone, is how many lives are worth what ever particular goal you’re trying to achieve?

Is killing Osama worth one innocent life?  (If for a second we assume that woman was innocent, which I’m not sure is so safe of an assumption.) I would say yes.  Him being alive carries with it risk of many more innocent lives being taken.

Was taking out Sadam worth 10s to 100s of thousands of innocent lives?  Of that I’m less sure.  But there was a good case to be made at the time that it was.

And what will be the next one?  Is removing Kadafi worth maybe a few thousand to 10s of thousands of lives? 

And does it matter to us if we’re talking about US civilians vs. civilians of other countries?  Say, does it matter that we risking killing civilians of another country to save civilians of our own?  I would say yes.  We have the right to value ourselves over everyone else, at least up to a certain point.

This:

Tango, where are you coming up the 20K to 500K numbers?

Was said in response to this:

When I say a few innocents, I mean it proportional to a few bad guys.  So, if 100,000 innocents were killed, then that means say 20,000 to 500,000 bad guys.

I’m not sure how many times I have to say these things, but ALL NUMBERS FOR ILLUSTRATION PURPOSES ONLY. 

Would people prefer I say:
If X innocents, then X/Y to YX bad guys, where Y = 1 to 100?

MGL had asked why I said a “few”.  So I had to illustrate that I meant it was proportional.  But then, I illustrated the proportion, and now I’m held to the numbers that I didn’t want to use in the first place!

It is incorrect to think we took these dictators out to save the lives of innocents.
If that were the case, then the rest of our foreign policy hasn’t made sense for the past 70 years. If, however, you view these actions through the eyes of realpolitik, or whatever you want to call the justification for expanding our power, then these conflicts, and all the others we’ve been involved in are consistent. This includes the thousands of deaths we’ve caused in S. America for the purpose of seating brutal dictators that killed even more innocents.
To somehow think that in the last 10 years we have, all of a sudden, started international conflicts to save the innocent people seems very wrong-headed.
It’s rationalization, not righteousness, that has us invoking the sanctity of the lives of the Iraqis, the Libyans and so on.

Let’s all play chess for a moment, instead of checkers, and ask ourselves how the “bad guys” of the world would behave if they knew that the strong powers in the world had decided to become pacifist, that is, not responding with force to an attack unless it is directly on themselves (for the USA, essentially a return to the isolationism of the 1920’s and 30’s).  Does anyone think that the “bad guys” of the world will be the ones to “stop the cycle of violence”, as David Mick puts it?

I’m skeptical.

I suspect, rather, that such an opportunity would embolden the bad guys to expand and grow their power at the expense of the weaker nations and tribes of this world.  This is how the 1930’s turned out, leading to the horrific body count of the 1940’s.

Now, that said, please don’t take this to mean that I favor US intervention at every possible event; I don’t.  My point is that there are consequences to some of the idealistic opinions I’m reading here.  Namely, I don’t think presenting a public face that places the minimization of civilian casualties above mission completion is wise, because two or three moves later in this game of chess, the bad guys are certain to cynically use that stance against us in a way that will lead to exponentially higher human suffering of those we wanted to protect.

I agree with mettle that it’s not righteousness.  Even Obama said that they can’t be involved in every human-interest conflict, that they have to pick and choose.  And, undoubtedly, it’s based on national security interests, for the most part.  Which, really, is what the constitution is about.

Someone said “somber satisfaction”, and I think that’s the best way to put it.  War is an ugly thing.  You cheer to end war, not to kill someone’s leader.

Some of the details in this story may not be what was reported earlier.  Osama may or may not have been armed, and apparently was not using a woman as a human shield.  Doubt we’ll ever know exactly how it went down unless a full unedited video is released.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54162.html

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I think we’re in agreement on some of what you’ve said: history has been the story of the strong beating up on the weak. And all things being equal, I’d much prefer that the US be the cop on the beat than Iran, or China for that matter.

However, I think it’s incorrect to think that our foreign policy is motivated by anything other than power and protecting our own. WWII is a fine example, where the murder of countless people from the other side could have been averted (not bombing concentration camps, Nagasaki & Hiroshima), but was not, because that was goal #7 or #8 and not goal #1 or #2, as you suggest.

