Costs of Action/Inaction -

Costs of Action/Inaction - Yesterday on the Minnesota National Issues discussion list, , someone posted a link to this website. It's one of those things that tries to show all the (inevitably social) programs we could afford if we weren't paying for (inevitably military) programs.

Some of the math is hilarious; I'm sure North Dakota elementary school teachers are amused to see they're averaging nearly $42,000 a year in salary. And California's share of a war with Iraq would pay for 5 million California kids to go on state-paid healthcare. That is, of course, more kids than there are in California, bidding one to wonder where these people are getting their numbers from.

But let's briefly suspend disbelief, and take their numbers at face value. According to the website, Minnesota's share of the tax costs of a war in Iraq would pay for:

• hiring 28,216 Elementary School Teachers
  
• buying 6,636 Fire Trucks
  
• 222,603 Head Start Places for Children
  
• 459,612 Children Receiving Health Care
  

That, of course, doesn't cover the cost of building the 1,000 schools it'd take to put them al the teachers in - not to mention the 677,184 students (at 24 per class) we'd need to import to keep them working. Or the 1,000 firehouses we'd need to build, and the 24,000 firefighters we'd need to hire - many more than exist in the entire state already. As to the numbers of children in Head Start or on government medical assistance...

But OK, that's one take on the costs we'll face if we go to war. Fair enough. Now, the costs we'll face if we don't depose Hussein.

SCENARIO 1: 2006.
Uday Hussein decides to avenge his late father's humiliation in 1991. He moves into the Northern and Southern No-Fly Zones, and begins brutal subjugation of the Marsh Arabs and Kurds, again.

The "world community" responds to the armed advances with a withering fusillade of UN resolutions and "strong statements". After three months of dithering at the behest of the French and Swedes, the UN passes a slightly stricter set of sanctions - and Hussein makes his move.

He tells the world to sod off - or he'll launch a barrage of long-range missiles over the immense oil terminals at Ras Tanura, Bahrain, and elsewhere in the Gulf, loaded with Sarin and VX gas, and aerosol Anthrax cultures.

Instantly, world oil markets panic. Oil prices spike immediately over $100 a barrel. World markets react accordingly, diving into an immense, worldwide panic.

Liberals in the US chuckle as their hated nemeses, the nation's SUV drivers, are shortly paying gas prices of over $7 a gallon (sometimes more) - but the chuckling stops as companies slash their capital investments, throwing hundreds of thousands out of work. Tax revenues plummet, as the most productive citizens (the private sector) clamps down on all spending (voluntarily or otherwise), leading state governments to slash social programs and lay off so many state workers that people recall the relatively piddling state layoffs of '03 as "the good ol' days".

And it's worse elsewhere. The European economy crashes. The crash sweeps in xenophobic "populist" governments - which combine rabid socialization with the worst anti-immigrant measures seen since the thirties. In France and Germany, the fight is legal; in other countries, bloodshed is widespread.

Israel, of course, is inundated with further terror attacks; the Palestinians, bankrolled as ever by their Syrian, Iranian and Iraqi benefactors, pin the blame for their burgeoning misery on the Israelis, and launch a wave of terror attacks that strain the fabric of Israeli society.

And the Third World? Deprived of oil AND export markets, the third world economies are eradicated. Many nations fall to extremist, authoritarian coups, which creates immense food panics similar to the 1942 Bengal Famine (in which there was plenty of food, yet hundreds of thousands died). Around the world millions starve or die in economy-driven conflicts. Islamofascist governments rise in Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Egypt, while India and Indonesia are riven by the bloodiest civil wars in history.

In Minnesota, a total of 28,216 Elementary School Teachers were laid off, 6,636 Fire Trucks decommissioned, 222,603 Head Start Places for Children removed, and 459,612 Children ejected from various Health Care programs.

Millions of lives lost. Hundreds of millions plunged into even worse misery than they'd had before.

No missiles were ever launched.

SCENARIO 2: 2005
A group of Saudi, Quatari and Chechen Islamofascists, enraged at what they consider Al Quaeda's "excessive moderation" and "willingness to sell out to the West, in comparison to us", makes back-channel contacts with Iraqi intelligence. Flying underneath the radar (because the US left has forced the nation's intelligence and military services into an artificial focus on Al Quaeda to the exclusion of other terrorist groups), the group drives the parts of a tactical nuclear device out through Saudi Arabia, load it into a container ship in Aden, Yemen, and assembles it in time to load it onto a truck in Biloxi, Mississippi.

The terrorists know that it'd be great to blow up some immense landmark, like the Capitol or the Empire State Building. But the security in these places is too tight to risk, these days (albeit at immense cost to American civil liberties, the Islamofascists chuckle). And there'd be a huge advantage to hitting America in the Heartland, too - creating the "if I'm not safe HERE..." effect.

They pick a spot deep in the heartland on their map - and, a week later, on a bright summer evening, set off their bomb in downtown Minneapolis, during a Twins game. Intantly, everything within a third of a mile of the van is vaporized or pulverized into nothing; most everything within 1.5 miles is pummeled flat. People five miles away get flashburns from the thermal pulse, while buildings are severely damaged and people terribly injured out to seven miles away.

The bomb, a groundburst, left a plume of radioactive fallout starting in downtown Saint Paul, and stretching a hundred miles into Wisconsin. The radiation takes years to completely clean up.

Probably 100,000 die instantly; tens of thousands more die of injuries and radiation sickness downwind from the burst. Long-term health effects are nearly incalculable. Downtown Minneapolis is mostly destroyed; the bomb was placed blocks from the Metrodome, which was obliterated (drawing a "glass is half full" editorial from Joe Soucheray), along with most of the east edge of Downtown, Cedar-Riverside, and most of the U of M. The IDS is a denuded steel skeleton; the Norwest (Wells Fargo?) tower sheds its top 25 floors. Downtown is a mass of wreckage - no actual street plan is still visible above Franklin Avenue..

The Twin Cities are evacuated, causing untold human misery and dislocation. 28,216 Elementary School Teachers are laid off or killed, 6,636 Fire Trucks decommissioned or destroyed, 222,603 Head Start Places for Children lost or vaporized, and 459,612 kids put in health care plans for acute injuries or radiation poisoning.

The national and world economies, of course, crash (see Scenario 1). Civil liberties in the US are suspended to a degree that makes people think of even the worst caricature of John Ashcroft as "not so bad, really".

Noam Chomsky cheers, as do certain Green politicians. Sean Penn declares that "it's really our fault".

Sound fanciful? Of course. And in 1938, when Neville Chamberlain led his era's version of the world's Alec Baldwins and Phyllis Kahns to grovel at the altar of appeasement, people like Winston Churchill and Hector Bywater were popularly regarded as "paranoid" and "warmongers".

History proved them right, of course - it usually does.

There is, however, no way to calculate the costs of our being right this time. The stakes are higher now.

Your feedback is appreciated, as always.

Posted by Mitch at March 16, 2003 08:49 AM