The Upside-Down War
Tim F. explains the economics of bombing "training camps" in Iran or elsewhere:
If training camps are anything like the ‘training’ or ‘camps’ that I’ve seen those places are mostly dirt with targets set a long distance away from the muddy spots where people kneel to shoot at them. Obstacles are made out of unpainted plywood and the barracks make your freshman dorm look like the Hilton. Building one of those would cost, what, $50k? It would take about five days to build another one using minimally skilled labor. A cruise missile costs a a million. A big GPS-guided bomb dropped by a stealth plane at night can’t cost that much less, and I doubt that the time and resources spent to ensure that the rest of our planes could overfly Iran without playing dodge-the-missile would come cheap either.
Of course, as Tim explains, it gets worse.
Comment by Doug T —
May 8, 2008 @ 8:37 am
I think bombing Iran would be a terrible, terrible mistake, but I don’t find this economic argument the least bit convincing. First, the main target when bombing a training camp isn’t really the infrastructure, it’s the trainers and students. Second, the benefit is not just the instantaneous destruction, but a hoped for change in longer term behavior–that there won’t be more training camps built and more training going on.
Lastly, even if the cost of the camps to Iran is small, that doesn’t mean the damage that the existence of the camps inflicts on the US is equally small. If insurgents are being trained there and sent back to Iraq, the cost to the US of the training camps could easily be in the tens of millions if not higher, so that it makes economic sense (in the short term) for the US to bomb them.
Now, you’ve got a problem if the enemy can continuously force you to spend millions to respond to them spending hundreds of thousands, but that’s a slightly different issue. But that gets you back to the question of whether bombing a few training camps would lead to a change in behavior.
Comment by y81 —
May 8, 2008 @ 9:53 am
But that’s exactly what Bush has said, about how stupid it is to use million dollar cruise missiles to blow up a bunch of tents. Shooting cruise missiles at sites that may or may not have had terrorist connections was the Clinton strategy.
It’s also a little stupid to pretend that the analysts who identify these sorts of targets are members of the administration. They are career military or intelligence personnel, who will not get smarter just because the president was on the Harvard Law Review.
Comment by Barry —
May 8, 2008 @ 1:40 pm
“It’s also a little stupid to pretend that the analysts who identify these sorts of targets are members of the administration. They are career military or intelligence personnel, who will not get smarter just because the president was on the Harvard Law Review. ”
It’s highly dishonest to pretend that the administration isn’t calling the shots here, both literally and figuratively.
Comment by mds —
May 8, 2008 @ 3:53 pm
With a y81 comment, that’s like calling attention to the sky’s blue hue.
Anyway, career military or intelligence personnel do call the shots. This President has made it clear that he listens to the generals… then fires them when they tell him what he doesn’t want to hear. Fallon, we hardly knew you.
Comment by Badtux —
May 8, 2008 @ 7:18 pm
Y’know, the folks telling me about these “training camps” are the same folks who told me that Iraq was brimming, brimming I say, with weapons of mass destruction. And that the biggest problem our soldiers would have would be all those rose petals raining down on them making them sneeze.
Yeah, so they’ve been 100% accurately wrong in the past, why should I believe them now? Of course, in Wingnuttisphere the WMD’s still exist (despite the CIA, U.S. Army, and Dear Leader’s very own hand picked weapons inspectorate finding nary a one despite combing the cat box for months lookin’ fer them), and IED’s are rose petals, but WTF, why should I listen to a buncha delusional fucks who’ve been wrong about, like, *everything*?
- Badtux the Skeptical Penguin
Comment by y81 —
May 8, 2008 @ 8:37 pm
Do you guys mean that Bill Clinton’s political appointees decided that that Sudanese factory was producing poison gas? And that he personally mistook the Chinese embassy for a Milosevic hideout? How could a Yale Law grad be so dumb?
Comment by mds —
May 9, 2008 @ 10:32 am
Gad, it’s somehow always a new discovery that y81 is dishonest and stupid.
Listen, girlfriend, the tired old “But, but, Clinton! [stamps feet, face bright red]” shtick is pretty goddamn idiotic to fling around at a libertarian blog. Henley, Thoreau, and Mona: obvious Clinton worshippers? It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. Clinton did evil imperialist stuff of questionable constitutionality. His successor has taken that and run with it into utter depravity. So by all means, let’s impeach them both, then send them to the Hague.
Sheesh. Did you take advanced idiot classes, or is it all natural talent?
Comment by Badtux —
May 9, 2008 @ 3:41 pm
I think it has to be natural talent. I spent the 1990’s opposing most of the Clenis’s policy proposals when it came to privacy (he wanted to bug all electronic devices and all Internet communications) and foreign interventions (I were agin’ them). All that’s happened is that Bush has taken the worst of the Clenis’s bad policies and run with them to the point where he makes even the Clenis looks good — heck, where he makes even effin’ RICHARD NIXON look like a great President.
Anyhow, my point remains. The Bush Administration has been either a) wrong, or b) lied, about just about *everything* dealing with Iraq or Iran. Why should I start believing them *now*, without some proof from third parties that I can at least somewhat trust?