This site has moved to robert.williamsonline.us.
Steven Den Beste has a good analysis of the risks we face in attacking Iraq, with some speculations of the probabilities of each outcome.
One thing I particularly like was his discussion of the worst-case scenarios of Saddam actually being provoked by an invasion to use the biological and nuclear weapons the lefties tell us he doesn't have.
Those are the worst case results, but it needs to be pointed out that if Saddam has nukes or infectious biological agents and also has dedicated teams of infiltrators, then we are in deadly peril from such attacks in all the alternative scenarios which didn't involve attacking Iraq, and the danger is even greater in them, which means that war is still the best choice.
I was a debater (can you tell?) for three years in high school. While not one of the best, I was fairly good and consistently won our district competitions. One of the key issues the negative side would use is to demonstrate that the affirmative's plan had certain inherent risks or even certain negative consequences. There was a twofold defense to this. First, you could deny or downplay the risks and consequences. When that worked, it was unstoppable. But it was quite hard to make it work, because there is always someone that will link anything you do to global nuclear war.
(I mean that quite literally. We were able to purchase books with briefs for the debate topic, which included some suggested plans for the affirmative, and suggested negative attacks for standard affirmative proposals. Most of the negative attacks ended with nuclear war, and each step was supported with logic and evidence from self appointed experts.)
The more effective defense was to show that the harms of your plan were not unique to your course of action. You could demonstrate that any course of action, or - better yet - inaction caused harms that were identical or very similar to the ones your particular course of action incurred.
This is what Den Beste has done, and he has done it quite well. I also pointed out something similar here. The worst-case risks are based on the supposition that Saddam actually has weapons of mass destruction. If he has them, and the means to use them against American citizens, then we are at risk no matter what we do and Bush is right to attack. If he doesn't have them, then the worst-case fears of what he might do if attacked are baseless and it's relatively safe for us to attack.
Either way, the hawks win.
Posted by Robert at October 12, 2002 05:59 PM | TrackBack