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How About a Nice Game of Global Thermonuclear War?
Loconut1389 writes "According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon has a revised doctrine to be signed in the next few weeks would give the president the authority for a preemptive nuclear strike. I would hope that this is a move designed to say we mean business and then never use it, but the means is there for mutual assured destruction."
My original submission was early this morning and also had a few extras like "Doesnt anybody remember the W.O.P.R.?
...Johnny, and remember if those mean boys on the playground even think of taking your Tonka trucks, make sure to kill them first!
FLR
I dont want to glow in the dark...
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Yes, because pre-emptive strikes have worked so well in this country before. Oh, wait a minute...
They will never stop until somebody makes the
....this whole Iraq mess in the first place by nuking them all? After all they "did" have weapons of mass destruction and intended to use them, right?
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
...scientists today believe they have finally solved the Fermi paradox. "Where are the aliens? Dead, all dead, in piles of radioactive rubble."
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
A preemptive nukular strike, sir.
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!
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Of course, since W's administration doesn't seem to think the Constitution is worth the paper it's printed on, this won't stop them.
And Congress doesn't seem to hold it in any higher regard these days. The Constitution says that Congress has the power to declare war, not the power to issue an "authorization of force".
There are at leat 19-20 countries with some kind of nuclear program, of which at least 6-8 have a full long-range nuclear capability. Wiki Has some interesting information on that one. Just because USSR is gone doesnt mean that all their tech has dropped off the face of the earth.
Live for the present, learn from the past, and dream of the future!
Err... anything else dumb.
What's that? We had that opportunity? November 2004, you say? Oops.
The president already has the authority to launch a pre-emptive strike.* What the article is about is a new policy statement by the US (i.e. an international "FYI") about when the president will haul off and nuke something
*This, like the policy discussed in the article, depends on the situation being one where the President doesn't have to wait for Congress to declare war.
Once upon a time the US Army developed an atomic artillery shell that could be fired from your standard 155mm Howitzer. I have heard rumors that authority to use atomic shells was (to be) vested in field commanders, possibly as low as the regiment level.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
North Korea at the very least? Lots of places, sheesh. And there are a lot of old Soviet scientist with nothing in their wallets but nuclear warhead schematics. Come on, open your eyes a little bit.
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!
These countries have nuclear capabilities.
Britain, China, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, United States, and I think North Korea as well.
The arguments for pre-empting action can be made long and hard, but in the case of nuclear weapons it just seems like a bad decision. The sheer destruction of these payloads, and devastating after effects they cause are not something that (in my opinion) be used without fully justified action. There's literally just too much at stake for the world community as a whole.
Business Voyeur
(Me? Cynical?)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
As long as no other country builds an automatic retaliation system without telling us. I wonder where that idea would come from?
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Remind me again how having stupid people be in charge of weapons that could potentially destroy us all is something to laugh at?! GAAH...
The biggest threat is the fact that the soviets had/have (may still?) sell weapons to other countries so long as the price is right. On top of that, many soviet scientist could be bought for a price.
That's the reason NASA can't pay Russia to launch more Soyuz's to station to compensate for grounded shuttles, the nonproliferation laws state that the US can't exchange money for services to countries that supply arms to our enemies...
-everphilski-
By destroying the entire city the small group of evil men may or may not be in? What a winning strategy.
This is one of those things that history classes 100 years from now will look back upon and someone will ask: "Why would they ever give the president so much power?" :-)
"The first example for potential nuclear weapon use listed in the draft is against an enemy that is using "or intending to use WMD" against U.S. or allied, multinational military forces or civilian populations."
GW was sure they had WMDs.
Furthermore, if North Korea had any legitimate reason to be concerned about America's intentions before (well, Iraq probably didn't help), they're certainly going to be paranoid out of their tiny little minds now. The further we go down this path, the less North Korea is going to believe it has to lose by launching a pre-emptive strike of their own, to pre-empt the American pre-emptive strike.
If you assume Iran actually meant what it said about their own nuclear technology being for peaceful purposes, you can be absolutely rest-assured they'll have no intention of sticking to that now. The only hope Iran has of NOT being nuked is to be in a position of nuking the USA.
All in all, this is a bad day for the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but one hell of a siesta for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Is this really necessary? Can't we just threaten to place our enemies under the protection of FEMA? That seems to achieve the mass casualty effect just fine, and yet the environmental mess it creates will only take a few decades to clear...
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Uhhm, we didn't do this with the soviets when they had enough firepower aimed at us to level the world 3 times over.
We also have a system in place to respond in kind to wmd attack within 3 minutes with all out world-killing force.
the idea of "preemptive nuclear strike" is not just radical, it's insane.
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Here's a scenario for you. Saudi Arabia is virulently anti-American and even anti-Non-Muslim. It is the seat of Wahabi Islam, a sect of Islam that calls for systematic elimination of the Shia and Sufi Muslims as well. Now, a bunch of Saudi terrorists drop a backpack nuke in NYC and kill 80,000 Americans and foreigners.
What do we do, aside from wringing our hands and saying we can't kill large number of civilians to fight terrorism? The terrorists bomb us, tens of thousands of Americans or Brits or French or Japanese, etc. die. No massive response against the popular terrorists' home base. The result is a population that sees the attacked country/ethnic/religious group as weak, vulnerable and in the case of Islamic terrorism, which is the majority of terrorism today, it is a "sign from Allah that the enemy is going to lose."
So we don't nuke Riyadh and kill a bunch of the people who gave their moral support to the enemy. This is the best option we have short of getting ourselves either into a guerrilla war or just letting the enemy kill us. And here's something that the hand-wringing pacifists will never accept: our enemy knows us and hates us. People who are as dedicated toward killing you as most terrorists are cannot and will not be reasoned with or otherwise be converted to liking you. Either they die, or you and your children die because after you're dead, chances are damn good they'll kill every last one of yours that they can get ahold of.
We have to kill people who even just strongly SUPPORT terrorism overseas if we can to drive home the point we are serious. If we don't, then many of those people will be saying "sign me up" right after the American paper tiger has been defanged by the "martyrs." The Iranian government is already openly boasting that we are weak and totally exposed thanks to our blithering idiots in government from Nagin to Blanco to Bush to almost all of the bureaucrats in between.
The threat is real, and it can indeed be better solved through the threat of military force, especially mass destruction by nuclear weapons. In 1992, the only way we were able to keep Saddam from hitting us and the Israelis with bio weapons was we told him we were prepared to fire off a few of our nuclear weapons against Iraq.
It really does suck that we are pushed to this point, but how else are we going to intimidate the governments and populations that would whole-heartedly jump into the terrorism game? Huh? I'd like to see some serious proposals that don't revolve around us sacrificing all of our rights and sending massive amounts of aid to these groups on a regular basis like some sort of tribute in exchange for not bombing us. And let's cut the bullshit. The Muslim terrorists whine and bitch and moan not just about the fact that we support Israel and have/had troops on their holy grounds, but that *gasp* Spain is actually ruled today by the Spanish and not those imperialist Moores. Repeat the same claims about Greece, Romania, a few other countries in Europe occupied by the Ottomans, India and well... you get the idea. Pretty much any country where the non-Muslims gave their Muslim overlords a swift kick in the ass right out the door.
Blame the enemy, not us. Most Americans do not want to rule the world. Hell, most Americans would really be happy if the rest of the world would just leave us alone and we could get our government to reciprocate to them. But I can say this, as much of an isolationist, live-and-let-live southerner as I am, if my girlfriend and our families were killed in the Northern Virginia area by an Al Qaeda nuclear weapon, I wouldn't care about freedom of speech or conscience in Saudi Arabia. Like many, I'd support anyone who would drive a nuclear bomb right into the middle of those fuckers dancing in the streets celebrating "The Great Satan(tm)" getting nuked.
For the love of God, terrorism is about slaughtering women and children. It is a low-key form of genocide and is beyond mere criminality. A population that supports it and encourages it doesn't deserve to be let off the hook when it unleashes that on another group.
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For those who are dumb enough to think that this is such a good idea, first read the article Apocalypse Soon, written by the man who was the person came closest to presssing that button in US history, R obert McNamara AKA Kennedy Administration's Secretary of Defense during the Cuban missile crisis.
I'm in for a thermonuclear flaming for so much as suggesting this on slashdot, but here goes:
The Pentagon is charged with defense and defense planning. Drawing up plans like this is their job. They are there to plan for every contingency and to present every option. They are also there to carry those plans out when so ordered. They are not there to carry those plans out without authorization
The United States is a second-strike nuclear power--its weapons are both so numerous and so dispersed that no single strike could easily knock out all of its retaliatory capability. Emerging nuclear powers, in contrast, are usually first-strike powers: their weapons are few and concentrated, geographically.
Given the knowledge that such an emerging nuclear power is preparing to fire its weapons on the United States or its allies, the warplanners are faced with the following choice:
Consider the costs and the benefits: a targeted, pre-emptive strike could neutralize a military target and eliminate a threat, all in a single stroke. Striking after the fact, your choice of targets is less optimal--do you hit some *other*, less-crucial part of the enemy's military infrastructure? Or do you retaliate in kind against a civilian target?
Tough choices. But somebody has to make them, eventually.
When "Death to America, death to Ireal" is chanted at the end of Irans parliamentry sessions much in the same fasion you might say "Amen" in church...do you really thing we should not take them seriously?
Life is not for the lazy.
In other words, if the USA got itself into a war that was wholly conventional, against an opponent that had no WMDs whatsoever and where no claims of WMDs were even made, but where that opponent was simply better at fighting, the President of the USA will have the right to nuke that opponent off the face of the planet.
Translated: America WILL win every war it fights, because if it loses, it'll utterly obliterate whoever beat it, and then it'll declare itself the winner anyway.
That is a very dangerous policy and doesn't dissuade places like North Korea at all. If anything, they'll now take the line that America is going to nuke them no matter what, so there is absolutely no point in holding back. If they're dead anyway, then why not pull the trigger?
That is NOT a way to make the world safer. Never play chicken with paranoid schizophrenics, particularly not after you've told them that you're prepared to cheat to win.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It SHOULD go without saying, but "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter".
If you consider what either side offers in this conflict, I think you would be led to conclude that there ARE no good guys. Consider a few points:
Whereas Muslim terrorists want to enslave the WORLD to their retarded religious extremism, the neocons want to ENSLAVE the world to their retarded religious extremism.
Whereas Muslim terrorists want to keep their women in the home covered from head to toe and pregnant, neocons want to keep their women in the home BAREFOOT and pregnant.
And whereas Muslim terrorists hope to spread their ideology by indiscriminantly torturing and killing white people, neocons hope to spread their ideology by indiscriminantly torturing and killing Muslims.
My greatest hope is that the Rapture comes soon and hoovers up all these assholes so that the world can be left to rational people.
Remember a few years ago, when we gave Bush the ability to go to war to "Show that we mean business", then went to war? Prematurely and illegally I might add. I think this is something to consider, but not with this "We don't just talk like 2 year olds, we act like it too" administration.
These are NOT the mental giants I pictured to responibly wield such authority.
--
This sig is available via p2p
"Nuclear proliferation will never be tolerated. If you sell those bombs on the black market, expect your nuclear reprocessing plants to be obliterated. And if you're lucky, we will spare your regime too."
Yeehaw! Way to tell 'em, buddy!
...Pakistan really dodged the bullet on that one, huh? Not only did we tolerate their proliferation and sale of nuclear systems and technical knowledge, but we spared their regime too.
BTW, what the fuck is a "nuclear reprocessing plant"? Can we please be minimally literate in the subject matter?
WARNING: DO NOT LET DR. MARIO TOUCH YOUR GENITALS. HE IS NOT A REAL DOCTOR.
Fact. The US is the only nation that has actualy deployed a nuke against any other party. We have flexed our muscles, and have clearly showed our willingness to risk nuclear destruction during the cuban missle crisis.
Fact: Nuclear proliferation is tolerated. We have tolerated Israel for many years, with unknown capability, even though none of the neighboring countries has any capability. We offically do not know what these arms can do, though perhaps they could destroy the US.
Fact: Fissionable material is not enough. The enemy must have transportation and enough arms to do significant damage prior to destruction. This is why the US and the former USSR had so many missles. Suitecase nuclear bombs are not practicle.
In fact, the biggest part of this new proposal is the ability use nukes to preemptively strike against suspected biological arms. So, the US Government can now make up threats, as they did the WMDs in Iraq, and use such fabrications to deploy non-conventional arms.