It’s also true that the past 100 years has seen a terrifying increase in civilian casualties in war as compared to military casualties despite improved technology and widespread democratic governance. Consider that for a moment before presuming American benevolence.

I’m no hater—we’re no more evil than the Europeans that have destroyed multiple continents, or the Romans or the Egyptians, etc etc (and I’m the first to remind self-righteous Europeans of that whenever they are critical of US policy)—but I don’t see any reason to think we’re more righteous, either.

Well, I’m not trying to argue that everything the USA does in terms of foreign policy is righteous, or has been righteous in the past.  It isn’t, and hasn’t been.  I’m just trying to counter the “whatever the USA does is by definition evil” position, or the slightly less over the top “we’re just as bad as the guys we’re fighting” trope.

I’m also trying to encourage some deeper thinking on these sorts of issues.  IMO there’s too much shallow, superficial logic out there, the sort that says “if we don’t drop this atomic bomb, then 100,000 lives will be saved”, ignoring the future implications of a longer war and the invasion of Japan. 

In baseball terms, it’s sort of like a pitcher saying “if I don’t throw this ball over the plate, he can’t hit a home run.  That’s good, I don’t want him to hit a home run.” Ignoring the implications of doing that 4 times in an at bat…

Mettle,

Civilian casualties have increase with the full on industrilization and mechanization of war.  Now, its not just a some guys in a feild firing riffles or canons at each other, but the whole of a civilization is under attack.  We need to destroy the means of production and transportation to win a war.  This means the line between civilian and military targets is blurred.  I’m sure we’re all aware of this, but we might as well say it outload and make sure we understand it when discussing “innocent” lives being lost in war.

To that point, is the guy that works on an assembly line creating the tracks for a tank (just off the top of my head here) really “innocent”?  Yes, he’s a civilian, and should that factory be bombed, he’ll be counted as a civilian casualty, but I wouldn’t exactly consider him innocent.  Sure, he has to work, support his family and all that, but in his choices of occupation he’s made himself part of the war machine.

Thus, ultimately I don’t think we can easily distinguish between the casualties of the innocent and somehow less wrongful deaths of soldiers.  We all make choices and even in the most extreme situations, I don’t think very many people can truly be considered helpless.  Please don’t confuse this with saying that the Jews should been able to avoid the holocost, or residents of Tokyo should have been able to get out of the way of the fire bombing.  Rather that, I’m just saying that the line between “innocient” and not is often not clear or definate.

We’re in agreement: Despite the supposed benevolence of the US or whatever else Greg is suggesting is behind our actions in Afghanistan etc., we’re just going to war in our narrow self interest, opposing civilians be damned.

Mettle, you’re implying that if something undesirable happens, then the entity whose action led to that outcome must not care about it. 

I.e. if an action of the United States led to a civilian death, then the USA must not care about civilian deaths.  Clearly, if the USA cared about civilian casualties, there would be none.  That’s the implication.

This is fallacious.

If you accept that, logically, then you must believe that Albert Pujols does not care about strikeouts, because sometimes when he tries to win baseball games with his bat, he strikes out.  It so happens that Pujols cares more about maximizing scoring runs than he does about minimizing strikeouts; he could certainly alter his approach to give top priority to minimizing strikeouts, but doing so would hugely limit his power, and thus critically hamper his likelihood of helping his team score runs, which would not be in his best interest.

Which brings me to my next point: every nation acts in pursuit of its own interests.  Suggesting that the USA is doing something wrong by aligning its actions overseas with its own interests is disingenuous.  Or perhaps everyone else is entitled to act in their own best interests, but we are not?

It’s fortunate for the rest of the world that we believe minimizing civilian casualties are in our best interest.  If you doubt that, go back to Germany’s behavior in Russia, or Japan’s behavior in China during World War II for an example of how a strong power behaves in wartime when they possess the opposite viewpoint…

You say “civilians be damned.” I must observe that you clearly were not on a U.S. ship in the Florida Straits during Operation Able Vigil in 1994, nor were you in a NATO ship, shore facility or on the ground in the vicinity of the Adriatic Sea and former Yugoslavia in 1995, during Operation Deliberate Force.  If you had been there, you could not possibly conclude that the attitude of the United States was “civilians be damned”, given the amount of personal effort you would have expended, at the orders of our government, to save the lives of innocent civilians.

