Well, I wouldn't have the balls to hijack an airplane and crash it into a building. If they're cowards, what does that make me?

In the weeks after 9/11, my colleague Roger Congleton, who had some expertize on terrorism, did a number of radio and other interviews where he argued that 9/11 was a unlucky aberration, and warned against overreacting. It wasn't a message people wanted to hear then, and his being right early wins him nothing in today's media game.

Interesting article, and I agree with most of it, but there is a point in which I fail to understand your reasoning, and which seems to contradict the rest of the article.

It's the « "We have forgotten that the first purpose of government is not the economy, it is not health care, it is defending the country from attack." » part. How is that not an applause light ? And how is that real ? When the country was just attacked, like after 9/11 or after Pearl Harbor, when everyone has in mind the fact the country is attacked and the horrors of violent death, but everyone forgets about the horror of diseases and the fact that half a million die from cancer in the US each year (according to cancer.gov), that is, one 9-11 every 3 days, that's definitely an applause light.

The first purpose of government is to maximize a very complex utility function, that contains factors about protecting people's life, factors about their (average, median, ...) economical well-being, factors about protecting personal freedom and safety, ... Maximizing this utility function requires investing resources into defending the country against external aggression - because external aggression comes with a very high cost in all those factors. But protecting the country against external aggression is not a goal in itself, it is only a secondary goal, because not doing so will lead to horrible things - death, lost of freedom, rapes, plunders, ...

What would have been saying something that was real, and not an applause light, would have been saying « yes, 9-11 is horrible and we need to keep some ways to defend ourselves, but much more people die from cancer than from terrorism, we should still, like before, invest much less in weapons and much more in cancer research ». Or, if you are libertarian, « yes, 9-11 is horrible and we need to keep some ways to defend ourselves, but much more people die from cancer than from terrorism, we should still, like before, give tax cuts and let the market assign those resources to what is more important. »

If you think government is bad at assigning resources, then arguing for tax cuts and shrinking the government can be a way to maximize the utility function. We can argue for long about how efficient is the government and the market for a given purpose and in a given situation. But whatever we think about that issue, it doesn't change the government purpose is to maximize that complex utility function - by investing in cancer research or by giving tax cuts, but not by focusing on defense and military as it did after 9-11. But that wouldn't get applause in the post-9-11 traumatic context. Which is why I really don't get that last part, because it goes totally to the opposite of the rest of the post.

Or maybe I misunderstood something ?

I tend to agree with Eliezer-February-2007:

"If you want to make a point about science, or rationality, then my advice is to not choose a domain from contemporary politics if you can possibly avoid it. If your point is inherently about politics, then talk about Louis XVI during the French Revolution. Politics is an important domain to which we should individually apply our rationality - but it's a terrible domain in which to learn rationality, or discuss rationality, unless all the discussants are already rational."

It doesn't seem like the US's overreaction to those attacks has been all that effective in harming al Qaeda I disagree, if we count the invasion of Afghanistan in there. It seemed to have quite effectively smashed al Qaeda proper so that they could not pull off any attacks since (remember that they attacked the U.S.S Cole, two embassies in Africa and bombed the WTC in the years before) with the remaining terrorists who call themselves "al Qaeda" franchises being quite buffoonish.

g,

Or, one could do what noted Law scholar and hero of secular humanists Alan Dershowitz calls for, which is destroy the families, homes and towns of the attackers. He has explicitly argued that Israel should destroy the entire town of every Palestinian attacker.

The fact that Dershowitz can say something so obviously hateful and still be considered a sane member of society is another manifestation of the spiral of hate that has gripped this nation.

denis bider, the people who perpetrated the 2001-09-11 attacks died, and knew they were going to die, so others like them won't be deterred by the likelihood that the USA will go after them personally. It doesn't seem like the US's overreaction to those attacks has been all that effective in harming al Qaeda (I mean, bin Laden is still alive so far as anyone knows). It doesn't seem like it's been all that effective in making people who might have been sympathetic to groups like al Qaeda less so.

So I'm wondering how you expect the overreaction to deter other people who might be considering similar attacks.

Initially, there were smarter responses to 9/11 than I had guessed. I saw a Congressperson - I forget who - say in front of the cameras, "We have forgotten that the first purpose of government is not the economy, it is not health care, it is defending the country from attack." That widened my eyes, that a politician could say something that wasn't an applause light. The emotional shock must have been very great for a Congressperson to say something that... real.