The real danger of this is false security. We almost attacked Cuba during the missle crisis, and it lucky we didn't because we did not know there were a few dozen fully armed nuked ready to retaliate. To defend ourselves against the former USSR we spent massive amounts of money on arms, which we now know was unnecesary because the USSR was not nearly as strong as the CIA thought, and has resulted in the US becoming deeply indebted to the Saudis and the Chines. From the 9/11 attack we entered Afganastan, which was not totally unjusitified, but the mission was so ill planned we still do not have Saudi Osama. We use those resources instead to invade Iraq, on the basis of, again, bad intellegence, and now want to launch nukes against Iran on the basis on some of the same intellegence.
I know that few peope care. As long as we can live in our big houses in the suburbs, and drive our big cars, and watch out big tvs, who gives a shit about how many dark people have to die. And, after all, if we use those missles, then the arms and drug dealers will have to hire more people, so the economy will improve! Yea! Drop out bubba will have a job.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I don't know how many of you grew up with the Cuban Missile Crisis and neighbors digging bomb shelters in their back yards; most of you probably just had scary TV specials instead. But we really don't need to put up with this kind of crap from an Administration that says it's doing it to make us *safer*.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Be careful with that word "never". It may not mean what you think it means.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
It was a project funded by DARPA. These "shells" are fired from a mobile walking tank's rail guns. Theoretically, it could fire a nuke that is untracable and therefore cannot be stopped.
Summary : Metal Gear?!?
May we can stump bush with Tic Tac Toe. He'll realize he can never win!
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
OPLAN's and CONPLANS exist by the hundreds, you are just hyperventilating over the idea that given the unthinkable, we might actually act unthinkably, given a huge amount of extremely unlikely circumstances, not the least of which is an extremely reactionary President, and cabinet, and Senior Military Leaders who most often would advise against it.
We have lived with the Nuclear Genie out of the bottle in this country for 60+ years now. I would think that we are pretty safe from Dr. Stranglove.
Despite the idea that there are truthfully folks (read many third world countries by todays standards) who try to bury secrets, several hundred feet underground, with many entrances and exits, and multiply redundant power and communications, and nearby nuclear, or chemical plants who produce precursors for VX, or biological agennts (think: genetic engineering facilities). These facilities are completely impervious to even our smart bombs. They cannot be explained, nor do the boogie men who build, and run them for their little crews of mad scientists have any intent of explaining them. Now without giving away any secrets, suffice it to say that there are many ways to learn tidbits about these little bunkers. What would you advocate we do about this knowledge???? Let's examine this little chess puzzle?
1) We could ignore it (the facility and all that goes on).
2) We could demand the UN invoke sanctions unless the boogie men quit whatever we know they are doing, but that we cannot fess up to knowing about.
3) We could try and form a coalition of other boogie men who are making billions selling technology to the boogie men in the first place. Optionally we could enhance this scenario by demanding a UN Security Council Resolution (of course again knowing that all the folks who are making money from the illegal sales of technology (and dual use stuff) are voting members of the UN Sec Council). By this time we know full well that half the economy of boogieville is wrapped up in "defense", and particularly in Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical technologies which would in the hands of most sane individuals rid the entire world of bugs (SuperVX), or kill every primate on the planet (Howbout SuperAIDS), or possibly even throw a little Nuclear FOBS into orbit on short notice and then detonate the thing over a major metropolitan area leaving an EMP'ed Stonhenge. All this coupled with the problem that the pitifully poor third world country hates our guts because the government, or religious zealots have been pumped full of lies and half truths by our own press.
4) Or after quiet diplomacy, some arm twisting, let a very delicately worde plan leak to the press that if some psychotic would decide to try the scenario above... let him know in no uncertain terms, that a small NUDET (a few KT or less) will be more than enough to destructively penetrate to his 700 foot deep little hideaway, rendering it useless as a hidden laboratory, launch facility, etc. All the time ensuring that the proper literature is available to ensure that there is less risk of this underground NUDET becoming any more danger to the pitiful residents of ashcanistan than smoking one of the heroin laced cigarettes they have smoked for their whole lives. And that since the penetrator ensured that it was several hundred feet deep before it detonated, no appreciable fallout, no appreciable collateral damage (beyond a couple hundred yards), etc...
5) Or we could put a multi-megaton, multistaged, MARV warhead one each on all of the stupid countries who sold them the technology? Or if we were feeling particularly kind, just several air bursts, about 1-5 miles up. It would change hundreds of miles into an electronic wasteland. Read up on EMP sometime.
6) Maybe the leader of the World could come up with some options I have not listed. Maybe we could bribe boogie man? How bout assasination (hey Pat Roberts got fried for suggesting that assasination could be a tool of statesmanship)? Hey I'd love to hear somebody even
Prez: These New Zealanders have banned all our Nu Clear ships - what are they hiding
Aide: But they are our Allie.
Prez: they MUST be hiding WMDS.
Aide: *slap on forehead*
Prez: *Presses Button*
later....
Aide: there are no signs of WMDS in New Zealand's smoldering wreakage. the 3 remaining people over there are quite upset
Prez: See I tol you that those Nu Clear Missile would Obliterate those WMDS! My policy works, Nuke those 3 remaining NZlanders. they might know how to make a WMD.
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
Greg Stillson?
I don't know if you've ever studied the Cuban Missile Crisis, but it came about because we elected John F. Kennedy. Now, I'm not saying that Kennedy was incompetent. Hardly, just the opposite. The problem was that Kennedy was percieved as being a spoiled rich boy by Nikita Khrushchev, someone the Soviet Premiere thought he could easily push around. Well, thankfully, Khrushchev was wrong, Kennedy was willing to go to war, and the Soviet sphere didn't gain a permanent nuclear strike base just off our coast. The key to international security is to show that you are willing to fight those who threaten you, otherwise your weakness is going to be exploited for all it's worth until it's too late for you to do anything but go to war.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
Slashdot has migrated from tech news to "Tech News and Anything We Can Bitch At Bush Over"
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
http://mediagoblin.org/
No, the only nation other than the United States with anything close to a MAD deterence capability is Russia. China, UK, France and DPRK have limited capabilities compared to the US/Russia.
Israel, India, Pakistan and others have very limited power projection ablities compared to the other Nuclear Powers.
9/11 should have dispelled that idea. Say the US nukes Iranian territory or even all of Iranian cities. (For this is to whom this policy is geared in about 10 years or so when they can attack). Do you not think that Iranians living around the world would not try to retaliate? Do you not think that most middle easterners would not try to retaliate?
Few countries would come to the US's aid if they nuked Iran. War or no war. The act is simply too repulsive. Sure, there will be official policies, but the regular people on the ground: customs official, the policeman. They will not inforce official policy.
Any country that lobs nukes will inevitably get theirs too. Not that the regular folks deserve it but they will certainly be the ones to pay the price.
Nukes are 40s technology. The time to learn to get along is now.
sounds like a great idea not to fuck with them then.
maybe they only chant stuff like that because the US tried to inject puppets into their nation.
maybe stop inviting the CIA to overthrow their regime.
or running stories about how their nuclear power plant is a cover for a WMD station. a nation who lied about WMDs in iraq, forged the niger yellow cake "evidence" and can say with a straight face that iraq was connected with 9-11, even after saying otherwise, doesn't deserve to believed about anything.
a nation who has 50 thousand nuclear warheads telling another nation they cannot have weapons, is about as absurd and hypocritical as it gets, especially since it's also the only country that has used 2 nuclear bombs on civilian targets. an act of terrorism by any definition of the word.
and clearly, any country that doesn't have wmd, like iraq, gets invaded. it's about time every nation on earth starts stockpiling wmd.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Anybody else notice how they use "Weapons of Mass Destruction" when speaking off the "enemy", but off "nuclear weapons" (not WMDs I guess!) when speaking about the americans?
Please, stand up and, for the sake of humanity, don't let this happen!
So... Muslims Neocons have a foot fetish? That explains a LOT. ;P
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
In other words, not very much. Not all prisoners will ever be given the opportunity for a review - the Pentagon has already said as much and has said that it expects some to remain prisoners for life with no possibility of any court review, even on an internal level.
Those who have been "processed" have been denied knowledge of the charges against them or the evidence against them. Indeed, nobody other than the top brass and the judges themselves know if any charges or evidence even exists in these cases. That falls a bit short of a right to a hearing.
Nor have any of those "processed" been allowed to bring witnesses of any kind, challenge testimony presented, challenge the impartiality of any of the tribunal, or carry out any kind of investigative process whatsoever. They can't even question any hearsay the DoD wishes to use as "evidence".
I'm from England, and I know English history pretty well. England had a time like that, under the ruthless dictates of King John, where any person could be arrested on suspicion of an unspecified crime, on the basis of the accuser's uncorroborated "eyewitness testimony". So horrified did England become that it rose up in rebellion and demanded a written constitution (the Magna Carta).
America has a written constitution - although GWB tends to ignore it, and it hasn't been (for the most part) American citizens who have suffered - although there are exceptions. In consequence, there is virtually no chance of any kind of revolt against abuses of power. Nobody who is in a position to has enough to lose or enough to gain. Those who do - well, they're just labelled terrorists and carpet-bombed.
The whole "war on terror" is one huge unholy mess. Hey, fighting terrorism is a good idea, but you can't fight terrorism with the weapons of terror. You've got to use other methods, where at all possible. The problem is, GWB has no interest in "other methods", which makes me think that he is more interested in the fighting than in the resolving.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Mod me as a troll, I don't care... I have to say it.
Those stupid motherfuckers.
No, the only nation other than the United States with anything close to a MAD deterence capability is Russia. China, UK, France and DPRK have limited capabilities compared to the US/Russia.
Umm. I'm not usually one to rise to the defense of Europe but I would point out that France and the UK have modern SSBNs. The Brits even have our D-5 missile. That's a pretty good deterrence force right there.
I'll grant you that China's nuclear force is a joke as far as the US or Russia are concerned. Of course that will probably change because some champ got the bright idea of walking away from the ABM treaty and giving them an excuse to start an arms race.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
China has about two dozen single-warhead missiles that can reach the US. That's hardly obliteration, though they're the old, heavy kind that are 2MT or more yield.
I did some research on this a while back. The original context was where someone asserted that a mutual exchange could destroy everything on the planet. The numbers for warheads are about two years out of date, so stats for certain weapons like the Peacekeepers are outdated (there are fewer deployed, possibly none by this point).
Throw it into the US and Russia, and the percentages jump to significant levels -- about 5.8% of Russia, and about 11% of the US. It doesn't factor in fallout, either, but as the numbers were intended to reflect airbursts, that wouldn't be as much of a probl
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The Pentagon is pretty sure that North Korea has a couple of nukes already but they don't have the ballistic missle technology to reach the United States. Currently, they are more of a threat to South Korea and Japan. They are selling their Taep'o-dong 1 boosters to Iran though, which is not good. If Iran develops nuclear weapons they can use these boosters to reach nations such as Israel. They estimate North Korea could develop booster technology necessary to reach the United States in a few years though.
In no particular order, these are the 'Nuclear Nations':-
- France
- United Kingdom
- Israel
- India
- Pakistan
- China
- Russia
- United States of America
There is also reputed to be a fair amount of 'missing material' of which nobody knows the exact quantity or location.Frightening isn't it?
The world's gone MAD, totally MAD
Since when does Nuclear Weapon == Tonka Truck? We're not talking about a little kid (presumably the US) taking toys from anyone. We're talking about the toddler's leverage against the bully with the brass nuckles. I agree that we're not handling things the way we should be, but I think that no matter who is president, there are always things that no one will like and things that half of the people will hate. What I'm deathly afraid of, and what seems to be becoming a reality day by day, is another civil war. It seems that the democrats and the republicans are getting further and further apart and at the same time increasing the hatred and the generalizations. I live in a very democrat heavy town (and in Iowa no less) and the bumper stickers, posters, newspaper articles, everything all seem to have degenerated into an us versus them thing where everyones backed into thinking the President is a schmuck with no regard for humanity nor a single shred of intelligence, or thinking that he's doing everything 100% right. The dissent is growing, the economy is going down the tubes, gas prices are going through the roof, a fair chunk of the country is now a 3rd world disaster area, and I don't see things getting better anytime soon. We're spending Billions on disaster recovery every year, if it isn't Katrina, it's Ivan or Andrew, or tornados in the midwest, earthquakes in the west, blizzards in the east. I am starting to believe that if OPEC squeezes their fist just a little tighter, the overall stress level in the country will go up just enough to bring us to the brink of some kind of internal war- perhaps not with guns however. I think that if you add up the stress of gas, race relations, democrats versus republicans, terrorism, and the job market, we're being torn apart at the seams and the terrorists are winning. I keep getting visions of $6-8+ gallons of gas, inflation, and chaos. Maybe this is all a bit of an exaggeration, but it certainly seems like things are heading for certain disaster. Anyway, for the good of all of us, please stop, research and let go of your pre-conceptions before you join into the us versus them choir.