Having had some of my own skin in the game, it’s difficult to listen to someone else opine that we in the USA don’t care about civilians…

There’s no question that USA takes great care to minimize collateral damage on a majority of occasions.  Even in the operation noted by Greg, NATO killed several civilian innocents.  In a war and humanitarian crisis, terrible things happen, terribly things have to happen, in order to get an overall positive outcome.

Indeed, one can always argue that NATO could have been less precise, and killed even more people, in order to improve the chance of others from being slaughtered by the enemy.

It’s a horrible balancing act to ponder, between the sin of commission and the sin of omission.

***

It’s when USA goes it alone that the issue of righteousness comes into play.  The invasion of Iraq was a huge blight against America.  It’s fine to say that the millions there are happy to be rid of Saddam.  But are the hundreds of thousands who died also happy that they had to die with Saddam?  They have non-convicted prisoners in custody, and are considered de facto guilty.  Abu Ghraib.

But America sticks its b-lls out there, so just by playing the game as much as they do, bad things will happen when some aspects goes rogue.

Tango, I agree with what you have written in /67, including your characterization of the 2003 Iraq War.  The decision-making runup to that conflict was not something we as Americans should be proud of. 

Just one thing to add, though: don’t compare the civilian casualties that occurred during the 2003 war with zero; compare them with how many innocent people Saddam and his foul regime would have killed in a “typical” year for him.  Sadly, that is nowhere near zero.

I didn’t say they don’t care, I just said it’s pretty low on their priority scale (see post 62); foreign casualties certainly do not rank #1 or #2 or anywhere near it.

There will be times when efforts to control our image and expand power will conspire such that we do something that might be considered righteous wrt foreign civilians (e.g., Iraq). And there will be times when all other priorities cancel out and we have the ability to throw foreign civilians a bone, so to speak. And I also know there are armed services personnel that are righteous people and really give a crap.

But to claim that foreign civilians causalities have anything other than a minuscule impact on our foreign policy decisions is polyanna and ignores most of the actual data.

Also, please note, I’m not saying it’s wrong for the US to pursue its self interest. Please point me to where you think I said that. What I’m saying is that it’s incorrect to pretend otherwise—to pretend that righteousness somehow enters into foreign policy decisions impacting civilians.

If you are, in fact, saying it’s almost all self-interest (i.e., not righteousness) at play, then we actually agree. The question of whether self-interest should be the only driving factor in the behavior of the family of nations is a question for another thread—we’ve certainly discussed it on this blog with respect to the individual.

I agree, you have to look at it as an opportunity cost.  Just for the sake of illustration and using cold numbers, you can have a scenario where under Hussein’s watch, you have 20,000 innocents killed each year for 10 years.  But under the invasion-scenario, you have 50,000 innocents killed each year for 3 years, and then 5,000 a year for 7 more years.  So, the “trade” is 200,000 for status quo against 185,000 with the invasion.

It’s a terrible, cold thing of course to even consider.

The larger question though is that the Iraqi civilians didn’t get to choose.  America chose for them, under the pretext that Rumself was selling the oil that the US soldiers would be greeted as liberators.  It’s this actual example of the low-point that undermines any good that America wants to do.

Mettle,

OK, I think we’re mostly agreeing here, but don’t forget that war is only the most extreme manifestation of our foreign policy.  We do, and have done, lots of other things in the service of trying to save the lives of foreign people. 

There have been loads of humanitarian missions in recent years where the intervention of the USA has saved lives - whether this be immediate aid from an aircraft carrier or USNS Comfort - type hospital ships, to longer term aid in the form of food or other supplies.  Now, mind you, plenty of these missions have fallen short of their goals for a variety of reasons, many of which are out of the USA’s control, but that doesn’t negate the positive intent of the acts, nor the positive impact on those that were helped by such interventions.