This may have been more of an applause light than you thought. This is an outlook I've heard expressed quite frequently by conservatives of a more libertarian bent, and the fact that congresspeople don't say such things more often is most likely because they're not offered many contexts in which it's an appropriate way to endear themselves to their constituents.

Okay, I'm totally not understanding the claim that the attackers were cowards. Either the people saying that are using a different definition of "cowardice", or perhaps they're thinking of the attack's mastermind(s) who stayed safely at home. m-w.com defines "coward" as "one who shows disgraceful fear or timidity" -- perhaps the hijackers timidly crept to the front of the plane, and killed or incapacitated the pilots with disgracefully shaking hands?

Or perhaps you mean fear of facing their enemies directly in fair combat, instead of behind the controls of a deadly projectile? It's a bit of a twist, but I might grant an argument along those lines. On the other hand, can it ever be cowardice if you know you're going to die, regardless of how defenseless your target is?

Or maybe you mean the hijackers were too cowardly to buck their religious/jingoistic upbringing, and say "wait a minute, this is just wrong"? That one seems a bit more of a stretch, but it's at least arguable.

Also: "Murdering the defenseless isn't an act of bravery." -- the US is hardly a defenseless target. (Or, rather, would have been hardly a defenseless target if the first response system hadn't been systematically hobbled... but I digress.) Under ordinary circumstances, the hijackers should have expected their planes to be shot down rather than being allowed to reach a densely-populated area. Insider theories aside, the hijackers had absolutely no guarantee of success and should have been up against quite steep odds. Furthermore, they saw the US as the invulnerable steel monster out to destroy their way of life (whether or not this is accurate). The people in the tower, left inexplicably defenseless that day, were just the monster's Achilles heel.

Calling them "cowardly" seems to me more like an emotional bandaid -- something to mitigate the overwhelming impact of what they did -- than it sounds like either of the possible nuanced interpretations I've suggested, but I'm prepared to hear further explanation.

Susan Sontag pointed out that the 9/11 hijackers weren't cowards a week after the event, and took an enormous amount of shit for it. And in fact there were a great many people engaging in relatively sane, measured reactions after 9/11. But they were drowned out by the much louder negative death spiral.

Many conflicts are really formed out of two mutually reinforcing negative death spirals. In this case, our overreaction to 9/11 caused us to take actions that produced more hatred of us in the Islamic world, leading to more conflict, leading to further hatred on both sides. This is a very basic dynamic underlying war.

rukidding: And one of the possible ramifications of the Iraq invasion is an end to the escalation of terrorist actions. How does the causality work there?

childish and hateful number I have never read any of those two adjectives precede that noun.

how does anyone here know that there wouldn't have been more deaths if Saddam had remained in power? Look at a graph of deaths under Saddam, assume any current trends continue. It's not certain, but it's a reasonable guess.

Why is the board so determined to think that being anti-bias should only mean being anti conservative bias? All the while so easily duped by liberal bias? I don't think you've been reading this blog very long, it's often accused of right-wing bias. I don't think you can establish that what's been said demonstrates bias either.

To which, I know--let me save you all the trouble of a response Sounds like you don't even care what others actually believe because you'd rather have a strawman caricature to argue with.

James D. Miller: I think that militarily President Bush under-reacted to 9/11. What do you mean "militarily"? The rest of your post makes it sound like the failure was diplomatic, unless you wanted to threaten other nuclear countries to assist us in holding the line.

The U.S. faces a tremendous future threat of being attacked by weapons of mass destruction. What probability do you give for this happening within the next decade? Next two decades?

Unfortunately, before 9/11 it was politically difficult for the President to preemptively use the military to reduce such threats. I remember Clinton bombing Iraq because they weren't cooperating enough with inspections and everyone said it was a ploy to make him more popular since Congress was trying to impeach him. I agree that it got easier after 9/11 though.

J Thomas: If they had lived, we would have caught them and slowly tortured them to death. We didn't torture Khalid Sheik Mohammed to death. We tortured him, sure, but not to death.

By dying they avoid the treatment they'd get as prisoners of the israelis -- they get off easy. Terrorists in Israeli prisons are still allowed to have kids that they instruct their relatives to raise into terrorism. Doesn't sound too strict (or bright) to me.

Brandon Reinhardt: If you believe invading Afghanistan was a correct choice then I'm not sure how you could say Iraq was a complete mistake. It's very simple: IRAQ DID NOT ATTACK US

Any other state that might offer aid and support to the enemy would enable the enemy to rebuild their ability to project power. What's with that word "might"? So there has to be a probability of 0.0000000? If we don't have absolute proof a country isn't doing so we should invade them? And why haven't we invaded Saudi Arabia and Egypt?