True on UK/French nukes, especially the UK's Tridents, however they don't have that many in the general scheme of things. Four Vanguard class with 16 SLBMs each, that'd kill alot of people in city bursts, but in the scheme of MAD, it's a minor threat.
"The British-designed warheads are thought to be selectable between 0.3 kt, 5-10 kt and 100 kt; the yields obtained using either the unboosted primary, the boosted primary, or the entire "physics package". Although it owns the warheads, the United Kingdom does not actually own the missiles; instead it leased 58 missiles from the United States government and these are exchanged when requiring maintenance with missiles from the United States Navy's own pool."
Notice that the french are declaring that they will use nukes in retaliation or self defense. Bush wants to use nukes in a first strike fashion.
This is really just a logical extention of his pre-emptive war doctrine. He simply reserves the right to attack anybody whenever he wants, for whatever reason he wants, using whatever weapons he wants.
evil is as evil does
All preemptive strikes are preventive, but not all preventive strikes are preemptive.
Preemption stops an action after it has been set in motion but before it has borne fruit. In order for an attack to be preemptive, the enemy must be engaged in an attack, albeit at a very early stage. When the gunfighter is going for his six-shooter, and the friend you've prudently stationed on the roof of the blacksmith's drills him with his winchester, that's preemption. When you shoot a guy in the back on the theory he might shoot you some day, that's merely prevention.
True preemption requires evidence, not of capability, not of hostility, but actual action being set in motion. Nobody who believes the self-defense is justifiable can deny that preemption is equally justifiable. But most forms of prevention are morally reprehensible.
Having a doctrine of preemption only means you prepare for the eventuality. I'd say it should be pretty uncontroversial, except that prevention/preemption distinction is one which many people aren't aware of. Unfortunately, the administration likes to blur the lines between these two things, giving mere prevention the status of preemption. The Iraq war was a preventive war, not a preemptive one, but the administration did its best to make it look preemptive.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Um, the point of weapons is to have more and bigger than the other guy. Trying to prevent other people from being as well-armed is not hypocritical in the slightest. Just so you know. Elitist, perhaps, but not hypocritical. When you insult someone, at least use the correct word.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
WTF is wrong with our government?!?!?
I'm in the middle of studying for my Chemistry quiz, when I figure, hey, I haven't check slashdot in the last couple of seconds, so lo and behold, out of the bloody blue, there's a story talking about my government giving a moron the power to nuke whoever he wants. WHY???? Where they bored? Did they feel they didn't fuck enough things up? Nuclear war is no joke! It doesn't matter what the reason or who you're bombing; nuking someone is wrong!
There's no reason and entire city of innocent people needs to be wiped out just because these idiots can't get along...
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
This is actually a kind of complicated intersection of several forms of insanity. For example, Dubya's flavor is that he buys into religious forms of Armageddon, so he thinks America needs lots of nuclear bombs to join the party "properly". The neo-cons have delusions of recreating a new Holy Roman Empire, with nuclear bombs replacing the legions. Cheney is the best example of the most toys faction, as in "He who dies with the most toys wins."
In reality, might does NOT make right, and trying to sustain modern civilization with the law of the jungle is going to produce a whole lot of dead Tarzans. The more nuclear weapons one side plays with, the more weapons the other sides will want to play with, and it's the richest players who wind up with the most to lose, and the poorest players who can roll for broke. No blinking allowed.
I'm not a pacifist, by the way. I know that the nuclear genie is not going to go back into the bottle, and the only way to have real peace is if you are ready to use sufficient force against anyone who wants to become violent. However, "sufficient" does not mean "absolute and overwhelming", because there is no such thing. What the world really needs is enough good nations that are capable of working together to face down the threats--which is almost exactly the situation that existed in Iraq in the '90s.
However, I also think that the "just use of force" has an even more important aspect than keeping it to the sufficient level. That's a matter of personal attitude. The just use of force should be done with the proverbial heavy heart and in the face of true necessity. It shouldn't be imagined as a real-life version of a video game or some kind of cowboy romp, which is how most of the Rusheviks and Busheviks see it. You can actually map this all the way down to your local policeman: Of course you want your local policeman to know how to quickly and efficiently apply enough force for each situation, but I do not want a policeman who enjoys the use of force, or even one who has become indifferent to the use of it.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Are you HIGH? Seriously, do you REALLY believe what you just put up there?
... everything!!! Show them we don't need a DAMN thing that comes from them... I guarantee they will be BEGGING to talk with us inside of 3 months!!! Turn their oil tankers around, don't let ANY of their people INTO or OUT of our country. Don't buy JACK SHIT from them.
So, you would get your rhetoric and information from movies to make your decisions? What? Is your news channel the "E" channel and/or FOX?
You are the classic example of what has become of this nation. ("pop-culture", "pop-mentality", "pop-psychology", a nation of lolli-pop-heads). You must be like what, early twenty something? Have you EVER been outside of this country? Have you EVER been to Europe? Mexico? Canada? Cuba? I don't mean just the little tourist traps where you see what "their" government wants you to see, but explored some of these other countries? Met people from other nations, had ANY kind of friendly relation with a person from another country/culture?
So, we should just ATTACK!! Damn the torpedoes FULL speed ahead... Nukem till they GLOW!!! Despite the FACT that those involved with 9/11 weren't from IRAQ, but MOST were from our BUDDIES the SAUDIS!!! Why then haven't we ATTACKED THEM?
YES we are THE MOST POWERFUL nation but that power comes with an even GREATER amount of responsibility and required temperance. ALSO, it requires a certain amount of intelligence and wisdom to think BEFORE we act.
Oh that's right, responsibility is something Americans (most) don't believe in anymore. Temperance, thought BEFORE action, instead of RE-action, that's right these too don't mean a DAMN thing...
I believe in taking action but NOT before we KNOW who is responsible! We KNOW who is responsible, but because the RICH have connections and TIES to those responsible AND have a strong control of the GOVERNEMENT (OUR government), the PROPER course of action is NOT being taken. Nor will it...
PROPER action should be taken to severely pressure the governments of Saudi Arabia and the surrounding countries, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Isreal, Palestine, Turkey, Iran, in fact MOST of the nations in that area to cough up those that are terrorists. You want to cripple a nation? CUT THEM OFF!!! Don't NUKEM! That just makes us MORE enemies, it makes US the enemy. Then EVERYONE sees us as an enemy if we just go in and without THINKING blow shit up!! Also, that crap that drugs lead to terrorism? What about the FACT that the country we liberated but don't care about because they don't have oil (Afghanistan) is one of the LARGES OPIUM producers of ANY nation? That certainly sounds like "feeding grounds" for terrorism.
Solution?
CUT THEM OFF!!!
Cut them off financial, economically, trade
SURE it will mean hard times for us, but it will be worth it in the long run.
BUT because the rich and the businesses control our government this will NEVER happen. It would take and EVEN GREATER amount of Chutzpah and BALLS to do it then it would to NUKEM! That's the EASY way out... but without THINKING about it, we wouldn't realize till it was too late that we have just turned EVERY OTHER NATION against us. You want WW3? Go ahead support that CHILDISH, TWO year old mentality.
We should have been researching new technologies to replace fuel when we figured out (twenty years ago) that we would start running out of crude oil around 1999/2000. (In other words we are using more then the capability is to produce and pump out.) HAVE YOU SEEN what the Saudis have in terms of riches? The opulence of those palaces? The CACHES of MONEY, Au (that's Gold for those that don't remember chemistry), Ag (Silver), jewels are SO vast!!! It is mind boggling to see.
If you want to nuke someone Nuke the Saudis, start saving for a hybrid car that gets BETTER then 45mpg to use less OIL, use more natural fabrics not ones which are petroleum based to use LESS OIL, and for GOD's sake do a little research before saying anything THAT m
So if it launches them and they go over 12,00 miles to their target, do we get $0.15 each additional mile plus damages
Does it make any sense at all?
... given that we now know that there was absolutely no trace of WMD's whatsoever? ... Or would you have even known how big a mistake your country had made, given that some dumbass like Bush would just tell you that the WMD's were destroyed in the blast.
.... and may just force that myth to become a reality at your expense.
Lets use a WMD in a pre-emptive strike against groups that MAY have WMD's!
How proud would you as an American be if you had nuked Iraq
Bush and his cohorts are the problem, not the answer. They are the terrorists bent on destabilizing the world's security. He is a firm believer in the book of Revelations and Armeggedon
IRAN is the new target.
Within 5 years Iran plans to have the bomb.
Iran is too big for Dubyafucker to invade in a conventional manner, without massive conscription.
Iran will be pre-emptively nuked by the time they are ready to test their first bomb. Hopefully it won't result in the immediate retaliatory destruction of the USA by the nations of the world whom this attack will anger.
The preparations are happening, this is not a troll, this is not flamebait.
Go ahead and ask your local representative why your airforce just ordered new flight simulators programmed specificaly for the topography of Iran.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
The Iraq war was a preventive war, not a preemptive one, but the administration did its best to make it look preemptive.
What was it trying to prevent?
American justification for refusing the pledge during the Cold War was that we needed the nuclear deterrent to prevent the Soviets from invading Western Europe.
According to this article, the issue came up within NATO as recently as 1999 and NATO refused to make such a pledge. A 2002 Pentagon report also looked into new first-strike uses for mini-nukes. Modern Russia continues the no-first-strike policy.
Whether you think no-first-strike is a good policy or a bad one, I think the subject is interesting because (as this Slashdot article implies) most of my fellow Americans have an image of themselves and ourselves as a nation such that they would assume no-first-strike to be our policy - with Soviet and other "bad guys" refusing to agree. As usual, the truth is more complex.
The tsar bomba, as it was tested was one of the cleanest weapons fired.
The full bomb, however would have made a very big mess, though.
BTW, something that can cause third degree burns at 100km away is pretty impressive (even if that monster bomb was impractical).
GPG 0x1B479C78
The Pentagon only gave gave him exactly what he asked for: the capability to order a "nucular" first strike.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Both policies allow pre-emptive stikes. Pre-emptive strikes are those against targets that are intending to strike you. This is "do unto others before they do unto you."
France is not saying they will only strike in retaliation - they may hit first if they think someone is about to hit them. The US is not saying they will hit without provocation - but that they may hit to stop an incoming attack before it gets started.
The problem is that the US is forsaking 60 years of carefully built credibility over the WMD issue - as though the war in Iraq wasn't bad enough. This measure (the new policy) does NOT increase American security. Nation-states already weren't going to attack us because we'd reduce them to smouldering rubble. Terrorists will not be deterred because we will never see it coming, and there is no place to productively bomb in response to a first strike.
There is a bare chance that this will make a pre-emptive strike against N. Korea legal if the President feels an attack is imminent. But it doesn't seem likely to make any meaningful difference to the other stakeholders in the N. Korea question. If the US bombs N. Korea with nukes to stop an attack, Seoul will still be gone in the morning. Is this a sign that the US does not believe that a diplomatic solution to the N. Korean WMD issue will be found?
Russia and China just held first joint military exercises.
China attempts to buy US oil company and is rebuffed.
US having problems in Iraq, perhaps Russia/China see possible takeover bid (maybe with UN approval), or perhaps they are posturing over Iran.
China refers to Taiwan as "terrorists", Chinese general recently threatened to "N-word" the US over Taiwan. Chinese officials back down. (Perhaps this document is our version of this sort of posturing.)
The Bush administration has pushed policies that blur the line between nuclear and conventional war-- i.e. tactical nukes to be used "in theater". This document may be referring to those nukes as well.
China's military spending found to be much higher than previously thought. Rumsfeld muses publicly (i'm paraphrasing) "one wonders why they spend so much when they have no enemies."
There's the issue of Peak Oil (if you believe it to be an issue.) People used to fight wars over salt...
