[ducktypegoose]

Good god just thinking about the resources and costs behind what this report describes is staggering. If the collaborative insight, intelligence, engineering, planning, and... just... human effort poured into this microcosm was directed towards building something, what would we have? Probably something a lot more useful than a ruined city and a bunch of graves.

[kungtotte]

You're making the mistake of thinking that this amount of resources and effort was available in some kind of global pool to be allocated to anything, anywhere.

The truth is that aside from maybe the human effort this would've gone to some other war or battle or simply be left unspent.

If, on the other hand, you're making the observation that war and violence sucks and that humanity would ultimately be better off if we tried to work together. Then absolutely I'm behind you 100%.

[Noumenon72]

The "global pool to be allocated to anything, anywhere" is called the economy. When concrete is not needed for walling people in, Iraqi concrete factories don't work extra shifts. The people who would have had to work there become employed at other jobs.

In the short term, a soldier who doesn't have to neutralize Sadr City probably does get assigned to some other war mission. In the medium term, his unit is not called up again and he returns to auto mechanic or whatever other productive thing he can do. He puts his effort into raising kids instead of raising barriers.

War does have an opportunity cost.

[sunjieming]

I like to think that a strong military creates security which allows innovation to increase. The US is able to produce and innovate at such a high level because we're kept stable by a strong military.

Battles like this ideally help us learn more efficient and effective tactics and strategies that can be used in future conflicts.

It's a necessary evil but I sincerely believe we're all better off because of these investments. Maybe someday we'll have world peace but for now, we're a violent species. Thank goodness the liberal democracies of the world have the dominant militaries.

[phry]

> It's a necessary evil but I sincerely believe we're all better off

except for the million dead Iraqi civilians that is

[jcranmer]

The US military is probably the most effective logistical system in the world right now. Which is why, if you pay careful attention to the news, you'll notice that the US military is usually among the first responders to any major disaster worldwide, be it in the Americas, Africa, Asia, or Europe.

[greedo]

"Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics."

[SiempreViernes]

Seems like a rather grand claim to make without supporting evidence. The military have little incentive to be cost effective due to the sanctity of military budgets in the USA, and by construction they use very few local resources which is inefficient.

Maybe you are right about the second claim if you impose the rather arbitrary restriction of ”foreign military force”, but rather obviously the first responders are always the locals. If those happens to include US forces it is a reflection of the maximalist approach to foreign policy the USA follows rather than a feat of logistics.

[greedo]

Read up on REFORGER, or on the build up prior to the 1st Gulf War. The amount of men and materiel moved in both instances was simply incredible. The Second Gulf War used far fewer forces, but was still an amazing display of logistical prowess. The US may not be the most cost-effective, (I'd give that to the Brits), but in terms of capability and overall effectiveness, they don't have a peer.

[jki275]

He didn't say cost effective.

[lostlogin]

Yes. The broader context of why it started and what the result has been is very depressing. The article even says “There were many other terrorist groups, criminal gangs, and war profiteers involved”. It is referring to the non ‘allied’ side but should probably apply to both, particularly the bit about profiteers. The regimes in place before the conflict were terrible, but the end result seems only marginally better at colossal humanitarian cost.

[bmer]

Some ideas:

* multi-storey farms, with "JIT" food production: lots of our food production is wasted, what if we streamlined it, by locating food production centers closer to population centers? Homeless people/other "undesirables" could be given some work maintaining a food production source they can be proud of (availability high tech solutions for various problems, lunch and learns with power point presentations and fancy marketing speak, rapid solution iteration by close interaction between (think, same office) engineers and green-collar food workers)

* traditional farms will keep their roles as is, but will have attached to them food preservation facilities, so that they can build stockpiles for when JIT fails us (natural disasters, etc.), and also be able to sell preserved stockpiles in general as special foods in supermarkets (bunch of "culinary engineering" will have to be done to take traditional preservation methods which have tasty output, and mass-produce it, or better yet, come up with new methods (with tastier output))

* public washrooms with automated cleaning facilities (janitors who maintain the washrooms are inducted into a 24 month MOS on mechanical design and robot construction---they don't need to be become experts on the physics, just aware of the possibilities so that they can combine their experience with this knowledge to come up with designs for engineers to construct, and are then responsible for testing in the field, and iterating on design)

* people who are willing to take risks exploring (maybe again, many "homeless" people/undesirables) could be recruited into fancy programs with the goal of most expansive deep sea exploration to date: mountains of geological, biological, meteorological data for scientists to explore; plus, an excellent training ground for deep space exploration (hostile outdoor environment, massive pressure differentials making structural design complicated)

* programs which involve the "mentally disabled" (think Down's syndrome, or other "obviously mentally deficient" illnesses) not in order to study them as "specimens" to be kept in the confines of their home, or a nursing home, but by involving psycholgists/neuroscientists to work with them in order to figure out the answer to: "sure, they suck at XYZ, is there anything they truly excel at? are there jobs/work/problems that other humans dislike doing which the "disabled" enjoy doing extremely, and are particularly well suited for? are there surprises regarding their capabilities (i.e. could it be that certain illnesses make you extremely good at certain types of mental tasks, which we don't know of because we simply don't interact with such people enough)?

* similar to last point, except for elderly, rather than treating them as old junk---figuring out ways to take advantage of their experience, for their benefit, and that of humanity

* fusion reactors

* deep space asteroid-mining

* energy storage research

* UI research

[thinkcontext]

There's a lot of bizarre stuff in your comment but using the homeless for deep sea exploration!? WTF

How old are you? I would guess in your teens.

[OldHand2018]

In the developing world, most food waste occurs at the food production stage. Think about cost effective cold storage in places with intermittent access to electricity.

In the developed world, most food waste occurs in the home and at restaurants. Localized food production improves local food supply resiliency and access to fresh, healthy food items. But it might also come at the cost of food security in less developed, less wealthy places.

[desireco42]

Pretty much anything is better than promoting human misery, which is what the article describes.

[panzagl]

Various other western countries have slashed their military spending, but the resources don't seem to be allocated to positive endeavors of a similar magnitude.

[thinkcontext]

That's arguable. Peer countries (Germany, France, UK, Japan, etc) spend multiples of the US on foreign aid on a per capita basis. They also spend more on their domestic safety nets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_countr...