Iraq was one possible source of aid and support. Except it wasn't.

Any Sunni state with sufficient reason to wish harm upon the west, with the desire to support organizations that might bring about that harm, and with the ability to provide aid and support to that end was (or is) a threat. Saddam had already gotten a bloody nose from the U.S once, he knew better than to try that again. His support for terrorism was limited to destabilizing his neighbors (Kurdistan Worker's Party in Turkey, Mujahedin al Khalk in Iran).

al Qaeda may still be able to project limited power, but its ability to strike at the US in such a coordinated way has been significantly hampered. That's because of the invasion of Afghanistan, not Iraq.

The harms of 9/11 cannot be measured by the harms of the event alone. I suppose then you agree with Eliezer, the main harms were in the overreaction.

If we merely rebuilt the towers and moved on, we would have done nothing to deny an enemy the power to strike again. I would have suggested restricting immigration as a much more sensible way to go about it, but Bush prevented a bill with that purpose from passing.

Additionally, toppling two governments sends a strong message to other states that might harbor the enemy that they will be pursued and punished. We punished a state, Iraq, that had NOTHING TO DO WITH ATTACKING US. Was Saudi Arabia or Egypt punished, since the 9/11 hijackers came from there? Was Pakistan punished for selling nuclear technology to other countries, or North Korea punished for making nukes? No.

it seems likely that both states had reason to desire an outcome in which the extremist groups were heavily disrupted. Invading Iraq did not accomplish that, it caused chaos and disruption for people who just wanted to continue with their lives.

You would have failed: not in the construction of your defenses, but by failing to hunt down your enemy and deny them the opportunity of future assaults. Solution: open the gates and invade countries that have NOTHING TO DO WITH ATTACKING US.

J Thomas: Allow israel to have nukes but not syria? Seems like Israel is implementing that plan itself.

If you and your enemies have nukes then you will be worse off than if neither you nor your enemies have nukes. No, you're both better off because you won't get invaded. Iraq: no nukes and got invaded. North Korea: nukes and not invaded. Now you're Iran, what do you think is the smart move?

The next obvious choice is a war between libya and chad. Are they angry at each other now? I know in Trevor Dupuy's "Future Wars" Libya was supposed to attack Egypt, but I forget if Chad was involved.

burger flipper: What if it had been necessary to shoot down a passenger jet to save some unknown target, but afterwards it was discovered that some on board had been mounting an assault on the cabin, and had called loved ones as well? Flight 93 still crashed, so then it would have just been a waste of a missile and nothing more.

Brandon Reinhardt: My post was simply pointing out that failing to respond to someone who actually attacks you can have increasingly dangerous results over time. We responded by invading Afghanistan. Iraq, let me repeat myself, HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH ATTACKING US.

when is it right to preemptively attack another state? When they are actually about to attack you, like in the Six Day War. Iraq was not about to attack us.

Wars of aggression against non-aggressors would rarely be popular The Iraq war was just that and popular for far too long.

Robin, Elizer or other moderators: if you are unhappy with how the thread has developed, make a note of it and I will move the discussion to my blog unless others would like to have it at their blogs.

America has one of the largest and best-equipped armed forces in the world. Only an idiot would attempt to confront it directly and according to the "rules of war".

Reality check: when openly declaring war and restraining one's tactics will inevitably lead to defeat, breaking the conventions is not only canny but necessary. There is simply no branch of the contingency tree where playing by the rules leads to a benefit in such a scenario.

"Eliezer, the US killed at least a million Japanese in World War 2, while the attack at Pearl Harbor killed less than 2500. Maybe it is true that the US response to 9/11 is "greater than the appropriate level, whatever the appropriate level may be" but I don't think you have showed that to actually be the case."

DL, let me put it this way. If the Rotary Club in canada declared war on somebody and did an atrocity, and that somebody in response killed ten million americans most of whom were not Rotarians, and mostly after they won the war against us and disbanded our surrendered army, would you perhaps consider that greater than the appropriate level?

Wow, the cowardice thing again. To review:

1) Eliezer_Yudkowsky just made a post arguing that it's not very virtuous to do things at great person risk when you believe you're immortal, and when you believe you are doing it to get great things in the afterlife.
2) The 9/11 hijackers believed they would be greatly rewarded in the after life.
3) It does not take much courage to argue on the internet, or in public forums.
4) The 9/11 hijackers did not argue their point of view with their intellectual opponents.
5) But, the 9/11 hijackers were courageous.

