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lessdazed comments on 9/11 as mindkiller - Less Wrong Discussion
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Basically. The wars are largely funded through separate bills, so the deficit probably wouldn't have been incurred at all. Other similar bills that were limited largely by total debt, such as the bailout and stimulus bills, would probably have been the most different had the wars not been waged.
I think of the Iraq war as more "a waste of money" than something causing "massive numbers of people dead." The succession after Saddam was not something that was ever going to go well, which is what what actually happened should be compared to.
Something over 3% of the population was killed as a result, by our best estimates. It would be good if a similar survey was done for Libya so we could compare different approaches to regime change.
The cases are very different.
It could have gone a lot better than it did. After the US Gov deposed Saddam, they disbanded the Iraqi army. The Iraqi army was composed of evil, angry people with their own hidden arsenals - the sort of people we really, really don't want to have out of work and stirring up trouble. If we had given them all busywork desk jobs instead, at least for little while, I think that most of the violence would have been averted.
I agree that a well-run invasion and reconstruction would have been substantially better than what happened.
I do not think that an unguided, sudden power vacuum would have been substantially better than what happened.