There's also the argument of the "Old Guard". i.e. the Chinese Old Guard is overreacting. (The same argument holds for GWB/GOP versus liberal American youngsters. Gay marriage is a done deal in twenty years folks.)
There's also issues with currency, world economy, and America's out-of-wack personal debt and federal deficit. A lot of that debt goes back to China and Japan.
I suspect all will be well as long as there's no total economic collapse. As long as everybody who's got a finger on the button is feeding from the same trough a war will be counterproductive. Hopefully all the Old Guard will die of Old Age before they can destroy this young man's world.
You aren't seriously suggesting that Ollie North was committing treason by selling weapons to a declared enemy of the USA (Iran) while working for the US military are you? That would be like saying the money wasn't being raised for a good cause anyway - funding right wing terrorists in Central America. It would also be like saying that skimming off money for a personal commission was also wrong, or the current administration giving him another job after all that was wrong.
When the leading lights of the USA compare themselves to the founding fathers are they really talking about Arnold, Wilkinson and Burr?
People didn't generally come out and put it that way, but the people who counted tanks didn't have much hope of stopping the Warsaw Pact using only conventional weapons. NATO defense plans depended on "tactical" nukes and the threat of strategic strikes. The code phrase used it public was that an attack on Europe would be treated as an attack on the US.
No, US policy is not shifting to resemble the French doctorine. French, Britain, and US nuclear doctorines regarding "No First Use" are all already the same, they oppose No First Use, afterall these countries all are part of NATO. US has always rejected No First Use. US policy had been one of "calculated ambiguity," that is we would be ambiguious on nuclear questions as it would contribute to our security. Secretary of Defense William Cohen in November 1998: "We think the ambiguity involved in the issue of nuclear weapons contributes to our own security, keeping any potential adversary who might use either chemical or biological [weapons] unsure of what our response would be." But there are four major problems with Calculated Ambiguity. (And this new doctorine eliminates the benefits of ambiguity, and just strengthens the case that we should not make nuclear threats.) 1. It violates The Non-Proliferation Treaty's (1995 extension conference) guarantee not to threaten non-nuclear states with nuclear use. Violations of the NPT hurt credibility in persuading countries to forgo acquisition of nuclear weapons. And Proliferation is a Bad thing. (See Scott Sagan in _Nuclear Weapons: A debate renewed_) 2. Calculated Amiguity creates a "commitment trap." If a country does threaten WMD, or does use non-nuclear WMD, then the US will be expected to use nuclear weapons, starting a nuclear war. (See Scott Sagan "The Commitment Trap" 2000 [PDF] http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/20284/sagan_is_spr 00.pdf [stanford.edu] )
3. Nuclear first use contributes to the tyranny of survival, whereby any imaginable evil can be committed in the name of survival. (See Daniel Callahan _Tyranny of Survival_ 1977)
4. Nuclear first use threats underly nuclearism, an ideology that makes nuclear use thinkable and more likely. (See Lifton & Falk _Indefensible Weapons_ 1982)
(Sorry that most of these resources are off-line, but the Sagan article should keep most entertained for a while.)
Here's the stance of the 5 major nuclear power states on the question of No First Use
China has No First Use
Russia had No First Use, but revoked it in recent years, due to a lack of reciprication.
Britain and France both oppose No First Use.
(NATO Members Canada and Germany support No First Use.)
US policy is stated above.
Also India has No First Use.
For more information on US First Use Policy, see Stansfield Turner's _Caging the Genie_ 1998. Turner was of the CIA, and advocates establishing a global No First Treaty, and believes that it would be feasible.
Having studied the question of No First Use literature for about a semester, I can say that the academic literature, especially critical academic literature, is slanted in favor of a US No First Use policy, even if not recipricated.
After we spent the 1990s negotiating with Russia to destroy their nukes, Bush cancelled the funding to actually scrap the Russian arsenal. Now we'll spend even more billions building more nukes. This whole thing is totally insane. Will the madness end only in a nuclear holocaust?
--
make install -not war
It is, today, September 12. Four years and one day ago, it was September 11th, 2001, and I was in New York watching the dust cloud rise. And it's just remarkable, just stunning... I mean, who could have predicted that four years later, the most powerful nation on earth would yet to have brought bin Laden to justice for what he did? Who could have believed that instead, the administration would use lies about WMD to invade a nation with no connection to 9/11? Who would have believed that we'd be in an endless guerilla war with almost two thousand American lives lost and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead. That a nation which prides itself in being a beacon of freedom would be torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib and running a gulag in Cuba. And there's no end in sight to any of it. It's just disgusting. And profoundly sad. What's happened to my country? We rose up after 9-11 but somehow in the past four years, it brought us down so low, I barely even recognize the country anymore.
We shouldn't be giving this guy the authority to use nuclear weapons. If he were watching TV in my house, he wouldn't even be entrusted with the remote control. God... just, one day, I want to walk up to him. And spit in his face, and then walk away.
Lets play chess.
Yep that worked out so well for empires in the past. There's a reason why the US is hated and it isn't jealousy.
Osama Bin Laden is a multi-millionaire but he's jealous of you yeh right.
You know how the UK stopped Irishmen blowing up our cities. We spent nearly 30 years of getting ever more draconian and then after actually negotiating with the terrorists we've had virtually no trouble with them at all in the last 10.
It may turn some people's stomachs to see Gerry Adams being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but up until our ass-kisser leader dragged us into a pointless war, UK citizens didn't have to worry about being blown up anymore.
Does a Christian soccer team even need a goalkeeper?
Politically there's no group in America more committed to Israel than the Evangelicals. Why? Because the Bible says that Jews must return to their homeland before Jesus will return:
[Jer 30:2-7] : 'For, behold, days are coming,' declares the Lord, 'when I will restore the fortunes of My people Israel and Judah.' The Lord says, 'I will also bring them back to the land that I gave to their forefathers, and they shall possess it.'
And in Ezekiel [37:21]: "This is what the sovereign Lord says: I will take the Israelites out of the nations where they have gone. I will gather them from all around and bring them back into their own land."
I mean, who could have predicted that four years later, the most powerful nation on earth would yet to have brought bin Laden to justice for what he did?
Just another example of the sheer, utter incompetence of the Bush administration.
Can't find Bin Laden. Can't respond to natural disasters. Somewhere north of $400 Billion down the "war on terror" hole and it looks about as successful as the "war on drugs" started by the original sainted Republican, Ronnie "Iran-Contra" Reagan.
Boy, but he sure got the "values" crowd in this country fired up - the same people who think it's logical to bomb abortion clinics to stop the "murder" of "babies".
After beating on Clinton and Gore for every little misstep they made over eight years, the press must have been tired, because even after Katrina, they're still taking a nap. Bush could cornhole a dead boy on the White House lawn and Fox news would fawn over him for making that particular butthole safe for democracy.
Sure, let's make it policy for the man responsible (and I use the word very loosely, since he never seems to take responsibility for ANYTHING) to fire off a few nukes when he feels like it, without provocation.
I know I feel safer. Not.
Unless we are expecting an attack from Russia, Great Britain, France, or China, we are not talking about MAD.
t ml/
t h_nuclear_weapons more carefully than some apparently have.
Read http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/MED/med_chp3.sh
Then read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_wi
Apart from the above countries, it is unlikely that any of these so-called rogue states have anything much more powerful than Fat Man and Little Boy. The first site above lists the damage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Note in particular:
-- No casualties were suffered as a result of any persistent radioactivity of fission products of the bomb, or any induced radioactivity of objects near the explosion.
-- The blast totally destroyed everything within a radius of 1 mile and caused significant damage out to about 3 miles.
Anyone who thinks that North Korea is going to figure out a way to send a missile across the Pacific, accurately, and manage to destroy all 465 square miles of Los Angeles, is not checking the facts.
China could destroy Los Angeles.
France could, probably.
Great Britain, most likely.
India, with 60-90 weapons, would have to place them carefully.
North Korea just can't do it
Which is not to say that hitting Los Angeles with even one nuclear warhead wouldn't hurt.
But consider the situation about a day after that, when the country that launched against Los Angeles isn't there anymore, and the US has used perhaps 5% of its arsenal.
MAD indeed.
THIS CHANGES NOTHING AND MEANS NEXT TO NOTHING!
This is just another stupid policy paper to keep the staff busy. It's nothing more than a reminder to anyone (mostly other governments) who have the time to waste reading such papers that this is the official US government policy. And it always has been bush changed nothing, not a thing. There are thousands of these papers published each year, this one got mention because some reporter thought he could stir up the reactionaries and get his name in the light a little.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now. - Ed Howd
The hurricane wasn't caused by policy. Obviously
The flooding on the other hand, was caused by the degradation of the surrounding swamplands, cleverly placed there by God/nature/whatever to absorb the excess water from exciting weather events
The levee system, it was forecast several years ago, was not even up to the task of resisting a smaller hurricane than Katrina. The Clinton administration had spent 500 mill on it, but funding dropped considerably under Bush.
The advance response was non-existent, the President being too busy with other affairs, and preferring to plead ignorance after the fact
Additionally, National Guard and Army troops, who would normally be called in to assist in major emergencies, were not available at this time, being elsewhere engaged.
Oh wait I see, you were being ironic. You're right, the poor levee maintenance and lack of military personnel and lack of preparatory response weren't caused by President Bush's domestic policies. They were caused by his obsession with foreign policy.
That's a very subtle and clever point you made, well done
All available data suggest that regardless of any of this, the sun will still come up tomorrow.
Well, 2003 actually. The US had troops in Saudi Arabia to enforce the no-fly zone in iraq. Then the Iraq war broke out and we essentially moved those troops (and many more) to Iraq. Yeah...I'm sure that made those muslims who were so protective of their land happy and they have no more reason to feel like they're being invaded, right?
Not that I support removing troops from Iraq now. I was against the war back before it started, but the only thing that would be worse than that ill-conceived invasion would be to now wash our hands of the incident and tell the new government to go deal with their own problems. We dug ourselves into one big hole out of which there's no easy way. Essentially, the grandparent was right though...instead of trying to gain these people's support and stop terrorism by removing the incentive and Osama's excuses, we went and pissed them off more. Now we can't leave, and just have to weather it out until someone smarter than I am can come up with a better solution.
However, if you're thinking the better solution is to go and nuke anyone pre-emptively...well, you're just nuts, and I'm glad you don't have the power to do so (I have to believe even Bush understands that, if for no other reason than optmism).
I always find it funny to analyze the pro-war people, like the one in the post that started all this. They say things like "terrorism is about slaughtering women and children. It is a low-key form of genocide and is beyond mere criminality. A population that supports it and encourages it doesn't deserve to be let off the hook when it unleashes that on another group." while at the same time saying things like "I'd support anyone who would drive a nuclear bomb right into the middle of those fuckers dancing in the streets celebrating "The Great Satan(tm)" getting nuked." Dude, you are obviously NO DIFFERENT. When something disastrous like 9/11 happens, as much as it is painful to us, the virtuous thing to do is to get out of the "we must have our revenge" mindset and into the "how can we prevent this from happening again" one. You can't bring the dead ones back to life, and killing people who didn't have anything to do with it because they bought into the propaganda that we are 'The Great Satan' is just going to enforce the notion that we are indeed 'The Great Satan' to anyone that survives.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
I hope you're refering to your grandparent, other wise I'd suggest that you read a book about the American revolution. Learn about Richard and William Howe, sent by the British to meet with representives of the Continental Congress to reach a compromise at the start of the rebellion (Surely something a country would do if they considered their enemies terrorists). And while American revolutionaries were considered traitors by many British, "traitor" is not a synonym for "terrorist."
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
You mean GWB was at the controls of the national weather machine when the hurricane hit New Orleans?
Maybe you mean the legislation he signed to go ahead and get 'the big one' out of the way.
Perhaps he wanted to do his oil buddies and Halburton a favor and cause a crisis.
Someone hates these cans.
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Davy-Croc kett-(nuclear-device)
The Davy was a recoilless rifle that fired 1 kiloton nukes and was developed years ago. Yes, there are 155mm nuclear rounds (some are rocket propelled and laser guided) in addition to VX, blister, mine deploying, etc. Do not be surprised at the disgusting genius of weapons designers. There exist some truly horrific means of mass murder and nuclear munitions is just one. Personally nukes don't scare me as much any more. They are fairly easy to track, difficult to build and deliver and suffer from scalibility and engineering issues to make the big ones. There is also a certain stigma attached to them.
