This is good, right, and unfortunately not obvious. I will quibble with tallying up terrorist attacks, because it runs into misleading definitional problems. We should be concerned with violence, not terrorism per se; and so putting a car bombing in Iraq in the category of terrorism, but not including the repression of the Kurds, is apt to be misleading. Also doesn’t grapple with the counterfactual, it’s quite possible Saddam’s regime collapses anyway and the US merely hastened it. Also if looking at cost, development aid should prolly be subtracted.
This is good, right, and unfortunately not obvious. I will quibble with tallying up terrorist attacks, because it runs into misleading definitional problems. We should be concerned with violence, not terrorism per se; and so putting a car bombing in Iraq in the category of terrorism, but not including the repression of the Kurds, is apt to be misleading. Also doesn’t grapple with the counterfactual, it’s quite possible Saddam’s regime collapses anyway and the US merely hastened it. Also if looking at cost, development aid should prolly be subtracted.
Sorry Bulldog - simple linguistics: If you are anti-anti-terror, the two anti’s cancel out and you are now terror.
Nevertheless, great post and summary of the data. Funny that I’m cutting 20 cards on the topic right as you post.