g comments on When None Dare Urge Restraint - Less Wrong
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Comments (118)
rukidding, it's obvious that it's saved some lives (of people who would have been killed by Saddam Hussein and his minions) and cost some lives (of people killed by US forces, or by the people opposing them, or as a result of the general state of lawlessness and civil war in Iraq, or because the chaos there has produced poverty, poor healthcare, etc.), and certainly someone who is unable to consider both doesn't belong in the argument.
But if you're saying that no one "belongs in the argument" who can't make both a serious argument that *on balance* lives have been saved by the invasion and a serious argument that *on balance* lives have been lost by the invasion ... well, that's only true if *in fact* the evidence is rather evenly balanced, and I see no reason to think it is.