In the beginning, the tone of the media was very positive in support of the Iraq war. The western world was still largely aggrieved following 9/11 and taking action against any purported enemy, no matter how tenuously linked to the crimes of 9/11, certainly brought relief to a shaken western world. In the absence of any direct action, we felt like vulnerable little lambs just hoping the wolves didn’t pick us next. But, as the gears of war started to turn in our favour, suddenly we were back in control, we were calling the shots, and we felt truly powerful.
The sugar rush of this increased confidence initially gave George W Bush’s popularity a boost to 65%. However, the media would quickly turn permanently negative and has been running down the former US president and the Iraq war virtually every day since. This narrative continues today where the media seems to celebrate any negative news coming out of Iraq. With the troop withdrawal now complete, all we hear is how bad it has been.

But is this fair and balanced? No. What’s missing from the analysis is the ‘opportunity cost’ of not intervening in Iraq. Now war is ugly, and it is my personal belief we should err on the side of peace wherever possible. But the bottom line is this, without hyperbole, some people in this world are truly evil.
Enter Saddam Hussein:
Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator responsible for the deaths of over 1.3M of his own people, with cold blood runing through his veins he murdered over 40 members of his own family, detained and tortured political prisoners, used chemical weapons to commit genocide against a Kurdish minority, and while in his formative years as a secondary student he killed a distant cousin by shooting him in the head. Is the world better off without Saddam Hussein? Absolutely. But how much so? Based on extrapolating the casualty rates during two discrete periods of time, (Saddam Hussein’s reign vs the Iraq war), on average, 108.4 extra lives were saved per day (see below). As a result, the opportunity cost of not intervening in Iraq is that 345,796 more people would be dead. From this Iraq has at least 345,796 reasons to sing ‘God Bless America’, and two more if you include freedom and democracy.

References:
- Wikileaks Iraq War Logs – http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,724845,00.html
- Iraq Body Count Project – http://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/
- Infoshout – http://www.infoshout.com
- Whitehouse Release – http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/04/20030404-1.html