The tragic thing about war, as Tango has alluded to as well as I, is that sometimes you have to do things and accept civilian casualties, even though you’d prefer to not hurt any non-combatants.  If there’s a bridge that has to come down, you take down the bridge; if you have a choice between bombing it when there are 500 non-combatant people on it vs. 5, you try to choose 5, but if that number never goes below 5, then you have to make a choice.

This of course doesn’t lessen the pain & suffering for those who end up being impacted by this cold arithmetic.  I’m sure French people today who lost parents during World War II as a result of British & American bomb attacks on the submarine pens on France’s Atlantic coast must feel a great deal of ambivalence when they think about the liberation of their country; for the greater purpose of freeing their nation from a brutal conqueror, they suffered a tragic loss that can never be fully healed in this life.  Ask them if they would have preferred to remain subjugated to Hitler, though, and you can expect the answer, “no”.

Tango,

Regarding the Iraq War II, how exactly did we go it alone?  Or was that not your implication by having those two statements right next to each other?  We may have been the largest force campaigning for an invasion, but certainly we didn’t go it alone.  And so what if we did?  Are we not supposed to be able to act alone to protect our interests?

And I don’t wish to drag out the entirety of proceedings leading up to the war in Iraq, but it seems as though much of the criticism is an ex-post-facto analysis, instead of simply looking at the data as we knew it before the invasion and evaluating those decisions without being colored by the outcome.  Its a bit like analyzing the A’s-Braves Hudson trade and bring up what those players have done since, instead of looking at what those players where likely to produce in the future and at what cost at the moment of the trade. 

Anyway, to get back on track, there were some very real reasons to go to war.  Saddam had defied UN inspectors, playing games with them for years, leaving a possibility that he was developing WMDs and would use them on his own people as well as our allies.  And of course, many those allies where responsible for supplying us with oil.  Now it turns out he didn’t actually have any, or at least he had destroyed them.  But that doesn’t change the very real possibility he had WMDs.  And to go with his known history of aggression, I found that sufficient cause for war.  As we’ve been talking about, this was an action that was in our nations interests, thanks to the oil we get from the region.  Plus, a good argument could be made surrounding the “humanitarian” nature of the mission, as Greg points out.

Now, if you want to criticize some of the specifics said without much evidence to support them, such as connections to terrorists or how quickly we’d be able to leave, I won’t contest those, and frankly I didn’t buy them at the time.  But that doesn’t exactly add up to something I see as a blight on our country.

Dude, c’mon:
“instead of simply looking at the data as we knew it before the invasion and evaluating those decisions without being colored by the outcome”

Almost the entire world was against USA.  Let’s not do revisionist history here.

There was none of this:
“Are we not supposed to be able to act alone to protect our interests?”

There were no interests to protect.

Please, let’s not go back 8 years.  It was a blight before the invasion, and it was a larger blight after the invasion.

No talk about Iraq on its own merits.  I’m going to remove all such posts, because they are nothing short of a thread-blight.

>>> No talk about Iraq on its own merits.  I’m going to remove all such posts, because they are nothing short of a thread-blight.

Seems like a poor way to treat your readers.  Of course it is your ball and you can take it home if you want to.  I think the person you wrote this to made a post in good faith and deserves to be treated with a little more respect.

Secular democracy in Iraq seems to have caught on a bit in the surrounding areas.  hmmmm
#NotJustAFluke

Xei: I’m not taking my ball and going home.  How about a little bit of respect toward me in that case?

It’s cases like this that I can’t stand being a moderator, as well as a participant.  I’m put in an impossible situation of trying to keep the thread for devolving into a tangent of what happened 8 years ago, while still being able to participate without forcing the direction of the thread. 

I made an editorial decision that I don’t want to talk about Iraq per se (even though I’m the one who opened the door by using it as an illustration).

Indeed, this whole thread was intended only as a “where were you”, so the thread already escaped my intent.

Think of me as the professor.  Operate under whatever guidelines the professor allows, without questioning it, while presuming that he’s trying to be a benevolent dictator.

71/
Good point.
Also, as I was walking to lunch, I was thinking that perhaps a useful generalization is that at the tactical level, we do weigh civilian casualties more significantly. Whereas at the strategic or policy level, it’s ignored.
If we were to cite our examples, all of mine would be pretty high level, e.g., the ironically ignored fact that the US put this murderous dictator there in the first place, while the ones you cite are more on-the-ground decisions, e.g., Able Vigil.