Biological weapons scare the living shit out of me. They are difficult to develop, but can be easily mass produced and delivered. They kill indescriminately and can be made self sustaining. What is worse is that to defeat them, you have to devlopment them in the first place (this is the conundrum of any weapons research).
Let's all just try to get along, okay?
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
We have not had a strike on US soil in four years.
This would be a more impressive figure it if included one or both of:
- An indication of how many aborted and/or prevented attacks there actually were during those four years.
- Some way of knowing how the numbers would change based on a more elegant and well-planned response.
Two countries that supported terrorism no longer exist.
Which countries are those? Did I miss the US invading countries other than Afghanistan and Iraq? Because those are still there, minus a tiny handful of their overall populations.
I think "shock and awe" was a valid description.
Yes, and I think theoretically it's a great strategy - just like it was when it was called a Blitzkrieg. But that doesn't mean it was the right thing to do in that particular situation.
Go ahead an tell me Iraq would be better off long-term with Saddam in charge.
I'm not a citizen of Iraq. The question should be "as a US citizen, am *I* better off long-term without Saddam in charge, given the cost?" and I think the answer is obviously "no."
Was he a vile person? Yes. There are lots of them in the world - including here in America.
Are the Iraqis mostly appreciative that he's gone? Probably. I think the lack of a significant anti-Saddam resistance before the invasion is an indication that it didn't matter enough to them that we should have cared either.
I think we had things right back in WWII. We stayed out of it until we were really sure it was necessary, and then we used overwhelming force to stomp all over the countries that deserved it. "Measure twice, cut once."
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
The way I see it, China and Russia will not look kindly toward smoking nuclear craters in its backyard. So it probably won't come to that. :)
I don't know how the rocket science works, but a nuke launched from the US into NK will look awful lot like a nuke coming INBOUND to China. hmm...
and the Soviet sphere didn't gain a permanent nuclear strike base just off our coast
Let us discuss the Cuban Missile Crisis. The REAL reason why the Soviets went ahead to put nuclear missiles into Cuba was that the Soviet Union was merely returning a favor.
You see, the USA had already planted nuclear missiles into Turkey. Did you know that? And the location of Turkey happens to be just outside the Russian border.
So the Soviet Union was merely extending the courtesy of hauling nuclear missiles next to the other guy's border, and then having had a taste of their own medicine, USA freaked out. When the missile crisis ended, USA agreed to pull out their missiles in Turkey (a little bit delayed though, so that it wouldn't seem that it was the real reason).
The key to international security is really just common sense and respect from all parties. Hauling up nukes to someones backyard and expecting them to accept it is not common sense. Crying wolf when they do the same to you is also not common sense (since you sort of asked for it)?
For more information, have a read.
I do not moderate.
1: Define "neocon".
2: Cite some specific examples of whom you are referring to.
3: Cite some specific quotes by these people backing up your childish, absurd claims about them.
4: Demonstrate that these particular fools have both the power and will to execute their idiotic claims.
5: Demonstrate that the public support for such people is great enough that their words are likely to result in actions by others.
Until you can do this, your absurd cries of "moral equivalence" are meaningless. Note that all of these unquestionably apply for Osama, if you substitute "neocon" with "Muslim Terrorist".
Eh, plenty of people wish death on every citizen of the US
Nope plenty of people wish death on the US Government because of their absolutely fucked foreign policy. And since tha US of A loudly proclaims it's a democracy for the people, of the people, yada yada, the terrorists assume (and rightly so 50% of the time) that the US citizens are 101% behind their government, thus, putting the blame squarely on US citizens. And this is why they want to kill you. I'm not saying it makes it ok. But I think this point needs to be clarified. They are NOT after you because of your "way of life" despite what OBL yells about all day long. They are basically after you because they think you are responsible for their loss of life and limb.
Osama Bin Laden is a multi-millionaire but he's jealous of you yeh right.
Osama bin Laden is a psychopath. But you have a point. His supporters are often wealthy too. They have no reason to envy the US.
I have traveled the world over. I have lived in Muslim nations as a non-Muslim. I have traveled to countries which have seen the brunt of US covert actions. I have never met anyone who hated *me* because I am an American. Yet many people are frustrated and even outraged at our government.
In May of 2002, I was in Quito Ecuador. I used to go to an Indian restaurant, and once I started talking with one of the owners. Turned out he was from Iraq. He asked me where I was from and I told him "Los Estados Unidos" (the US). I will never forget the look in his eyes. Not hatred or anger. But pain and sorrow. Yet I am sure he was in Ecuador not because of my country but because of trying to get away from Saddam.
We in the US are often incredibly insensitive to the suffering our country causes all over the world. The problem is that once you are hurt enough, you may start to do little things to fight back. These may involve looking the other direction when a charity you give money to spends some of its money on donations to militant and/or terrorist organizations. It may involve actually willfully aiding such organization, or it may even involve volunteering into such groups.
Yes, we are the most powerful country the world has ever known. But the hardest lesson to learn is that, to quote an old Norwegian saying, the "Sheath is for Swords." Real power is best kept in reserve, always close at hand but rarely if ever used. Ever since WWII, however, we have been militarily involved in one place or another more or less constantly. We have caused immeasurable sorrow in the world, and consequently we have earned powerful enemies. People forget the lessons of Iran, or Chile, or Guatamala.
Do a google search for September 11, 1973 and see what shows up.... The result of that action by the CIA killed *more Chileans* than Al Qaeda did on the 28th anniversery of that event (if you assume that the 1100 or so that were "disappeared" were probably summarily executed in custody.
The truth is that we are hated for the same reason that we hate Al Qaeda. We are hated just as they are for our crimes against humanity. And those of us who truly love our country have an obligation to try to turn this around.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
IANAL....
But I understand that there is this thing called "International Humanitarian Law" that includes such things as the Geneva Conventions. Real freedom fighters should confine themselves to standards that are at least defensible under interational rules of war. Those that do not are terrorists, state sponsored or not.
For example, when I look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, lets look at acts of terrorism:
* Blowing up busses
* dropping 1-ton bombs on apartment buildings
* Indescriminant razing of neighborhoods in refugee camps
* Blowing up supermarkets
* Using ICRC relief workers as human shields
* Firing on PRC medical personnel and equipment with PRG's etc.
etc...
The *only* group which has a legitimate claim not to be a group of terrorists is Tanzim. Not Fatah, Not Hamas, Not the IDF. And Tanzim is only questionably so (it depends on whether Settlers are protected noncombatants under the Geneva Conventions). So a terrorist is a terrorist.
Back to the US.
Look up "September 11, 1973" and you will see what I mean. Personally I think that if Pinochet is to be tried for his crimes against humanity than his CIA buddies should be too. Same in El Salvador, same in Guatamala, same in Ecuador, same in Iran.
Strategic nuclear weapons IMO are terrorist impliments and the use of them ultimately qualifies as a terrorist attack.
A terrorist is a terrorist. It should go without saying that we should be willing to police our own government as much as we want to fight those who perpetrate crimes against humanity (though in revenge for what we have done) against us.
Those who truly love our country have a moral duty to try and turn things around before it is too late (it may be too late anyway but we have to try). I don't pledge allegiance to the President. I pledge allegiance to the *flag.* I don't owe allegiance to the president. I owe allegiance to my *country.* This is the essence of true American patriotism, deeply rooted in a mistrust for those who run our government.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
True -- and three weeks ago, the US public wasn't in an uproar about the destruction of a single city by hurricane and flooding, either. Nobody pays much attention to potential disasters until they happen -- especially "new" types of disasters that they haven't experienced before. That doesn't mean there won't be hell to pay when they do. (Would you want to be known as "the President who let San Diego get nuked"?)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Not gonna happen.
w s/1126539690860_121948890
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNe
The christofundies can play hide-and-go-f***-themselves too. No special treatment.
You really need to keep up with the times, troll.
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
Hey, guys -- I'm a furrigner -- it's your country, your Constitution. But you make us furrigners (Australia here) nervous sometimes.
What happened to Section 8 Powers of Congress to declare war ? Isn't that part of your democracy ?
Tell me a preemptive nuclear strike wouldn't be a declaration of war? Sure! It's like a pat on the head!
Or maybe, like Pearl Harbour, it'd just be an act of infamy ?
Where'd you get these Pentagon brains ?
WTF is wrong with our government?!?!?
In a democracy, people get the government they deserve. It is the responsibility of USA citizens to stop the madman in the Whitehouse. If you do not, you are part of the problem. As things stand, the majority of USA citizens that can be bothered to vote want Bush. You guys had the ability to kick him out of office last year, and you didn't. He represents you. Your fault. Do something about it.
On the way down, the missile's warhead may scatter independently-targettable nuclear warheads. I believe the really big missiles can carry over a hundred such warheads. Those then rain down, totally unguided except for whatever initial kick the originating missile can give. Not all missiles do this, but most of the strategic ones (as opposed to tactical nukes) are supposed to be like this.
However, American missiles really aren't known for being that accurate, and past a certain point, there would be no way for the Americans to command the missile to self-destruct. (Even if you do, if the warheads inside are primed, that might not do a whole lot of good.) If the missile overshot and was going for China, the Americans might not have time between discovering this and not being able to stop it.
Even if the missile was going for the intended target, China might not be able to determine that. It depends on how good their Radar is. If the precision is too low, if there's some interference which distorts the image, or even if they decide the missile has enough fuel to repoint from North Korea to them, they may well conclude it is an attack on them and fire back.
There are a very large number of possibilities, there is currently no technology advanced enough to eliminate all of the variables, and as the Son Of Star Wars project proves, politicians are likely to ignore the details anyway.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
But entrusting someone with nuclear capability who is allegedly 'leading' a superpower nation, necessitates a true leader with great wisdom and foresight. Somehow I don't see a former alcoholic who can barely give a speech without sounding like he just had one too many as someone who qualifies. First, there was the intelligence debacle that allowed 9/11 slip through the cracks, the perpetrator was allowed to escape and was never captured, an attack on the country of origin proved very costly and without the intended result, and to top it off, there is a continuation of the so-called 'war on terror' marked by a 'pre-emptive strike' on a nation for something that turned out to be a complete falsehood. This is not the kind of record I'd use to justify the use of nuclear weapons.
The problem is that once they are used, there is no going back...it may trigger all manner of unintended consequences and be be just the beginning of a hell we never imagined possible.
Yes, unfortunately, the majority of the country seemingly believes that creation myths have the same quality and quantity of supporting evidence as evolution, that hurricanes are the result of gay people and that crippled people don't deserve to walk again or move their arms, if it means utilizing stem-cells.
I think I heard a statistic on a television show the other night stating that 20% of adults think the Sun revolve around Earth.
And, unfortunately, the numbers of these people are such that they over-ride those with - you know - common sense on their side.
It's a little dishonest to say that "Americans get the government they deserve". No - 100% of the country gets the government 52% of the country is ignorant enough to choose. That, my friend, is democracy.
This is probably designed to scare Iran into submission. Problem is, that sometimes bluffs get called. Then we will have to go through with it. Then how will the world (esp the muslim world) regard America to be the only nation to drop the bomb? Twice.
This is going to backfire badly.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
> their weapons and live a peacefull life, or we hunt them down in their neighborhood.
Funny - that's not the conclusion people who've actually studied suicide terrorism have come to. From The American Conservative:
RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign--over 95 percent of all the incidents--has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.
TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush's policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them here.
RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.
According to someone who's studied the problem, the "other methods" include such things as removing our troops from unfriendly foreign soil and our military backing from autocratic foreign regimes. Basically, stop stomping around in other people's backyards and maybe they'll stop telling us to leave.
Will it work? I dunno. But even the CIA says our current approach is failing, and is making the threat of terrorism worse:
The insurgency in Iraq is creating a new type of Islamic militant who could go on to destabilise other countries, a leaked CIA report says.
The classified document says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of skills, from car bombings and assassinations to co-ordinated attacks.
It says these skills may make them more dangerous than fighters from Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s.
Oh please, spare us yet more of this ridiculous bomb them back into the stone age idiocy that fails to realise what epoch we're in and who we're dealing with. Please be absolutely, unconditionally assured that no-one in the world doubts the ability of Americans to utterly miss the point and bomb the hell out of "rogue nations", utterly unaware that they're fighting last century's kind of war. The terrorists escaped by foot and horse while you "bombed Afghanistan into the Stone Age", killing more innocent civilians than ever died in 9/11, largely for the benefit of Fox News. So it's all good; no-one doubts your ability to make this kind of dumb fool mistake, just as few now doubt that America is, indeed, a paper tiger when it comes to writing checks the electorate's stomach can't cash. Like a sustained military occupation of Iraq, for example. But, it's true, putting more power in the hands of a prat like Bush will certainly drum the point home to anyone who hasn't been paying attention to your murderous platitudes about trigger-fingers and righteous bombs.
