Imagine It, but That Probably Leaves Out a Lot
Imagine how much better off we would be if over the last few decades we had not made mistakes of being overly aggressive and unwisely violent toward other countries. If we had gotten in and out of Afghanistan quickly. If we had not attacked Iraq needlessly. If we had been smart about Vietnam. If we had not interfered in Iran many decades ago, and then again threatened them in 2003? Without that threat Iran would have had much less motivation to acquire nuclear weapons. Imagine the savings in military expenses. The generally more peaceful international situation. The many thousands of young Americans who would be alive, or who would be whole. Imagine that and you’ve still just scratched the surface of how big the difference would be.
First, consider ways we could have behaved smarter. George W. Bush invading Iraq was a mistake, full stop. Afghanistan is murkier. You can read about the ways we meddled in Afghanistan for many years before the 9/11 attacks. It’s murky but leaves a legitimate question whether there would have been enough anger at America to have stoked the 9/11 attack if we had not been playing games there long before. If no such attack had happened then there would never have been a need to invade Afghanistan. Or when the attack did happen we could have gotten in and out quickly and figured out getting Bin Laden later, as ended up happening anyway.
In Vietnam, if we really adhered to our own principles then we would have concluded early on that the people there just wanted to be independent, and that which form of government they wanted was their choice. In the same vein we would have allowed the people of Iran to keep their duly elected prime minister rather than our overthrowing him. We would have let them elect who they wanted as their leader rather than our artificially keeping an unpopular Shah in power. Maybe they would have chosen other leadership and maybe that would have been relatively moderate, rather than blowing up in a full-on revolution by the most radical elements (the ’78 revolution led by Khomeini). If their history had played out like that then the situation of the U.S. and Iran being enemies would never have happened. Imagine what that would be like, if the U.S. had just never pushed Iran into seeing us as an enemy. They might have felt no compulsion to have nuclear weapons. Note that over those same decades many other countries in that region have not felt compelled to develop nuclear weapons.
There have been times we have been smarter and have benefited from it. When General MacArthur wanted to be overly aggressive and invasive in Korea President Truman removed him from leading that operation. We now have a problematic state in North Korea, but the wider, and likely longer and worse, war that MacArthur wanted to pursue would have created much more damage for all. Many criticized the first President Bush for quickly leaving Iraq after having pushed them out of Kuwait. Critics wanted him to overrun Iraq, remove Saddam Hussein, and transform Iraq into a more friendly and compliant state, as if that kind of thing has ever gone quickly or well (see Afghanistan.) But Bush ended Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and then got out quickly, saving us and the region and the world from much worse results.
There are the obvious benefits we could have had: for example less military spending, and so many of our own people who would not have been lost or damaged, but there’s much more. What would we have done with that money instead? Be less in debt? Paid for day care? Reduced climate change? As for our dead and damaged, it’s not just that they would be here. For each one with long term serious damage, physically or mentally/emotionally, we have to spend tremendous amounts of money and time helping them, and even then we often fall short. So it’s a double loss. We not only spend time and money helping them, but we also don’t have them being productive people. By productive I don’t just mean producing work that makes money. I also mean their presence that would have made for better families, would have cared for their elderly, would have created situations that would have led to kids growing up better, would have been helpers in our communities.
As for the wider world, in a similar way, a more peaceful world is a more productive world, in all those same senses. Not only would we spend less on defense, many other countries could do the same. Look at what a productive nation Vietnam has become after we stopped making their entire country a war zone. Imagine a more peaceful Iran focused more on being productive. It might always have been a mixed picture in Iran, we don’t know, but it could have been better. A world of productive countries interacting with one another creates a whole different situation. Perhaps China would have stayed as a nonthreatening and fully participating member of the world community as it was in the ’90s rather than switching to feeling like it needed such aggressive posture. With fewer international conflicts there would also be fewer waves of desperate refugees, who put pressure on neighboring countries, or flood places like Europe until the locals get nervous and that creates societal divisions.
In that better picture perhaps the sense of faith in our own country would have remained stronger. More faith because of a better economy, and because of all those additional productive lives and what they would have contributed, and because of less stress on societal ties from controversial wars and all that comes with them. Perhaps there would be less frustration and less divisiveness, and all the repercussions we now have from that.
Just as war has far reaching effects, so does peace. War has ripples that go on very long after, continuing to inflict damage and waste and cost in ways that come as unforeseen surprises (countries becoming enemies, terrorist attacks, waves of refugees). Or they come in ways we don’t connect back to the source and so don’t realize the full cost. Just so, peace has ripples that reach far and continue without end. Countries that are relatively healthy and relatively peaceful allow people to just go on about their lives, creating benefits and improvements that we can’t even realize come from that peace.
Of course such a scenario might have just had different problems develop, but it certainly would have been better, probably much better. There is an enormous gap between how things would be if we had been wise at each of these steps versus where we are. All because of stupid actions. Actions like this current warring on Iran (we are not at war “with” Iran. We are committing war on Iran). It is a gap so far beyond what we are aware of, or that we can picture, that it is in the most literal sense, a challenging, difficult, fuzzily pictured, distantly viewed, hard thing to imagine.
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