I also wonder about your last point: What would your average Iraqi say about the war? From what I recall, the average Afghani is pretty unhappy about the whole thing.

I do find it interesting that we’re now talking so much about Iraq. You’d think it was the day after Saddam had just been killed.

Look Tango,

I’m not trying to be disrespectful, I’m just in disagreement.  If you don’t want to talk about Iraq II, so be it.  I’m not here to force people to talk about something they don’t want to. 

However, it seems a little irrational for you to bring it up, particularly when calling it a “blight”, and then when someone disagrees with such a bold statement (and I assume you’d know that statement would be fairly controversial) you run away telling us you should be treated like a professor? 

Uh, well, I’d hope my professor wouldn’t interject such opinion into their lectures unless they’d want to have a balanced discussion.  Otherwise, I’d say they are abusing their position as a teacher.

Now, I’m happy to abandon the justification of Iraq II, however, I’m still quite confused how you can say “Almost the entire world was against USA.” While its true we didn’t go to war with the whole of the UN behind us, but we had quite a list of relatively powerful European nations behind us, as well as what added up to another 50 or so nations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-National_Force_–_Iraq. 

I’m also confused on your position regarding acting alone.  So, we have to have interests to protect?  But shouldn’t that be the case even for an international action.

Anyway, I’m reminding of some great words as spoken by The Dude:  “Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

You call it a blight, I’d call it something more like: “possibly a regrettable decision made with imperfect information.” I could argue my case and I’m sure you could argue yours, I don’t think anyone could objectively tell us which is right, however.

Dude, c’mon:

I’m not trying to be disrespectful… However, it seems a little irrational for you to bring it up, particularly when calling it a “blight”, and then when someone disagrees with such a bold statement (and I assume you’d know that statement would be fairly controversial) you run away telling us you should be treated like a professor?

I AM NOT RUNNING AWAY.  Stop inventing this bullsh!t.

I brought up Iraq as some side illustration.  It wasn’t germane.  I don’t want to rehash the reasons for going into an invasion from 8 years ago.  It’s not germane to this thread.

Can we PLEASE stop talking about my editorial discretion, that I actually have to justify to you or to anyone why in the world I make the decisions I make.

I am not doing it for any personal gain or any personal motivation.  I am doing it because I want a good thread, and arguing as if we were in 2002 or 2003 is completely pointless.  We could have posts back and forth, and it would be without point.

Don’t question my motives.  If you don’t think I’m above reproach, you should really not bother reading or writing here.

I have to ask for alot here, because it’s a real pain in the butt to be both moderator and participant, so give me the latitude I’m asking for.  Respect what I say and what I do.

Pretty please, with a cherry on top.

What about Poland?!?!?

(I hope some of you recall the 2004 debates and get that joke.)

Getting back to the subject of this thread, I don’t think this event has near the significance required to rise to the level of “Where were you when...?”

Like many others, I found out by reading on the internet.  Nobody called me to talk about it.  I have spoken to all my family members since the event, and not one of them has even mentioned it.  I did briefly speak to a neighbor and my girlfriend about Osama but were it not for this thread I would never even have thought to ask or think about where I was when I heard.

Not many moments in my life would live up to that standard.  9/11 certainly, and also the Loma-Prieta (world series 1989) earthquake, as I live in the San Francisco Area.  There must be some others, but I can’t think of any right now.

I don’t know auntbea… we’re talking about it on a baseball stats website.  It’s been all over ESPN (website and tv shows).  It’s all over random forums I peruse about decade-old video games.  Whether or not it *should* be, from my perspective at least it certainly is.  I am actually surprised at how transcendent of an event it has been so far.

Tango,

You can do what ever you want, no one is questioning that.  Its your blog.  But don’t confuse that with being above reproach.  No one is above reproach, nor do I believe anyone should be above reproach.

I find this view point of yours very disappointing.  I’ve loved your work for years, and here we are having an off-topic discussion, and as soon as it apparently hits a nerve for you, you’re cursing, telling me you’re above reproach and should be treated like a professor.... sorry, not with this attitude....

