StrangeSox

I'm not sure why you think I or the authors of that study have an "agenda" here. I'd personally like to see what the results would have been if Rwanda was included, but, really, not including extreme outliers is something that's considered in any type of data analysis. They choose a time period, which obviously any cut-off point is arbitrary to some extent, but maybe good data wasn't available pre-1989. I don't know. These are legitimate questions. This study was looking at interventions in conflicts. WWII wasn't an intervention-type situation at all, so even if it was within the time period it wouldn't relevant. The DPRK isn't a conflict situation, either. It's an ongoing s***ty regime, its not the same category as a civil war or a genocide. That isn't "reflexive handwaving." That's explaining to you, repeatedly, the differences between these types of situations. And, again, I'm still waiting for you to present any sort of argument at all in favor of bombing Syria. Fine, you're going to dismiss not only this study but this entire field of investigation out of hand, but at least support your own position.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 30, 2013 -> 10:15 AM) Wouldn't the intervention in Libya be a pretty good counter-point to this? According to Wiki, the UN reported 60 deaths as a result of the coalition's involvement. I'm guessing that number would be much higher if the civil war had continued. 60 deaths directly from coalition bombs. That's a very narrow first-order view of what effects foreign intervention can have. But, yes, Lybia is at least somewhat of an argument in favor of intervention. The conflict ended sooner, but it's very far from a stable situation at this point and, just like a lot of these other conflicts, the rebels committed atrocities of their own.

There's no evidence that Assad is "straight-up gassing his own people." There's evidence that chemical weapons have been used, probably by both sides, against two warring factions. Let's not conflate that, as horrible as it is, with a situation like what Saddam did to the Kurds. Of course context matters, and just because no two situations are identical does that mean that no two situations are comparable, or that one set of situations might be comparable to each other but not to other situations. Really, explain to me how Stalin's purges in Russia are at all relevant to the situation faced in Syria. Again, just like the DPRK comparison, it only makes the argument for intervention worse. Foreign intervention during one of Stalin's purges in the 50's mean global nuclear warfare. Intervention in the DPRK means tens of millions of dead Koreans, North and South. WWII had nothing at all to do with humanitarian intervention and the opportunities to go that route were passed up. None of these are anything at all like Syria, or Lybia, or Bosnia or Somalia or Sudan or Rwanda.

Fitzgerald was pretty worthless last year

By the way, I'm still waiting for you to present any reason at all that you believe the US bombing Syria will result in fewer overall civilian deaths. You argue that the DPRK is a counter-point to a non-intervention argument. Should we start bombing there? What about Myanmar? Iran? Egypt? DRC? Are we going to start bombing every country with s***ty leaders in order to save them?

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 30, 2013 -> 09:52 AM) The objections aren't irrelevant. It is easy to dismiss this as "data points" and "extreme outliers". What we are talking about is death on an extreme scale. Dismissing things out of hand just because they don't fit a model is misleading people into thinking something that isn't true. If we ignore situations like this, they don't just go away. That is the theme here. NK has been killing their own people on a cleansing scale for five decades now, but this is ignored,l for whatever reason. NK is ignored because it's not at all similar to Syria or what anyone thinks of for an interventionist conflict. I really don't know why you think they're remotely similar. Why is study in scare quotes? What familiarity do you actually have with common statistical analysis and how to handle data? Yes, Rwanda was an awful situation. This study isn't an argument that every single possible scenario for intervention ever will cause more civilian deaths than non-intervention will. It's a study that finds that intervention is more likely to cause more civilian deaths. Individual scenarios can be analyzed on a case-by-case basis with additional information. That's because you can't understand the basic difference between 1) full-scale global war (in which humanitarian intervention was barely even a consideration!), 2) oppressive regime not engaged in genocide or an internal rebellion, and 3) oppressive regime engaged in genocide and/or internal rebellion. Why is WWII relevant? Why is DPRK relevant? How are either of them anything at all like Syria or any of the other types of conflicts included in this study? Going back to Lenin or Stalin's purges is, again, irrelevant because the context for intervention is completely different in those time periods and with the countries and actors involved. The world is too damned busy talking about who we can bomb next, which village we can burn so that it can be saved instead of actual humans.

A couple days late, but zero Republicans accepted the invitation to speak at the anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Equality. http://thehill.com/homenews/house/319239-b...ton-anniversary

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Aug 30, 2013 -> 09:35 AM) No, there is a very good ending here. No intervention = no American deaths and i don't give a f*** who's in power, but it will probably be Assad. Shooting a bunch of tomahawk missiles won't cause any American deaths, but I care about Syrian deaths, too. They're not worth anything less than you because of where they live in the world.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 30, 2013 -> 09:08 AM) So if I drew up a formula and excluded Iraq and Afghanistan, that would be OK? The equation is rigged by excluding things that don't fit the formula. Why are you assuming this is "rigged" or outcome-oriented? If you're running an analysis and one potential data point really is an extreme outlier, you will sometimes want to exclude it. If it's so unique and unusual that it bears no relation to an otherwise strong trend, you run the analysis without it. You should look at why that data point is so out of line with the others to make sure you're not missing something, but this is basic data analysis. I'm still missing why you feel so strongly that foreign intervention will not lead to more civilian deaths. You keep jumping from irrelevant objection to irrelevant objection (WWII! NK!) to dismiss this study, but you've done nothing to support your own point of view.

