1 American life = x Iraqi lives, solve for x

This poll was inspired by two other posts buried deep within another thread.

Feel free to show how you came up with your answer for the value of x.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=1814062&mesg_id=1814149&page=

(snip)

I think I can help narrow x down...

Several people (freepers that haven't got caught yet, I hope) have said that this beheading is worse than Abu Ghraib. Now there have been numerous men, women and children raped at Abu Ghraib, we've seen people electrocuted, and attacked by dogs, but ignoring that we still have the at least 23 people murdered at Abu Ghraib. Likely more.

So, at least to these people, the value of x is greater than or equal to 23.

eom

if so, please explain.

Please tell me how you think that this is right.

as essentially meaning one Iraqi death should lead to the total eradication of the USA.


Edited to say whoops! I meant to direct this to the other guy!

X=0

to mean that the death of one Iraqi should equate to the total annihilation of the USA. A bit extreme, don't you think?

I still think part of the point here that makes this case different (as opposed to other Americans KIA) is that when a civilian has his head sawed off on film, there is a specific intent to terrorize an entire nation at large - this was not only directed at Mr Johnson - it was directed at all of us by extremists that may as well be considered Arab Freepers. Our Freepers think all Muslims are evil and should be eradicated...Arab Freepers think all Americans are b*sh clones that want all Arabs dead. Hence their irrational and psychotic behavior.

explain how they arrived at that number as being an acceptable value of x?

more value to many in the US. To see the headlines on ONE American citizen killed versus the thousands of Iraqis killed by the US, and the outrage being voiced tells me that it is not a 1 to 1 value in the minds of too many.

I don't think the post is completely fair.

The dispassionate side of me obviously sees no difference in value between lives, without a doubt. And of course, that's the right attitude.

At the same time, the death of some people in my life would hit me harder and be more personally devastating than the death of someone I never knew. I think that's why sometimes Americans react more to deaths of other Americans. It's more personal when its a guy from Boise Idaho than it is when its person x from some place you've never seen or know anything about.

That doesn't make it right, but it does make sense.

Emotions run wild with all this stuff.

The funny thing is that the right likes to claim that they only use logic and no emotions and call the left the emotional wussies. Maybe they don't know what the fuck they are talking about!

That said, the gratuitous sawing off of an innocent person's head and distributing of the image/video with the specific intent to terrorize a population at large is worse than what our assholes did to any one particular person in Iraq.

Definitely.

Important consideration there, 3/5ths of a person. Lots of history behind that answer.

A slave was valued at 3/5th of a person, I think I remember reading.

The south wanted to count the slaves when trying to calculate how to distribute the house of representatives among the states. The north didn'w want to let the south use the slaves to get more representation, but the south obviously wanted to use them for more representation. Basically, it came down to being a dealbreaker if something was not compromised on, and so came the "3/5 compromise." This allowed the south to count each of it slaves as 3/5 of a person for the purposes of calculating how much representation their states would get.

We don't count them. They don't count. Why would you waste your beautiful mind on a trivial question like this?

I dont think the live of one of our soldiers is worth any of them fighting. I was pissed when i found out that hussiens sons were caught in an actual firefight by a zealot officer. None of those turds are worth dying over. A life is a life, unjustly taken, they all mean the same to me, when i see caskets of little iraqi kids line up it hurts, when i see the caskets of our guys coming home it hurts. Freepers are so fucked up! they say, (Well the kids were cover!) What a screwed up thing.

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eom

I could be wrong though.It wouldn't be the first time. :)

Nobody is inherently worth more than another; however, a governments' first responsibility is to protect its own citizens.

Real numbers can be irrational...take the square root of two!








I am really really sorry for that joke. I apologize profusely!