Hydrogen bombs have yields around the 10 Megaton range. The russians even tested a 54 Megaton bomb. Third degree burns at over 100 km. Blast damage over 1000km away. It's all in wikipedia. :D
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
While it's interesting to see the reactions of people to nuclear weapons policy, the fact is that this is absolutely nothing new. It has been the policy of the US to strike back with nuclear weaponry against anyone using Nuclear, Biological or Chemical weapons for decades. Indeed, it was the stated policy of the United States that Nuclear weapons would be used against a conventional invasion of Europe by the Soviet Bloc, due to the incedible numerical superiority of those forces. They didn't even have to launch their nukes on us first, all they had to do is roll over into West Germany.
I don't think anyone, particularly me, likes the idea that there is a plan out there to nuke anyone, but the fact is that there are states out there that that need some reassurance that they will be living in a radioactive wasteland if they start wondering why they can't just a lob a few at us.
If you think it can't happen, think again. All it takes is one leader with nukes who thinks that the world will let him get away with it to ensure continued peace, and you've got a disaster waiting to happen. And don't think it couldn't. It takes a lot more planning to launch a full scale invasion of Europe than it does to launch a ballistic missile. The only way to forestall that is a policy that cuts out the realm of uncertainty that brinksmanship thrives on.
This sucks, but we managed to avoid blowing up the world for 60 years with such a policy in place, I don't think a revision is going to make that much of a difference.
Have they no suitcases?
Are they unable to covertly contact terrorist organizations?
Have they no legitimate-seeming cargo containers?
A missle is a rather unlikely way for a nuke to strike the US, so forgive me if I find it uncomforting that nutball nuclear powers have poor missile capability. Kinda like I'd hardly feel better to note that a grizzly bear charging me did not, in fact, have the opposable thumbs required to hold a gun---that isn't why it's dangerous.
Watch the movie 'threads' for a good run-down of a post-nuclear war world.
It's not that nuclear blasts will kill everyone. It's that 'developed' countries, especially large metropolian areas, are extremely dependant on others for their survival. Once the infrastructure is gone and panic ensues, there will be no electricity water or food. The economy will be reduced to a barter economy since faith in the monetary system is gone.
Hell, even a miniature-by-comparison disaster like New Orleans / Katrina showed signs of anarchy for a while, imagine the hell-on-earth that will erupt if not one, but several major cities are flattened.
P.S. I'm serious, get ahold of and watch Threads, it's a great movie.
"Just another example of the sheer, utter incompetence of the Bush administration."
Maybe you should consider the possibility that its not incompetence but malevolence, and that the Bush administration doesn't want to catch Bin Laden or break up Al Qaeda. When the Soviet Union collapsed the world started heading towards a dramatic reduction in military spending and decline in military threats and fear in the world. The right wingers absolutely HATED it. The couldn't stand the defense spending cuts in the U.S in particular.
9/11 was a godsend to them since not only did it allow them to reverse the defense cuts but they had an excuse to inflate defense and intelligence spending to new record levels today, and this is facing a rag tag terrorist band with few weapons, versus countering the massive armaments of the Soviet Union.
The right wing no doubt vowed that when a new threat came along to replace the Soviet Union, to justify the massive defense spending they love so much, to justify massive erosion in civil liberties they love so much, and to use as a fear mongering tool to get themselves elected, they no doubt took a vow to make sure they would do everything in their power that threat would last forever this time. There is a fair chance the current strategy is to nibble around the edges of Al Qaeda but make sure their leadership stays in tact so they can put out a video tape every six months or so to whip up a new round of fear.
The heart of the neocon philisophy is to create myths of good and evil to unite and heard the American people, American's always being good and everything they oppose being evil, hence the terms "Evil empire" and "Axis of Evil". This whole philosophy falls apart if you don't have something clearly defined, and clearly named to play the evil role, its Bin Laden on the global stage and its Al-Zarqawi in Iraq. Notice how the Bush administration uses the name Al-Zarqawi every time they talk about the war in Iraq, though in fact he probably has little to do with the vast majority of the insurgency which is based on former Baathists and Sunni's who are angry they've been thrown out of power. Al-Zarqawi is just evil role player the neocons love so much.
@de_machina
Ok, I could understand that one would think about measurements like this when one feels threatened. However, what do people feel threatened by? Other than terrorists, I can't think of anything. And it's not like a pre-emptive strike is going to help - after all, terrorists are usually stealthy and you only get to know where they are after they hit.
So what's this new bill for? Just strengthening the powers of GWB so he can visit some more destruction on the heads of whoever the heck crosses his mind? What good does that accomplish? It seriously sounds like a very dangerous law introduced for no reason at all.
Damn, I almost wish some other countries would show some backbone and state that they will launch their missiles if the USA passes this law. But, of course, it's hard to stand up against the big bully.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Listen, your post is well written and i'm glad you own a passport unlike 80% of us (or whatever). I do too. I've listened to anti-US tirades in bars, and the opposite. It depends on where you are and the person.
Despite all that, your post sets up a straw man, and also discounts the lust for power.
Your mistake is that you blame your own country for these issues and that isn't so. The problem isn't a US problem. The problem is human nature. No one is going to sit down and be killed or held hostage by external forces when they can do something about it, and there will always be external forces that will want to exert power over significant reaches of (or the entire) world.
Moreover, someone like OBL isn't motivated precisely by envy of the US, though that is there in terms of the power we can wield. One almost gets the impression you think desire of money is the only motivator for humankind. His attack on the US was motivated by the needs of local politics and establishing his bonafides as an enemy of the imperialist oppressor that shows up in Arab schoolbooks as the supporter of the Zionists. It was a piece of a plan to provoke revolution in his home country, more than anything else. He exploited a weakness that the Saudis have in their own ideology. He probably has Pan-Arab ambitions like a modern day Nasser, also. This is lust for power.
Explain to me exactly how anything except fighting and killing are going to get rid of a ready-made foe like that? (taking him and his minions collectively)
Leaving that aside for now, the fact that little people get ground into the dust by exercise of the power of a nation like the US. Truth - and in retrospect the Allende situation perhaps wasn't the Communist revolution that it seemed to be to people like Kissinger. Gotta love that 20/20 hindsight.
The point is that even today, the Allende thing had a meaningful realpolitik objective that we can discern. It might have been a bullshit reason. We'll never know now, though, because all anyone has is conjecture about the future actions of an Allende regime. There was a real force in the world that plotted our demise via proxy. We had lost a lot of fights against that force in the recent past (or were about to, in Southeast Asia). Those fights resounded far more strongly in importance then than they truly had. Yet, though the events in Southeast Asia were somehow unimportant to us (though they were very important to the inhabitants thereof who suffered from privation and extermination, depending on geography and timeframe), they certainly did their part to assure that the Iranians, sensing our weakness, felt few qualms about kidnapping the occupants of our embassy in 1979. Note that they didn't take over our embassy because of Mossadegh or hatred of the Shah. They took over our embassy because they could. What was Jimmy Carter going to do about it? (one can hear the laughs from the back of the audience)
The lesson to draw: Carter's 'niceness' and perceived weakness was the cause of those hostages enduring a year plus in captivity. Reagan got them out simply because they feared his reprisal should they remain captive. Fear for your own survival is a far better motivator than some abstract moral sense. In fact, the abstract moral sense barely registers in comparison.
When you recount our supposed 'evil' without giving it contextual backing, you are bashing your own country. This is why I call people like you anti-American. You'd rather see your own country humbled because of some misplaced humanitarian notion that doesn't work in the real world. That's a seditious attitude whether you understand that - or not.
The only measure of a nation at war is that you survived. I point to Dresden or Hamburg or Tokyo or even Hiroshima/Nagasaki. If the war had turned the other way, we might talk about war crimes trials for these wanton killings of civilians, rather than for concentration camps. Both the Soviets and the Germans raped, pillaged and murdered the
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
No, 70% of the country has decided to let the other 30% choose a government. If they get something they don't like, it's too late now to complain.
This is completely fucking disingenuous, and you know it.
Sure the GPP was a bit over the top, but by seriously suggesting you don't understand where they're coming from you're more stupid than you appear. Sure, the liberals hate Bush and the religious right, but they also hate the terrorists. It's Republicans vs. The Terrorists, and the Democrats are merely stuck in the middle (all too often huddling on the ground in a puddle of urine with their hands over their ears).
The "liberals" think the right are similar to "the terrorists" because they have the same level of vitriol, prefer the same strategy (violence[1]), are motivated by paranoia or religious extremism, happily and easily reject facts (and greater reality) whenever convenient, and are completely incapable of rational, detatched self-analysis or self-questioning.
The right think "the liberals" are similar to "the terrorists" because they see the world in black and white - they literally believe "if you're not with us, you're against us". This is so fucking simple a child can understand it - it's the concept of "compromise" or taking the middle road. It is, however, useful to pretend they don't so they can accuse anyone faintly less extremist than them of being a traitor.
Nevertheless, you can't deny that it's extremely hypocritical to loudly condemn one type of religious fundamentalism (Muslim) for:
Unnecessary violence and invasive aggression
Repression of civil liberties
Causing civilian deaths
Repression of women
Possibly researching nuclear weapons
while your own fundamentalist-lead (Christian) leadership and population promotes:
Invasive foreign policies that risk turning the world against you
Police-state interior policies (PATRIOT act, etc)
Anti-abortion legislation
And actively threatening to nuke countries
Even reducing it to your stereotypes:
Any denomination of religious nutter with a nuclear fucking weapon is far more dangerous than any number of "terrorst sympathisers".
Footnotes:
[1] Although not the same tactics, due at least in part to the massive disparity in their material resources.[2]
[2] Reading it back, this sounds like I'm implying that the American Right might use terrorism tactics if it wasn't the overwhelmingly dominant party in the conflict. We can actually empirically test this - when the economy starts slipping, natural disasters deplete their resources, they can't afford (or recruit) a large enough army to continue the conflict and they generally perceive a slipping of their power, what do they do? Start waving the "fuck with us and we'll nuke you" card.
Setting off a nuclear weapon, killing the opposition but also killing hundreds of thousands of civilians... Exactly how is this different from (say) terrorists nuking the Whitehouse? They take out the people they hate, plus hundreds of thousands of civilians. Seriously - what's the difference?
And no, I don't buy into that whole "it's the government, so it's alright". The Taliban were a government, and they weren't "alright". This argument simply devolves into "it's us, so it's alright", and the same argument is used by fanatics, liars and psychopaths the world over.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
roughly 40 years of economic sanctions? And it will all end if you attack your "enemy". N Korea does nog have 1 enemy, but multiple. Still, I do not think they can or will attack anybody from their current state. Looking at the developments between S Korea and N Korea, I would even say that they are looking for a graceful way out of the current situation.
What if there would have been no sanctions, and N Korea would be as prosperous as the USSR, or China (their closest relatives in vision). That would not make them a superpower: They are just to small. But would it give them any reason to launch an attack on the US? Not really. They might try to intimidate S Korea, but with more to loose, most likely nothing will happen anyway (look at China vs Taiwan: Lots of threats, and not even one shot fired).
Yes, N Korea has a dictatorship which tries to build certain weapons.
To be afraid of that: No, they will probably not succeed anytime soon, and to use such a weapon is not a good idea anyway.
There actually is only one danger left with this: Hard cash: Sell the bomb which you create to some extremist group, let them play with it.
Somehow I think however that even extremist groups are not that crazy. They have seen by know what 2 airplanes can cause in counter actions: The leaders are not taken, but two countries have lost their goverments, and taking out a third or a fourth is no serious problem for the US. The US goverment has also shown that they will not obey human rights anymore in such a situation. The step to a complete masacre has become a lot smaller. A second holocaust could be the result of an extremist organization using a nuclear bomb.
Looking in general at countries with a dictator or similar goverment: They do attack their neighbours, bot only if they think they will gain something from it.
