ISIS demolish ancient city of Nimrud

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Year Zeroes happen every now and again.  1789, 1871, 1975...

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This madness must be stopped. At all costs.

why?  how many fcks did you give about "Nimrud" before 5 minutes ago?

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No

to the extent we can know anything with use of counterfactuals, there is no doubt that "the World would be a better place" had a) the UN never imposed sanctions on Iraq and b) the US-UK had never invaded.  even the supposed worst case strong-getting-stronger Baathist dictatorship (and there are plenty of arguments that the sanctions strengthened the regime, that Saddam or a successor would not have been untouched by the 2011 events) would be infinitely preferable to our actual past 25 years.

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What would arguably be even more preferable was if Saddam was overthrown during the first Gulf war.

this is a typical liberal talking point.  there were fewer (but not zero) cartoonish villains around to fill the vacuum in 1990/1 than 2003 and on, but doing so still would have required a mass invasion, humanitarian chaos, setup of a US puppet state, etc.

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What would arguably be even more preferable was if Saddam was overthrown during the first Gulf war.

this is a typical liberal talking point.  there were fewer (but not zero) cartoonish villains around to fill the vacuum in 1990/1 than 2003 and on, but doing so still would have required a mass invasion, humanitarian chaos, setup of a US puppet state, etc.

1) That's a typical Obscuritan-left position which, should I be so willing, removes you from my ability to take you seriously.
2) Yes, yes it would have. So?

2)  if we can't prove beyond a clear and convincing standard that such a massive intervention, with its guaranteed massive human cost, would be 'beneficial', that the action should not be taken.  an adoption of the Hippocratic Oath.... "first, do no harm".

of course, this is not how those who control the levers of foreign policy actually make decisions.

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Also, it doesn't strike me as necessarily a good principle to base foreign policy. Even less than Cheney doctrine, which at least recognizes the notion of a threat.

'threat' has to be part of the harm calculus, but there are two big problems with it.

1) it's easy to states to claim that there's a threat when there isn't, based on classified intelligence.  we both know how that works out.  2) the problem of proportionality.  how much is a US citizen 'worth' compared to an Iraqi or an Afghan?  since Sept 2001 the answer seems to be a ratio of thousands to one.  a mass invasion in pre-emptive 'response' to a threat is almost always going to be way out of proportion.

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the discussion between us had obviously evolved well beyond the discussion of the Nimrud situation. your last post got to talking about the Cheney doctrine.  I don't see how I was out of keeping in carrying on some talk about war doctrine.