Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Foreign Policy & News "Unintended Consequences of Military Intervention"

Just for the sake of discussion, let's say that you made your point Zeke.... where does that leave us? Is there any actionable take away?

Just to put things in some perspective, I suggest we consider that following assertion.



Love, its all economic
Art, music... it s all economic
Sports.... economic
Food, cooking.... economic
HaVING CHILDREN.... ECONOMIC
rELIGION--- ECONOMIC
sCIENCE... ECONOMIC

There are virtually no known examples of human activity that are not fundamentally economically motivated. Even when a single mountain man lives alone in the wilderness... it is all economics. Whan a soldiee jumps on a grenade to save his friends, it is economic. Jesus and Buddha were no more than great economists.

Well, I'd say it leaves us with a way to understand history and the present that may change our faith in the many diversions our leaders often offer up as excuses for their actions.

They may have been economists, but the "great" part is open to discussion.

I may be jumping to conclusions here, but I see Ardy's comments leading to the idea that one could substitute a number of other primal motivations in place of "economic" and be able to make an almost identical case.

In any case, until the discussion begins to massage opportunities to use the enlightensome information to influence the culture of military interventions, then it's like talking about the Superbowl.

Let's just say that it is pretty clear to me that a lot of non-rational stuff is happening in human behavior.

Was Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky a rational thing? Do people ever makes decisions based upon pride/arrogance? Do we ever act from fear, or overconfidence? Do we ever let ourselves be influenced by a crowd of advisors or public opinion? Do we ever act from hatred or contempt, or compassion? Some people (like G Bush) say they make decisions based upon a "gut" feeling or instinct. Maybe sometimes we act out of habit, convention or social expectation. And yes, sometimes people do act out of spiritual conviction, or some other closely held ideal.

But there is another question. Are decisions most always "pure" in the sense that we can almost always identify a single reason why we made a particular decision? Or, are there lots of subtle and sometimes even unconscious factors that come together to shape a final action? It is now a scientific fact that the human brain often makes a decision even before the conscious brain is aware of that decision. How can we be sure what is the basis for a pre-conscious decision?
It is certainly possible to retrospectively examine a set of events and assign a logical ordering to those events. In fact, much of written history is precisely that sort of exercise. Astrology is a similar effort in struggling to identify patterns in the stars. Our brains are exquisite pattern finding machines. Our brains are so good at this, that we even find patterns that do not exist. We find patterns that justify hating people, or loving them, or enslaving them, or killing them.

We imagine things; we make false assumptions. Our thinking is subject to an endless number of documented forms of bias, logical fallacy and errors of all types.

Individuals are clearly complicated, error prone, and not nearly as rational as we would like to pretend. And I have a hard time buying the idea that if you combine a large number of such people into a political group, the result will be an entirely rational decision making process based upon an assessment of the economic variables involved in that decision.

Out of curiosity, 25 pages into this thread, I went back and discovered that the thread had left the original premise on the first page, and apparently hasn't drifted back since. 24-pages of off-topic discussion. Still, it's a discussion. Maybe a thread rename is in order.

TO review the discussion

There are the pious rationales that are fed to the public in order to start a war. These "objectives: are seldom accomplished.

There is the hidden agenda of economic benifit. Wars also mostly fail to accomplish these goals.

All the rest of it... that is what actually results from a war... that all falls under the heading of "unintended consequences."