I agree: let's not look for whatever flimsy pretense we can, for throwing a negative label at people we don't like. But "9/11 terrorist were cowards" is a bad example of that. Here are some better examples of wrong labels:

The 9/11 hijackers were...

-disloyal
-hypocritical
-short-sighted

For the record, as far as my knowledge goes, the reasons George Washington won against the English are:

1) He avoided fighting battles that could lead to a decisive English victory; all he had to do was "not lose" and make the English keep spending resources to try to finish his forces off. Until...
2) Benjamin Franklin was able to persuade France to lend military support. France had a military as strong as England; it was basically the French army that won the American colonies their independence.

Wow, have I gotten off-topic...

If you want to see an example of a measured response, take a look at the UK's after the London Underground bombings of 7th July 2005. Admittedly the bombings weren't of the same league as the September 11th attacks, but virtually nobody in the UK was saying "let's bomb the f*ers" And a month or two later (at the most) it was as if nothing had ever happened.

Comparing the lives lost in 9/11 to motorcycle accidents is a kind of moral calculus that fails to respect the deeper human values involved. I would expect people who die on motorcycles to generally understand the risks. They are making a choice to risk their lives in an activity. Their deaths are tragic, but not as tragic. The people who died in the WTC did not make a choice to risk their lives, unless you consider going to work in a high rise in America to be a risky choice. If you're doing moral calculus, you need to multiply in a factor for "not by known/accepted risk" to the deaths in the attack.

Tragedy of Death: (by Known / Accepted Risk) < (by Unknown Risk) < (by Aggressor Who Offers No Choice)

My last post, though, since The More I Post, The More I'm Probably Wrong.

"If you believe invading Afghanistan was a correct choice then I'm not sure how you could say Iraq was a complete mistake. The invasion of Afghanistan was aimed at eliminating a state that offered aid and support to an enemy who would use that aid and support to project power to the US and harm her citizens or the citizens of other western states. Denying that aid and support would hope to achieve the purpose of reducing or eliminating the ability of the enemy to project power.

"Any other state that might offer aid and support to the enemy would enable the enemy to rebuild their ability to project power. Iraq was one possible source of aid and support."

Brandon, your reasoning is compelling. However, it has a subtle flaw that I think will be easier to see when I rephrase the argument as follow:

We will be safer after we conquer every potential enemy.

The claim is obviously true, and yet....

Some very vehement responses.

If you believe invading Afghanistan was a correct choice then I'm not sure how you could say Iraq was a complete mistake. The invasion of Afghanistan was aimed at eliminating a state that offered aid and support to an enemy who would use that aid and support to project power to the US and harm her citizens or the citizens of other western states. Denying that aid and support would hope to achieve the purpose of reducing or eliminating the ability of the enemy to project power.

Any other state that might offer aid and support to the enemy would enable the enemy to rebuild their ability to project power. Iraq was one possible source of aid and support. Any Sunni state with sufficient reason to wish harm upon the west, with the desire to support organizations that might bring about that harm, and with the ability to provide aid and support to that end was (or is) a threat.

al Qaeda is now largely holed up in regions that do not offer much by way of aid and support, at least for now. al Qaeda may still be able to project limited power, but its ability to strike at the US in such a coordinated way has been significantly hampered.

The harms of 9/11 cannot be measured by the harms of the event alone. The economic damage and the lives lost are only a small part of a complete justification for a vigorous response. If we merely rebuilt the towers and moved on, we would have done nothing to deny an enemy the power to strike again. We would have done nothing to deny the enemy their ability to develop their offensive capacity. Without our interference and no change in the demeanor of the enemy, a second attack would likely have been larger and more damaging, as the enemy would have continued to develop offensive capacity and support while we stood aside.

Additionally, toppling two governments sends a strong message to other states that might harbor the enemy that they will be pursued and punished. Although it did not serve Russia or China politically to openly support US actions in the Middle East, it seems likely that both states had reason to desire an outcome in which the extremist groups were heavily disrupted. Of course, their ideal outcome would also involve a significant loss of prestige, financial power, and influence by the US as well.

If you allow an enemy to batter your gates, you could sleep easily knowing that you built your gates to be strong and withstand such assaults. Eventually, however, your enemy will learn the weaknesses of your gates and batter them down or circumvent them. You would have failed: not in the construction of your defenses, but by failing to hunt down your enemy and deny them the opportunity of future assaults.