Do I have to repeat myself?  I guess I do:

- Can we PLEASE stop talking about my editorial discretion
- Don’t question my motives.  If you don’t think I’m above reproach, you should really not bother reading or writing here.

And once again, inventing things like “hitting a nerve”.  It’s not the topic, it’s the idea that we are going to talk about the motivation for invading Iraq in 2011.  It is so unappealing.

Finally:
- Respect what I say and what I do. Pretty please, with a cherry on top.

***

Please don’t even reply to this post.

First, a note on editorial discretion… kidding.

Some random thoughts/questions:

1.  What is the moral basis for distinguishing between “innocents"/civilians and soldiers?  If I’m standing next to a soldier why is it morally worse to kill me, because I’m the one who didn’t need a free college degree?  I get why killing the soldier might get you further towards winning the war than killing a civilian but, if each killing was equally effective, why would one be morally worse than the other? 

2. Why is the assassination of an enemy leader a bad thing?  To my mind, this seems far better than killing several (never mind many) of their soldiers.  I get why world leaders might find it advantageous to agree to a “No assassinations!” policy but I think it works out pretty badly for the rest of us.  Ideally, to my mind, “war” would consist entirely of world leaders trying to off each other while leaving the rest of us out of it to the greatest extent possible.

3.  When doing the calculations of expected lives saved/lost in (for example only) Iraq do we get to include things like lived saved due to vaccinations?  Is it only deaths that count, or do we try to maximize lives?  In other words, if war changes the number of births does should this get factored in?  In practice, how often will the number of subjective factors be so large that anyone can convincingly rationalize their initial war/peace inclinations based on a calculation?

Oh, I was also watching The Killing on AMC.  It was an exciting moment, I thought, but unlikely to be memorable in a few years.

J. Cross,

Related to point 3, are free lives worth more than oppressed lives?

For example, might it be worth 2 out of 3 people living in a concentraction camp fighting and dying in order for the 1 out of 3 to live free?  Personally, I think so.  Should I ever be in such a situation, I’d happily take those odds.

Of course in reality, those people that are being slaughtered or kept in an concentration camps have pretty much zero ability to orginize and fight for themselves (which is of course why they happen in the first place).  So, that leaves the rest of the world in a possition of deciding when/if they should intervine.  But how do you exactly know when to do that?  And at what costs?

The Iraq War II would serve as a good illustration, at least in part, because of Saddam’s treatment of his people, but I guess we got a little to specific and opinionated with that one.

And with point two, I believe people have wish such a thing for millinia.  Maybe one day.

80/81 and the main point of the thread:

But would you have woken a friend/spouse to tell them the news? I certainly didn’t wake my wife to tell her this news, but I certainly would have on 9/11, or during the ‘89 earthquake, or the Challenger exploding, or the Red Sox ‘04 World Series or perhaps OJ’s verdict (that seemed like a really big deal at the time, for some reason—trust me kids, the OJ chase and verdict weren’t your run-of-the-mill Lohan jailings).

I think that’s your dividing line, and I think this fall pretty short.

To summarize:

9/11 - Barry Bonds
Kennedy - Babe Ruth
SF Earthquake - Ricky Henderson
Challenger - Roger Clemens
‘04 World Series - Pedro Martinez
OJ Trial - Andre Dawson
OBL death - Willie Stargell, Jason Giambi

Yes, they were two of the most feared hitters for a couple of years but they aren’t quite HOF material.

And:
Obama’s election - Jackie Robinson, obviously.

(you may not believe this, but the captcha I got for this was “charge42”

#86 - thats an interesting idea, ranking the moments that you remember time and place most vividly. not counting the personal moments and including only universal (figuratively of course) events, the only ones that come to my mind are 9/11, last sunday night, and every playoff win of the new york giants super bowl season. actually, i also remember the OJ verdict, i was sitting in high school gym class and one of our teachers was holding a handheld radio and relayed the news to our class. i had to check back to see what year it was though.

no recollection of the 04 series, very vague memories of the SF earthquakes and nothing of the challenger, though i was only 5.