Well I had to miss the draft and had the league manager's dad draft in my place with some guidelines, here's what I ended up with: 12 team league QB: Wilson RB1: Rice RB2: Miller WR1: Amendola WR2: Boldin TE: jimmy Graham Flex: MJD D/ST: Tampa (lol, this will change weekly) K: Phil Dawson Bench: Ballard, Moore, Roethlisberger, Broyles, Sidney Rice Probably better than I would have done on my own!

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Aug 30, 2013 -> 08:20 AM) Good luck!

There's really not much we can do about it, unfortunately. Any action against NK will piss off China something good and result in NK leveling Seoul and killing millions of civilians. There were two really interesting documentaries I've seen on NK. The first was a NatGeo look inside the country by a team of journalists ostensibly traveling with this eye surgeon who has developed an extremely cost-effective cataract surgery procedure. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxLBywKrTf4 The second was about a US soldier who defected to NK in the 60's. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473181/

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 08:53 PM) lol. You can't be serious. If aid shows up, the rebels stop rebelling even if they don't get fed? If the government "steals it all," that means that the government is in control and the civil war is essentially over. Aid isn't drop-shipped to Assad's estate and dispersed from there. The idea that the Syrian government could "steal it all" in the middle of a civil war when it'd be delivered to millions of refugees across and near the border is ridiculous.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 05:12 PM) I dont trust anything but myself. Im not advocating for intervention in Syria, Im arguing against the idea that you shouldn't intervene because people may die due to intervention. Nobody is making that argument.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 08:52 PM) So going into the data of this study, a couple of things jump out at me very quickly. #1- Nothing with North Korea is included in the study, yet how many millions have died there? North Korea is a brutal, oppressive regime. They haven't had anything like a civil war or targeted ethnic cleansing though. Anyway, intervention in North Korea would mean millions of dead North Koreans plus millions of dead South Koreans, so that'd only make your case worse even if it did somehow fit. If action is taken, the worst case scenario is an "extreme outlier." That cuts both ways. I don't know if they have a strong reason for excluding Rwanda. I know that, personally, it's one of the conflicts I believe intervention absolutely could have helped. But, again, it's not like Syria. Rwanda was genocide. Syria is not.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:57 PM) Are the Jews using chemical weapons? Because if both sides are using chemical weapons you need to stop them both. Chemical weapons really just are not okay since WWI. Why is it ok for Assad and the rebels to blow each other and lots of civilians up with conventional weapons but not chemical weapons? What happens when we start bombing both sides to stop their use of chemical weapons? The only available information I've seen, which you dismiss out of hand, is that there is greater risk to civilian life by intervening.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:58 PM) How can you say that even? How is that working in North Korea? There is nothing to stop a scenario where the government just steals it all and keeps it for the loyalists anyway, just like in NK, while they keep slaughtering anyone who isn't "loyal". You wouldn't be sending money to the Assad regime. Refugees are pouring across the borders into other countries.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:53 PM) You were the one saying conflicts in the research were comparable, but then in the next breath were saying that others weren't comparable because it didn't fit the narrative. It sounds like you're really confused here. Do we have a reason to believe that the conflicts in the research weren't comparable? One of the comments on the link posted contains a link to their data. Can you tell me why they "probably" aren't comparable? On the other hand, we can unquestionably say that World War II is not at all comparable to the ongoing Syrian civil war and the potential for foreign intervention. The US wasn't "intervening" in the European theater in order to support an internal rebellion or suppress an uprising. The US was attacked and Germany declared war on them. When they had the opportunity, the US did approximately nothing to directly intervene in the genocide. How or why is this comparable?