It is just as unfortunate for the strategists that hatred and emotional fervor clouded the discussion of response. No right minded military commander wishes to unnecessarily expend resources on a purposeless campaign. While it may be that a clearly reasoned discussion on response would not have led to as extensive a result, I believe that leaving the gates to attack those harboring the enemy would have been considered strategically sound.

I would argue that that our reaction to 9/11 was not a uniquely bad use of the military, but that most of our wars were mistaken (as were most domestic reactions like locking up dissenters in WW1 or Japanese in WW2). It saddens me that otherwise intelligent people see restraint as indications of being a crackpot.

I would like to give praise to express my agreement with the spirit of this post.

(Attacking Afghanistan made sense... but much of the rest of what was done, militarily and otherwise, was sheer overreaction.)

(I link to this post and print my reply over at my own site. I actually have some pleasant things to say about you - which you might not readily guess from this comment.)

The longer I consider this post the more it troubles me. Your argument is "The American public was destined to overreact to the events of 9-11. Therefore, what they did do must be an overreaction." When I state it that way, you would of course rise in protest – “No, no. What the American response was to 9-11 can be demonstrated to be an overreaction in its own right. That goes without saying.”

Well, it did go without saying, because you didn’t say it. You provide no evidence for either half of the argument and are going in a circle. I could as well write “I woke up on the morning of 9-11 and just knew that even though we are under attack, those buffleheads at Overcoming Bias would underreact.” Then I could define whatever you did as underreacting and prove myself correct, at least in my own mind. Who would choose between us, then, whose actions were over…and whose under?

You may well have offered elsewhere why you believe our responses have been an overreaction, but it is not here or in the linked article that preceeds it. The entire focus of this essay was the groupthink of the public, and how difficult it is to counteract that, combined with (I am sorry to have to say it) your weary superiority. That simply isn’t enough. Worse, the mere fact that it was the focus suggests that this part of the equation predominates over the real question.

That one notices a bandwagon effect and deplores it does not in itself persuade me that it’s a bad bandwagon to be on.

I will note additionally that this is precisely the accusation that conservatives often make against progressives: that they are elitists who “just know” that GW Bush and the neocons are wrong because “everyone knows it,” but when pressed are unable to provide sustained arguments for the premise. You should thus be especially careful not to step in that whole if you hope to persuade. Many commenters on the thread demonstrate the same sloppiness. I don’t hold the host responsible for that, of course, but it may be significant that the same error occurs so frequently in the group.

Thus also with the discussion of courage, which you call the “best example” and wave off counterarguments dismissively. I grant that it takes a modicum of physical courage to face certain death, but let’s not overrate it. The hijackers faced no prospect of pain or even discomfort – they didn’t even deny themselves lap dancers the night before. In a state of excitement for what one believes to be a noble cause, even cowards can nerve themselves up for a few moments, especially under group pressure. That the network itself is cowardly is also easy to demonstrate: they sent a very few to kill many innocents who were unprepared. I take your point that there is a phenomenon by which we will hear no ill of our own and no good of our enemies, but if this is your best example then perhaps you overstate how important this is in group psychology.

Note two: Studies from evolutionary psychology, PTSD, depression, and personality disorders suggests that day-to-day civilization and cooperation is dependent on our wearing blinders. Life is far more painful and dangerous than we could endure if we did not delude ourselves slightly in an overoptimistic way. As events like 9-11 recede in time, we come to regard them as one-off events which should not rule our lives. Perhaps the opposite is true. Perhaps those events are closer to human reality, and the receding of the fear is reentering the too-rosy narrative we call normalcy. Those who are not directly in harm’s way, then, would be especially likely to underestimate threats.

I doubtless noticed this because I do not believe America’s actions to have been an overreaction. Iraq is not much more than a police action, made outrageously expensive by our insistence on creating as few fatalities as possible, whether our own troops or semi-innocent bystanders. I approve of that insistence despite the expense because it is consonant with our values. But I have every recognition that this is a new way of waging war, made necessary by the impact of media and quick communication on our foreign policy.

gator80, I haven't noticed anybody saying why they thought the continental USA hasn't been attacked since 9/11.

Here are three possibilities:

1. In the days after 9/11 we rolled up the AQ network, that we had been watching before but not doing much about since after all they weren't doing much and the ones we let run sometimes led us to new agents and such. Once we eliminated the ones in the USA and our allies eliminated the ones in their own countries, new ones haven't really gotten a foothold.