Looking at wealthy democratic countries: They do attack countries all over the world if they think they can gain something from it.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
This bunch of 5 gallon cowboys in 10 gallon are going to leave this country in a real mess. Watch real closely once Karl Rove's think tanks come up with the catch phrase (probably "Operation Compasion" or something) who ponies up to the trough following Katrina...Haliburton and the usual suspects are already there. REALLY pay close attention when the word for the day is mentioned 14 times in a carefully test grouped speech and displayed on a big blue screen behind the President. It's worked for 6 years...why not now.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
You sound ripe for Gore Vidal, particularly "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace"
You know, I have a theory that even the Bush-bashers don't have the balls to voice in public: al Qaida works for Bush. He signs their paychecks personally. And the 9/11 attacks were his idea.
I mean, come on, without all that, you have to say Bush/Cheney,inc. just got fantastically, unusually, cosmicly, freakishly lucky. Nobody in History is *that* lucky: To have the exact shadowy enemy that you can use to freak the people to give up their liberties. To do the exact heinous crime you can shock and rally everyone with, at the exact right time of a year after the beginning of your new administration, when you've had ample time to seat yourself at the reins and will still have years guaranteed in which to milk the opportunity. From the appropriately Middle-Eastern country, close to the oil you need. From the appropriately demonizable religion. With perfect timing for idiots to still be shaken when election time rolls around again, but not so soon after that they remmember the facts and blame you.
Nobody could possibly get that lucky in a billion, trillion years. They BOUGHT!
The Declaration basically says that if we don't like our government, we should overthrow it, which is what our fore fathers did. But in today's America, to try and do such a thing would likely get you labeled as a terrorist, with no legal recourse.
The only thing left to do is try to work within a broken system. Once again, our fore fathers left means to fix it, but I am sure any attempt to do so would get a label of unpatriotic, or a terrorists, or both.
Damned if you do, and damned if you don't. God bless America.
The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.
The person saying this is white, mature, educated, well travelled, and not american.
I deliberately said "not american" as opposed to "european" or "english", because that is fast becoming the only distinction required.
the USA, that is the people, need a wake up message, perhaps a wake up message in the form of your entire congress including the president chimp being nuked.
the WTC obviously wasn't a clear enough message.
"9/11" was ___NOT___ an attack on the american people or way of life or anything else, it was an attack on USA foreign policy as driven by USA monetary policy, hence hitting two buildings full of financial institutions.
If I wanted to slap the face of the USA ___PEOPLE___ I'd fly a jet into the Statue of Liberty, the one true global symbol of all that is american.....
if this has been done it would have killed maybe a hundred people, but rocked every citizen in the USA back on their heels as a personal insult.
no way lady liberty was "Overlooked" as a possible target, no chance in hell, ergo the perpetrators werem't after slapping you all personally across the face.
3 jetliners could have been crashed into three electricity stations around new york and thrown the city into anarchy, same as new orleans, but it wasn't done.
bottom line is it is really hard to think of targets that are more clearly and obviously specifically USA financial / foreign policy related than those that were hit
and yet you lot still do not get it
bush is still there, getting worse every day.
we don't care too much if he ruins america, we're sorry for you as citizens, but then you keep voting him in and who are we to interfere?
we do care if he ruins our countries.
bush is the village psychopath, as time passes and his behaviour worstens, more and more of the villagers are going to turn against him
sure, in the ensuing fight much of the village may be razed to the ground, but some of it will survive, if we don't do something about the village psychopath he will desroy ALL of the village.
USA citizens need to wake up and ask themselves is living in a destroyed US economy, like post katrina new orleans or a kurt russell vision of new york, is the future they really want, if not, it's time to cut loose, very publicly, from the insane chimp and his money men backers.
I guess we'll tell how blinkered you all are from how quickly this message is modded as "troll", if slashdot had regional modding you'd find non USAians modding it differently....
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Unfortunately, this country was never designed to be a democracy, no matter what you think you remember from US History class. This country was created by rich white people who thought that it might be a good idea to protect thier own property.
We live in a REPUBLIC. We vote for representitives that vote for "us". Sure, some systems in our goverment are democratic in nature, it doesn't make it a democracy.
I can't just march up to Congress and help change public policy now can I? Is that a democracy?
I don't care about how precisely the government should be run, but I want to have a say when they are doing something that I object to.
I know what you mean! I love the GrandParent Poster's idea, too!
Along with killing the genuine "evil men", we should be really should be sure to kill their families, since they all almost certainly share their ideologies.
The same goes for their neighborhood, and maybe even the whole damn city. Even if the whole city, neighborhood or relatives are not guilty/evil, people really shouldn't complain because it's all for the cause of:
1) Fighting Terrorism
2) Preserving the American Way if Life
3) Making the World Safe for Democracy
4) Stopping Religious Extremism
5) Keeping that oil flowing so we can still drive our SUV's in the face of rising gas prices and global temperatrures (some say this bears a close simililarity to #2, but they're just pinko hippie communists)
6) Deposing those evil/misguided leaders who we either put into power in the first place, or aided, so that they could fight another evil/misguided leader.
So what if killing one evil man, and maybe his wife/family/brother/cousin, causes three or more to take up arms against us! So what if they aren't actually the ones who attacked us in the first place! God and morality are on OUR side! Our religious and government leaders say so!
So you can see there is no room for (intelligent) diplomacy, compromise or alternatives!
DIE! DIE! DIE! YOU EVILDOERS!
(cough cough)
ahem.
We know return to our regularly schduled broadcast of the 700 club.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
Meh. The reality is, someone will always be willing to shoot. If you embrace a pacifist ideal, then the next guy who comes along who doesn't is going to take you down without even thinking twice about it.
And sometimes there really isn't anything you can do about the problem. You make something someone else wants. They take it, violently if need be. You live where someone else wants to live. You have food when someone else wants to eat.
Sure you can give up something every time someone asks for it, but how long will you last in that case?
Competition is the way of the world, and all the creatures on it do it all the time. If you decide you don't want to play the game, then you need to be glad that there are people with guns whose job it is to make sure you have that right.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
American soldiers were not terrorists. They engaged in guerilla warfare, but they did not kill innocent British civilians. There is a difference.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Really, do you think the American public would be okay with not even trying to stop russia from putting nukes in cuba? Nukes aimed at us?
No, I do not think the American public would be okay with that. And no, I also do not think the government and people of Soviet Union were okay with the missiles in Turkey.
Once more, I reiterate the point: USA put nuclear weapons into Turkey first and had them aimed at the Soviet Union. Why do you think the Soviet Union should have accepted US nuclear missiles next to them, aimed at them?
Like you said: "no sane person purposely lets a potential enemy gain such a close striking position". The Soviet Union did to USA exactly what USA did to them, i.e. they positioned some nuclear missiles near the US border. The result was the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I would say that the correct action in this case would have been to exercise some common sense and NOT to position the nuclear weapons into Turkey in the first place. Eisenhower was very correct in noting that the step would be considered as "provocative".
I do not moderate.
I can appreciate how much everyone else pays for gas outside of the U.S., but it's a different situation over here than in a lot of places in Europe.
For one, the U.S. is as big as western Europe. So we have to travel longer distances for a lot of things. Plus, our national passenger train system is, being generous, poor. It's slow and more expensive than flying. Mass transit in all but the largest cities is also very poor. Probably all consequences of always having cheaply available gas. Everyone could afford to have cars and drive around.
I hope one good thing that comes out of the rising fuel prices is establishment of better transit systems here.
I like bread.
Yes, unfortunately, the majority of the country seemingly believes that creation myths have the same quality and quantity of supporting evidence as evolution, that hurricanes are the result of gay people and that crippled people don't deserve to walk again or move their arms, if it means utilizing stem-cells.
Or we don't believe any of that crap and just thought he'd do a better job than the other guy. Many people, and I'm saying 'many' based on an informal survey of group containing 'people I know who voted in 2004', thought that it was a choice between a bad and worse candidate. Neither were terribly appealing, and both had lots of negatives. Some (lots) of us who voted for Bush did so because we disliked Kerry, not because we thought Bush was right on everything.
--trb
Having recently watched a few shows and read some articles on the nuclear weapons used in Japan, I got to thinking nuke's are almost a purely terroristic weapon.
If you use them against terrorists you have very little chance of getting them. Even if you hit the city they are in most will survive. In Japan some girls working in a bank less than a mile from where the bomb went off are still alive to talk about it. Key to their survival was not drinking the toxic rain that fell afterwards.
The bomb creates tremendous heat and on large populated areas is so terrifying (terroristic weapon) that it scares your enemy into surrender. Which is exactly why we used them against the Japanese.
Anyway I just think the principles of the United States and what we advertise to the world should not be "we have nuke's and we can use them at a moments notice", but instead be "we want to help create a world where it is clear to everyone that fascist, expansionist empires are not a good idea and will not be tolerated".
Being a fascist, expansionist regime ourselves is not what the United States is about IMHO.
If this policy were in place before Iraq II, would Iraq now be a radioactive crater? I'm sure some of you wouldn't mind, but I think it would have been a truly horrible tragedy. And, just think, how would we know whether the act was justified? A nuke would completely wipe out any evidence. This policy would lower the barrier to deployment of nuclear weapons and I don't trust the Bush Administration, or any other administration that acts as recklessly as they do, enough to condone the lowering of such a barrier. This is insanity.
Linux is not Windows
Nazism killed many more people than that, 6 million is the count for Jews alone. But Nazism is a socialist doctrine, the name itself is an abreviation for "National Socialist German Workers' Party". Nazism was socialist both in its emphasis of government control of the economy, and social protection and welfare for the workers. Check for instance their "Kraft durch Freude" program.
Nazism may be called "right wing", but that's just an attempt of the "left wing" to differentiate. Actually, Nazist Germany and Socialist Russia were close allies at one time. Remember the so-called Ribbentropp-Molotov treaty by which the Soviet Union and Germany agreed on how they would split Europe among themselves. If Hitler hadn't coveted the natural resources of Russia, they would have continued to be allies. The proof that Stalin had no intention of attacking Germany is in the events from July through December 1941, when it became clear that the Soviet army was absolutely unprepared for war against Germany.
Therefore, the real distinction is not among "left wing" Socialists vs. "right wing" Nazis. If you want to distinguish between political streams, a better classification would be "socialist" vs. "capitalist", or the government taking care both of the economy and welfare, vs. a system where everyone takes care of himself.
Mutually Assured Destruction is something very different. The ultimate extension of the MAD policy was the doomsday device in Dr. Strangelove. If you're going to nuke us, we're going to nuke you, and everyone is going to die. Basically, no matter who fires off the first nuke, everyone dies.
MAD didn't just discourage pre-emptive strikes. MAD downright forbade nuclear strikes of any kind. Using nuclear weapons was suicide, period. MAD was not a policy, it was a fact.
And it still is. Sure, people reserve an implicit "first strike" doctrine, but it really doesn't matter. Against any nuclear-capable country, a pre-emptive nuke still assures that everyone is going to die. Even more silly, we still have the capability to return nuclear fire while the first set of weapons are still in the air, so there is no additional protection offered by firing anything first.
The difference between now and 50 years ago, is that 50 years ago nuclear weapons were seen as a last resort that could end mankind either through regular terrible destructive power or through nuclear fallout. Fast forward to the administration of today, and we now have "tactical" nuclear weapons, a nuclear "pre-emptive" capability, and the stated right to use nuclear weapons against countries that may just be stockpiling weapons we don't like.
So far, everything I have read about this policy says that we should have nuked Iraq. I fail to see how that would have helped do anything but basically rendered the Middle East, and anything downwind from it, uninhabitable.
The ______ Agenda
Has anyone noticed that we've gone several years without a terrorist attack on US soil even though many significant attacks would be easy to accomplish even without suicide? Set off a cheap bomb in a bus somewhere in Kentucky and the media will stir up a nationwide panic. In addition, Katrina shows us that we aren't even prepared to deal with larger attacks.
Given the resentment aroused by recent US foreign policy, the motivation for attacks and their frequency should be increasing. Also given the glaring ineptitude evident in other federal agencies and the challenges involved in restructuring agencies built for the Cold War, I doubt that it's the magnificent accomplishments of behind-the-scenes CIA and FBI operations that are protecting us.
Maybe there just aren't that many people out to get us and we're spending a lot of money on defense trying to prevent disasters that are better prevented with more thoughtful foreign policy (like nonproliferation efforts)? Maybe we're not spending enough money to protect ourselves from dangers that are more likely to affect more of us like levee failure and electrical grid malfunctions? Maybe the evil genius of terrorism is that it causes the victim to seek safety from the terrorists at the expense of protection from more realistically harmful dangers?
