One life = ?
Some of the comments to my earlier posts said that:
- Economic advancement is enough of a moral excuse for war
- War is good for the US economy
- War is the smart way of gaining wealth
- A mighty (& smart) army is always good for wealth as long as it is democratic
Is human kind really so jaded ? Have we lost all appreciation for the beautiful world we have been given ? In our feverish drive for economic advancement, we seem to have lost our focus !
However, for one moment, lets assume that I set aside all of my romanticism and approach this issue scientifically ....
Lets assume we run the world purely on economic considerations - Pursuit of wealth is the only consideration ... A balance sheet would be drawn up for every war with the cost on one side and the benefits on the other. If there was a positive balance, that would be the only justification required.
Then, there would be no need to justify war with cock-and-bull stories of WMD ... There would be no need to give war a shroud of decency - "Bringing the heathens to light", "Controlling communism" etc ...
However, there is one stumbling block ... How do you quantify the value of a life ? Is it just the amount of money he/she would have earned in his/her lifetime ? Whats the value of relationships, friendships, love .... ? And of course an American life is more valuable !
That will be they day - When Bush stands in front of Congress and says - "We are going to attack Iran. We will get 250 billion dollars of reconstruction contracts - The cost of running the war will be 100 billion, we will lose 1000 American soldiers (@10 Million each) = 10 Billion and a million Iranian lives (@50,000$ each) = 50 Billion ..."
So overall, cost = 160 Billion, gain = 250 Billion,
Lets go for it !!
Comments
Why do you lock your house, your car and have a passport ?
As world looks like it is to get a best deal - for YOU, your family, your friends, your country, your humankind etc.. would you give up your life style for someone else ? would you ?
I guess you don't need to answer that. I will just quote what my son said when he was 4 years: if I give all my money to the poor then I'd be poor!
So beat the romantic stuff which is for books and naive people and may be women. It just won't make us go further. It just relives us from unanswerable questions or fears that answers are not what we expect.
Look at the Poles in 80s. As long as they were hungry and fight for daily food, democracy was far away. Once their bellies got enough they wanted their freedom. It is survival after all that goes first.
Even if I know, I wouldn't tell what makes people do things - like Bush going to war or BJP takes down the temple. It is generally a naive belief on doing their "kind" a good deed. Since I am unaware of American Life (which stands for 60% of world CO2 emission) - I would be more interested in human kind and what makes them as they are. But what US does has a bearing on the world. One can say whatever they want but Bush administration did what is morally right and so did Clinton in Bosnia & Kosovo. India did not. And UN is an impeccably corrupt organisation which India allies with. Kofi Annan is pointed out to be responsible for not stopping Rwanda Tutsi genocide. So he really has nothing to say about Iraq. Probably he would rather have his son getting paid by Saddam still. As long as US World Police is democratic ... it is more preferred than UN. Ask those guys in Srebrenica.
Very few humans are philanthropic. If they are then there is some thing wrong with them too.
The world goes on a simple principle: you scratch my back and I will scratch yours. It goes from the family to country. It is not always win-win situation. It may be WIN-win or Win-wIn or whatever.
The biggest threat to any life is the chemicals we are made of - a mutated life form that we have no defence for and not the WMD or Nukes - they do very little damage compared to mutated Ebola, HIV, bird flu...
think about it..it is after all a virus...like common cold :)
/Reddy K