2. AQ is following Napoleon's maxim which goes "Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake.". They did 9/11 and we did what they wanted us to. If they attack us again we might stop doing what they want and do something else instead. It makes sense for them not to hit us again unless our will to be stupid starts to lapse.

3. It was an inside job and our own administration or their supporters or Mossad or whoever did it to get us to attack iraq and to get support for the Bush administration. They achieved their objectives. But after all the spending and chickenguano we've endured for the administration to stop terrorism, if we got an effective attack now the US public would decide that the current administration is a bunch of stumblebums who can't protect us from AQ no matter how much money they spend or civil rights they revoke. The first time we banded together behind Bush. The second time we wouldn't. So it would be stupid to pull the same trick again.

Our government might have information that would tend to disprove one or more of these alternative possibilities. But if they do, they're keeping it secret. I have no reason beyond sheer prejudice to discredit any of them.

Maybe I missed it in the many, and often rambling, posts, but has anyone addressed why we haven't been attacked again since 9/11? If we're talking about predictions, I would guess there were VERY few of us who would have predicted that on 9/12.

Second, it's remarkable how much confidence people have defining alternative courses of history. (Of course, it's made Harry Turtledove a fortune.) I haven't seen the ability to predict events in advance that would lead to such confidence.

Eliezer:

'the point here was a very short distance from ones I'd already made in "Uncritical Supercriticality" and "Affective Death Spirals"'

Perhaps the main point was, but statements like this:

"If the USA had completely ignored the 9/11 attack - just shrugged and rebuilt the building - it would have been better than the real course of history."

seem to me to require another month of steps of inference even if they're true. Tracking and comparing consequences in world politics is really really complicated.

A word about the terrorists being called cowards: when you take into consideration their complete certainty that they were going directly to paradise, the statement that they were cowards seems more reasonable. As a thought experiment, imagine that some person was faced with a choice between preventing the violent deaths of some 3000 people, or going directly to a paradise of eternal bliss. If this hypothetical person were to choose the former, I would consider that to be a brave decision. If they were to choose the latter, I would have to go with cowardly (and reprehensible, obviously). Put it this way: in their eyes at least, they were taking the easy way out, at least if my understanding of their radical doctrine is correct.

TGGP: Yes. That is my real name. First Anglicized in nearly it's present form in 1715 at Three Forts in NY state (Bonnesteel). I understand that a small museum stands there, now. The etymology is from north of the Caucus Mountains prior to the 1400's; later "Germanicized" to Bohnenstielen and then Anglicized five years after the Paletine Immigration. ...learning the true meaning of the name requires learning about ancient Teutonic and Indo-European linguistics, archecology, the Human Genome Project ...and certain specialties in ancient history. ...which leads to philosohical, social, political, cultural and economic studies of the times in question. ...happy death spirals, indeed... ;) (It would appear that my ancient ancestors were a part of an ancient queen's personal guard. Roughly translated: "The 'Green' Lady's Dagger/Castle." ...which fits, as seventeen generations of Bonesteels have worn the uniforms of colonial and American forces since 1715, and have been busily, if somewhat quietly, engaged in building this nation since our arrival.)

Eliezer, the US killed at least a million Japanese in World War 2, while the attack at Pearl Harbor killed less than 2500. Maybe it is true that the US response to 9/11 is "greater than the appropriate level, whatever the appropriate level may be" but I don't think you have showed that to actually be the case.

the overreaction was foreseeable in advance, not just in hindsight

To paraphrase what my brain is hearing from you, Eliezer:

In 2001, you would have predicted, "In 2007, I will believe that the U.S. overreacted between 2001 and 2007."

In 2007, your prediction is true: you personally believe the U.S. overreacted.

Not very impressive. (I know lots of people who can successfully predict that they will have the same political beliefs six years from now, no matter what intervening evidence occurs between now and then! It's not something that you should take pride in. :-)

I would suggest you join a prediction market if you believe you have an uncanny, cross-domain knack for consistently predicting the future, except that I don't want to distract you from your AI work.

The terrorists don't have to be cowardly or courageous, you know.

rukidding, being biased doesn't mean we can't know anything.

The Americans DID adopt mass marching tactics during the Revolutionary War. We even won battles that way!

Okay, fine, let me rephrase: to the Americans' willingness to resort to nonstandard tactics.

Caledonian, joking in which way?

If you can't make the argument that the invasion is saving lives, and if you can't make the argument that it's costing lives, you don't belong in the argument.