Maybe we're letting the terrorists win?
I swear there were terrorists there!! Of course if you care to go there to look for factual evidence or WMD you'll find only dust...Cause we did our job so damn well!
Dude, if you can't make a coherent argument try not saying anything at all. Ad-hominen attacks, like yours, are normally the tool of last resort of people who can't pen an intelligent argument. If you can't make a coherent argument supporting your assertion that a poster is an "idiot" you end up looking like the idiot, not the person you are attacking.
The grandparent's assertions are something of a long shot, but they are entirely plausible. Power mad politicians and spooks have done things just that over-the-top and far fetched throughout history. The Nazi's most probably set fire to the Reichstag for precisely the same reason, they needed to stage a spectacular attack on the nation to use as justification for tightening their grip on power, and to suspend all of Germany's civil liberties, much like the U.S. and U.K are doing now in the wake of their "terror" attacks.
There has been long running speculation that FDR goaded Japan in to a confrontation by embargoing Japanese oil supplies in concert with the U.K and the Dutch. It put Japan in an untenable position since the wheels would eventually fall off their industry and military adventure in China without those oil supplies. The Japanese only had two options, capitulate or seize their oil supplies, especially in Indonesia, by force and declare war on the U.S. and U.K. Chances are FDR's administration turned a blind eye to the attack on Pearl Harbor because they WANTED a catastrophic "sneak" attack, that wasn't really that sneaky, to use as a tool to motivate a reluctant nation in to diving in to World War II with both feet, and to justify trampling civil liberties, in that case mostly aimed at the Japanese, in Germany it was aimed at Communists and Jews, while todays its mostly aimed at Muslims. To have a solid good versus evil myth to use for national propaganda you need scapegoats to blame and lynch.
@de_machina
With apologies to Roosevelt: We have become of afraid of fear itself.
Capitalism encourages us to feel that not having the latest, greatest consumer product cheapens our very existence - thus we become jealous. Once we acquire these products, we want to hold onto them and acquire more, preserving our sense of status and increasing our sense of self worth - thus we become greedy. We are fed a daily doses of horror, terror, and bad human behavior by the media and the folks we put in charge - thus we learn to fear. We fear that the "others" are out to take our stuff and make us less than we were before.
Jealousy, fear, and greed are three primary elements required for control over any individual. Just ask any con man.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
"9/11 didn't just kill people---it killed an ideal, and terribly wounded a once-great nation."
The attacks just killed people and destroyed a few buildings. Not particularly many people even, barely half of the number are killed in traffic the average month.
The administration, the elected representatives of the people and the media killed the ideal and terribly wounded the nation.
Assign blame where it belongs. Not even the strongest efforts of terrorists can ever put a dent in the sheer mass and momentum of a civilized country. Only with the active cooperation of the leadership and media can they obtain enough leverage to affect anything. Unfortunately both politicians and reporters are quick to cash in on rare and spectacular events, particularly when innocent people die.
This past Sunday was the 4th anniversary of the 9/11 bombings that destroyed the World Trade Center.
,speech by President Bush that he would capture him.
Osama Bin Forgotten, um... Bin Laden, is still at large despite a very firm, clear
I can't help but have the intuition that all of this cold war era recycled talk of big missile nuclear is the rattling of sabers so that the US doesn't feel like a paper tiger.
In under 6 years we went from the most powerful, prosperous, and confident nation in the world to a country that can not ( or will not ) catch a grown up spoiled child in the middle east, to a country with red/yellow/whatever alerts, and to a country that gets offered foreign aide ( and needs it ) after a natural disaster.
Maybe we need a new administration( republican or democrat ) instead of a new nuclear war doctrine.
Without wanting to blow my own trumpet (hell, if I could do that I'd never leave the house), this seems to happen a lot around here with the minority crowds around here (right-wing, ID, whatever).
/., and almost every debate seem to end one of two ways:
I've lost count of the number of times I've good-naturedly (and not) argued on various topics on
1) I read up and realise I'm wrong (or they offer an argument I can't logically spot the flaw in), at which point I apologise and either admit I was wrong or agree my conviction has been shaken and I'll reserve judgement pending more thinking.
2) I fire off my arguments (not normally as vitriolic as this, I must add), wait eagerly for the other side's reply, and watch as they argue until they're backed into a corner, then just stop posting to avoid having to admit they're wrong.
Even worse, I often see the self-same people in other threads advancing exactly the same arguments I'd shot down in previous debates, who then stop posting if I point out the problems again.
I try to judge people on their merits, and try to avoid sterotyping wherever I can, but the only explanation I can find is that the majority of Republicans and ID proponents are simply intellectually corrupt.
They don't appear to believe what they believe because of evidence or rationality, and having it demonstrably proven their position is untenable doesn't make them re-evaluate it - it just makes them duck out of the fight and try the same arguments and same fallacies the next time.
This idea of grading things from "my point of view" to "your point of view" (rather than "right" to "wrong") is completely alien to me, and it's quite disturbing to find how prevalent it is.
These people need to understand reality is not "Pick 'n' Mix" - everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but no-one's entitled to their own facts.
The religious right in the USA might rail against "moral relativism" (basically, the idea that it is possible to hold a valid opinion different to their own), but they're demonstrating a much more dangerous habit themselves - factual relativism.
Such wholesale rejection of reality is a symptom of mental illness, and it worries me greatly when it's exhibited regularly by people controlling the most powerful nation on earth.
Everything in moderation, including moderation itself
"We give them what they want! We get the **** out of Saudi Arabia!"
We already did.
Should we cave into their other demands? Let's list what they want us to do:
(1) Become dhimmis. That means that we can't testify in court against any muslim. If we refuse to worship Islam, then we must pay an annual dhimmi tax.
(2) Stop charging interest. Stop receiving interest.
(3) Stop giving equal rights to women. Women must cover their heads and must be subservient to their husband. If they don't have a husband they are worthless.
(4) Kill all gays and adulterers and pornographers. Bill Clinton is one of the people that Osama bin Laden frequently mentions as being morally reprehensible and eligible for execution.
(5) Adopt Shari'a law in our land. This is far worse than anything you read in the Bible.
(6) Submit to a global caliphate. That would be a world government administered by Islam imams. Think Iran but on a global scale. No, think Spanish Inquisition replacing the blue-helmetted UN.
So we'll just cave into the demans. You're not an adulterer ot homosexual are you? Why don't you just commit suicide and make our job easier in submitting to Osama's demands.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Mass transit is poor because gas prices have been kept artificially low for generations in the US. A good chunk of the federal taxes we pay goes toward keeping gas prices as low as possible, so we pay extra for the gas whether we use it or not. Plus, most people would have to pay twice as much to ride public transportation, and it would take twice as long to get to their destination, so who would use it when it can be avoided?
Worse yet, most US cities and towns have "grown up" around the car because gas has been kept so cheap. The design of our cities (with way too much sprawl) makes good public transportation very impractical. I live in Atlanta, and people commute to work here every day from various towns in 5 different states (Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, plus North and South Carolina). Many drive as far as two hours each way every day to combine affordable housing with a well-paying job. Many of them are dumb enough to drive all that way in a truck or SUV. When gas prices go through the roof, we'll be royally screwed, and it'll be our own fault.
I guess I should add some of the other prominent fabrictions used to justify wars and power grabs.
In 1898 the U.S.S. Maine exploded and sank in Havana's harbor. The investigation at the time contended it was a naval mine and sabotage by either the Cuban's or Spanish. In 1976 Admiral Hyman Rickover conducted an investigation that concluded it was most probably a self inflicted fire of some kind that ignited the powder magazine. The conspiracy theorists argue it was probably self inflicted by the U.S. to create a justification for declaring war against Spain. The Spanish American war that followed was in large part due to a massive yellow journalism campaign by William Randolph Hearst, who was parodied in Citizen Kane, and his newspaper empire. In fact the Spanish American war was just a pretext for a massive imperial expansion of the U.S. by seizing Spain's Caribbean assets, including Cuba, and the Phillippines. The occupation of the Phillippines lead to a long and bloody insurgency in which hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed by the U.S., and where the U.S. routinely engaged in torture. The Phillipine-American War has largely been purged from the history the U.S. teaches its children because of its raw brutality, but it is a good historical precedent for U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Iraq.
In 1965 we have the Gulf of Tonkin incident. It is a bit different because I don't think anyone was actually killed. It appears it was a complete fabrication on the part of the Johnson administration used to push the Congress and the American people in to escalating U.S. involvement in Vietnam. This was one of the more explosive revelations by Daniel Elsberg's leak of The Pentagon Papers. The Johnson administration claimed the North Vietnamese attacked the U.S.S Maddox out of the blue in international waters. Most information since contradicts this claim. From Wikipedia:
"Daniel Ellsberg, who was on duty in the Pentagon that night receiving messages from the ship, reports that the ships were on a secret mission, codenamed DeSoto Patrols, inside North Vietnamese territorial waters. Their purpose was to provoke the North Vietnamese into turning on their coastal defense radar so they could be plotted."
"Regarding claims that the attacks on the US were unprovoked, veterans of US Navy SEAL teams say that US-trained South Vietnamese commandos were active in the area on the days of the attacks. Deployed from Da Nang in Norwegian-built fast patrol boats, the Lien Doc Nguoi Nhia (LDNN, soldiers that fight under the sea), made attacks in the Gulf area on both of the nights in question."
@de_machina
Actually, nuking Mecca would enormously strengthen Islam. You see, neither Jews, nor Christians have a Holy Church. Jews had one, but it was, ahem, lost. Christians never had one. That's one of the reasons why they can operate all over the world. Muslims, on the other hand, need to go to hadj, need to turn to Mecca every time they pray, etc. This complicates things a lot. Destroy the Mecca and they will invent a portable holy symbol, such as a crucifix (or even simplier - cross) for Christians.
And with that portable symbol they will conquer the whole world.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Leaving that aside for now, the fact that little people get ground into the dust by exercise of the power of a nation like the US. Truth - and in retrospect the Allende situation perhaps wasn't the Communist revolution that it seemed to be to people like Kissinger. Gotta love that 20/20 hindsight. ....
When you recount our supposed 'evil' without giving it contextual backing, you are bashing your own country. This is why I call people like you anti-American. You'd rather see your own country humbled because of some misplaced humanitarian notion that doesn't work in the real world. That's a seditious attitude whether you understand that - or not.
When I was discussing the lessons of Chile, Guatemala, Iran, etc. I was referring to the pain and suffering we have caused and the way in which this stokes the fires of those who would wish our country harm. My own personal judgement or lack thereof regarding the original decision is another discussion for another time. This is about hindsight (as you touch on) and making sure it can be applied in the future, not about whether any of us would make the same decisions with the same set of facts before us. The ultimate hindsight we have today is a part of that set of facts we can look at today regarding how to go forward from here.
I don't think it should matter what your political views are, but you have to admit that voter apathy is one of the worst threats to our democratic republic than any thing else-- as long as voters are apathetic, then corporate interests will always carry the day. On of our primary duties as Americans is to focus on raising the level of public discourse regarding these topics. By participating in this discussion, I thank you for your part of that. And I do appreciate that you are not simply dismissing my POV for this reason.
I have lived in other countries. My appreciation for what we have in this country in terms of both good governance and civil liberties runs deep, but we should not pretend that it is perfect. And the essence of American patriotism includes a careful scrutiny regarding the acts of our government (to do otherwise renders the democratic on which our republic rests largely meaningless). Open discourse of these issues is extremely important to our form of government.
I will also say that should the basic foundations of our society be changed by the combination of an over-extended executive and an activist court* (4th circuit, Padilla v. Hanft), that I will be the first to say that once the protections of our liberty which have served our society well since before the founding of our country are eviscerated by judicial and executive fiat, then I will at that point reconsider my loyalty to my country.
* I am sensitive to the weight of this accusation. However, for the 4th circuit to rule that an American citizen detained on American soil by ordinary law enforcement officers can be held indefinitely without normal due process rights, and without the possibility of a writ of Habeas Corpus (and in the absense of a Congressional suspension thereof), one is hard pressed to find any interpretation of the opinion in which the court was not seeking to rewrite the basic right to due process written into our Constitution both in the Invasion clause (Article I, Section 9) and in the 4th ammendment. Furthermore, they must have written this with full knowledge that the Supreme Court was largely deadlocked on Hamdi with circumstances far less suspect than those of Padilla. Either the court was negligently wrong or was activist.
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