Paul Krugman: The Arithmetic of Failure

[kpete]

Friday, October 27, 2006
Paul Krugman: The Arithmetic of Failure

Iraq is a lost cause. It’s just a matter of arithmetic: given the violence of the environment, with ethnic groups and rival militias at each other’s throats, American forces there are large enough to suffer terrible losses, but far too small to stabilize the country.

We’re so undermanned that we’re even losing our ability to influence events: earlier this week, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki brusquely rejected American efforts to set a timetable for reining in the militias.

Afghanistan, on the other hand, is a war we haven’t yet lost, and it’s just possible that a new commitment of forces there might turn things around.

The moral is clear — we need to get out of Iraq, not because we want to cut and run, but because our continuing presence is doing nothing but wasting American lives. And if we do free up our forces (and those of our British allies), we might still be able to save Afghanistan.

more at:
http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/2006/10/paul-krugman-arithmetic-of-failure.html

[moondust]

1. It has become a game of Whack-A-Mole.

Beat them down in sector X and they pop up over in sector Y. Beat them down in sector Y and they pop back up in sector X or in sector Z. Krugman is right: you'd need a gazillion troops to cover all the X's and Y's and Z's.

Of course it's not a game.

[bluerum]

2. The soviets got run out of Afghanistan. What makes him think

that military power alone will solve Afghanistan's problems?

He seems so enamored of arithmetic. There is no way, that we can send enough military force to Afghanistan (or Iraq or the Middle east in general) to solve their problems. We can't put them all in jail and we can't kill them all. In theory, I suppose atomic weapons could kill almost everyone, (how nice to be considering such a thing) but we would have to live with ourselves in the world that remains.

It is more than a math problem. These problems will not be solved by military force. They will require real thought, real human compassion and concern, real planning, real diplomacy.

It is not a failure of arithmetic. It is a failure of vision and a failure to lead.

Here is some arithmetic. Take some of the billions and billions of $$$'s that we have poured into the Iraqi rat hole, and use it for education, health care, and energy research.

Instead of killing and destroying, build and enrich. It might not sound as chest puffing and manly but it sure makes for a better world.