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:45 PM) Exactly, this is why I wont let this happen on my watch. Because to many people like you just raise their hands to the sky and say "There is nothing I can do" No there is something you can do, when you see evil, when you see tyranny, you stop it. Sometimes bad things happen because of that, but you dont just let the even worse things continue because youre afraid something bad may one day happen. Now that is not to say the US should absolutely intervene in Syria. But if its shown that the govt is targeting and killing civilians with chemical weapons, Im not sure how much worse our bombing can make it, because chemical weapons on civilians is pretty outrageous. And what if it is shown that the rebels are also using chemical weapons, which is pretty likely as far as I've read? What if Assad used chemical weapons against the rebels and wasn't directly targeting civilians? I've seen nothing to indicate that that's what is alleged here a la Saddam and the Kurds in the 80's. It's not throwing your hands up and saying "there is nothing I can do." It's recognizing that doing something has its own effects. Those effects may very well be worse than non-intervention. If you believe the balance of intervention is fewer civilian deaths, fine, let's discuss why. That you keep ignoring this and pretending that Balta and I are making a completely different argument is pretty insulting.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:46 PM) I think in your last paragraph you make the best argument of all for that research being pretty worthless. In there you are comparing conflicts that probably aren't really comparable, Why aren't they comparable? Have you looked at the methodology? I'm not sure what line you're talking about. The data set they picked? Well, you've got to pick a data set somewhere and ultimately most lines are arbitrary to some extent. WWII would be completely irrelevant, anyway, as that wasn't about foreign intervention. It was full-scale nation-state war with a bunch of genocide by several actors thrown in to the mix. That's the situation that's not really comparable to the current civil war in Syria. Well, I'm not quite so willing to reject a pretty huge and broad category of research that extends far beyond foreign policy.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:42 PM) You do realize that if it was today Germany would call the Jews "terrorists", "enemies", etc. Im not sure why it matters what the pre-text for killing civilians is. German Jews weren't in open rebellion against the (oppressive, s***ty) Syrian government. What are the comparisons here? Who or what are we bombing? How is that going to reduce civilian casualties? Are we going to come out in full favor of the rebels and try to wipe Assad out as quickly as possible? If there was a legit civil war within Germany, I don't know that the US should intervene. If one side is committing genocide, that's a different story, but that's not what's happening in Syria. Yes, I agree, your arguments are getting beyond absurd. Recognizing that foreign military intervention isn't such the noble and clean action you are pretending it is is nothing at all like saying all interventions always are bad and that I'd be a-okay with Germans gassing jews or Assad engaging in ethnic cleansing. Rebels are also killing civilians. Should we bomb them? Don't forget, we'll be killing civilians when we bomb the people killing civilians. Again, on what evidence do you base your conclusion that foreign intervention=less civilian casualties? Good thing that's not my line of thinking at all. I've clearly and explicitly rejected that line of thinking. I've clearly and explicitly stated my concerns over foreign intervention in that I believe it is more likely than not to kill more civilians than it saves. If you're going to keep pretending that means I'm an isolationist or that my argument in any way is an argument against intervention in the case of genocide, then we're done here.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:35 PM) As I said to Balta, how can you get statistical evidence about things that didnt happen? How can you know what the casualty rate would be if there was no intervention. You cant. You can only compare pre-intervention to post intervention. But that is inherently flawed as intervention almost always comes when casualties are increasing, it very rarely comes when casualties are decreasing. Therefore it stands to reason that there will be more deaths after intervention, because the conflict was escalating. If they are comparing different conflicts, thats just a waste of time because they are unique. You're basically saying that counter-factual research is impossible and worthless. I don't accept that. Interventions save some lives and take others. What is the evidence that the net effect is fewer civilian deaths? How is Syria comparable at all to targeted genocide and open warfare between multiple nation-states like WWII? The comparison just doesn't hold up here. And, if you'll note, the Allies didn't really do s*** to stop the genocide even when they were bombing within a mile or two of known concentration camps. They could have very easily bombed the railroad tracks, but they didn't. They didn't intervene to help civilians or to stop the genocide. The Allies' conduct in that regard is actually pretty appalling. It's certainly not a good example of humanitarian intervention.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:37 PM) Its just made up bulls***. I hate to say it, but it is. Why do you say that? You seem to be saying that you categorically reject any research of this type.

1) The paper looked at conflicts from 89-2005. 2) References to Nazi Germany don't seem particularly relevant because Syria doesn't have concentration camps and that wasn't about foreign intervention, that was open warfare between numerous nation-states. 3) It was an overview of the effects of intervention. You can probably come up with some unique scenarios, like concentration camps, where the conclusion would be changed. That's not the case in Syria, though, where we're talking about warfare between the national army and various rebel groups. We are talking about coming down and backing one side over the other because one side used chemical weapons (though probably both sides have in the past several months). Why should I believe that intervention will reduce civilian casualties? I would really, really like to. I want fewer dead Syrians. I just don't think Tomahawks are the way to get there.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 29, 2013 -> 04:21 PM) How in the world can you actually project that? There is no way of being able to tell what would have happened if it was just let go. Even just thinking of a place like Rwanda where somewhere around a million people died, I can't see how you could project that 1.4 million would have died if there had been military intervention at some point. The same way any other counter-factual-to-real-world is examined. Obviously you cannot know for sure, but you can study and compare different situations throughout history in which there were interventions and which there weren't. Balta posted this link a few pages back: http://themonkeycage.org/2013/08/27/do-mil...+Monkey+Cage%29 This is a challenge with any counter-factual research, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to do. From the conclusion: If you have third-party troops on the ground that you believe both sides will refrain from attacking, intervention can protect civilian populations. Lobbing a bunch of missiles, which is the only thing anyone is talking about or considering, won't do that.* *According to this paper. I'm open to any studies that suggest otherwise.