Look at the Numbers

Here's a hypothetical situation which has nothing to do with history. Well, actually it has a lot to do with history, but it's not my imagining a fly-on-the-wall conversation that probably never took place. It's a thought experiment.

Let's say that, at the end of World War II, we invaded Germany, freed all the Jews that were still alive, and did all the other things we actually did at the end of World War II. Then let's suppose that, a year later, we took a poll of all those Jews, asking them if they thought we were doing the right thing by setting them free. Now let's suppose that the poll came back the 56% of Jews recently freed from concentration camps, Nazi torture, and what-not, believed it was a good thing, according to our poll. There are two ways to look at this.

The first is the way we tend to look at things. "56%! That's a majority, right? So we've got a mandate from the Jewish population for our actions! Hooray!"

The second is the right way to look at it (hypothetically speaking, of course). "56%? We liberated them from almost-certain death and nearly half of the people want us to stop what we're doing? What gives here? Maybe it wasn't such a good idea after all."

Now I should like to disclaim for a moment. In no way am I suggesting that any of the above is fact, or should be fact. I'm sure all the Jews who were rescued from concentration camps were happy. Killing Jews is bad. Nazis are bad too. Nor am I making a comparison (artful though it may be) between our policy in Iraq and the Nazis. This is a thought experiment, remember? If you can't take it, please just leave and come back when I start talking about cheese.

In Iraq, we have a similar, although also different and should not be compared, situation. We have the Shiites, who under Saddam Hussein were treated poorly (more or less poorly depending on whose version of the story you believe, and I refuse to take sides). We have their liberation by the US (not the point of the war, I know, but for the purposes of this thought experiment, liberated they were nonetheless). So if a poll of Shiites taken, say, this year, found that 56% of them thought things were going well (I've made this number up), there would be two ways to look at that.

The first way... wait, I've already covered this ground. The point is that if only 56% of the population think something is a good thing, then maybe it's not such a great thing. Barely half of the people is one thing, but barely half of the people who are supposed to be benefiting the most from said "good thing" approving of it is probably not so terrific.

Obviously, not everyone will agree, and I don't expect 100% of even the recently-emancipated-from-tyranny to agree that said emancipation was the best thing. But I do expect a little more than "just over half." Just over half of the answers right on a test is still an F.

Please post your comments stating that I am a horrible anti-Semite racist below, or if you'd like to save them up, I can arrange to write something about how I disagree fundamentally with the state of Israel, and you can head over there and call me a Nazi. I must be, since I don't agree with you. That, I suppose, is how a little over half of people feel about me. I can live with it.