| sc94597 said: Strong disagree here. Any war with a country will have costs and risks super-linearly proportional to the population of the country. Knowing the population helps us estimate costs (and risks) in various what-if scenarios. And that is if we take a purely sociopathic cost-benefit-risk analysis approach, purely interested in the effect on the U.S or Americans and not the effect on Iranians or the region. Tucker Carlson's point isn't that Ted Cruz doesn't know the exact population statistic, but that he is advocating to go to (or potentially escalate a) war with a country he barely knows anything about and therefore hasn't actually done the cost-benefit-risk analysis for the effect on the U.S. He's done it purely because he knows his Christian nationalist/fundamentalist base supports Israel unconditionally, because of their religious views. If Ted Cruz said something like "approximately 80-90 million" or "I am not sure the exact number, maybe 85 million?" then nobody would think much about it. Instead he couldn't even give a rough estimate. Same thing with the ethnic-group question. How can Ted Cruz push to go to a war with another country without estimating the potential fallout and blowback? Even if it isn't a full-blown war, regime change attempts can mean a civil war that tears Iran apart along ethnic and religious lines and lead to increased terrorism as different groups attempt to fill a power-vacuum. It could mean genocide of minorities. We saw this with Iraq, Syria, etc. The problem isn't that Cruz can't remember specific details, it's that he can't even make rough guesses because he hasn't put the work in to inform himself. He doesn't support war with Iran on some rational analysis of how it would benefit the U.S, but because of the religious views of his voters. I remember ten years ago the Libertarian Gary Johnson said something like "what is Aleppo?" at the start of the Syrian Civil War, and it was a big gaffe. This is on that level, if not greater. |
I don't know man.
Of course population size isn't irrelevant, but I don't really think it makes sense to expect a senator to be the one doing the math to make these estimations. The side of the cost benefit analysis that they should predominantly be concerned with imo should be the outputs, not the inputs.
Similar to the questions regarding the Bible that I discussed earlier, I kind of understand what he was going for, but it was just done so poorly, it felt kind of stupid.
Do I think that Ted Cruz has done a good analysis on whether or not we should go to war? Of course not, but I think that could be communicated so much more effectively than some chud doing trivia at him.
I feel like we've lowered the bar way too much if that is passing as a good interview.
For the record, the Gary Johnson clip played out roughly as follows:
Interviewer: What would you do if you were elected, about Aleppo.
Johnson: And what is Aleppo?
I think the difference between the two gaffes should be clear.
