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Cold Warriors Question Nukes

Posted by Soulskill on from the nukes-invoke-their-right-to-remain-silent dept.

Martin Hellman writes "George Shultz served as President Reagan's Secretary of State, and Bill Perry as President Clinton's Secretary of Defense. Henry Kissinger was National Security Advisor and Secretary of State to both President Nixon and Ford. Sam Nunn was Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee for eight years. Their key roles in the Cold War has led many to call them 'Cold Warriors.' That status makes their recent, repeated calls for fundamentally re-examining our nuclear posture all the more noteworthy. Their most recent attempt to awaken society to the unacceptable risk posed by nuclear weapons is an Op-Ed in today's Wall Street Journal titled Deterrence in the Age of Nuclear Proliferation. (That link requires a subscription to the Journal. There is also a subscription-free link (PDF) at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.) Key excerpts and links to other resources are available as well."

4 of 274 comments (clear)

  1. In the suicide-bombing age... by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...deterrence is obsolete. If people are so brainwashed by their religion that they think that they're going to be greeted by 17 virgins and everything will be better once this life is over, all bets are off.

    Religion is the biggest threat to the survival of our species, folks. Time to wake up. Time to stand up to the "let's not offend the Muslims" crowd. Every time they claim to be offended by people in the western world exercising their western rights (whether it's to draw cartoons or write novels) we should tell them to go fuck themselves.

    --
    Drill baby drill - on Mars
    1. Re:In the suicide-bombing age... by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Religion is the enemy right now, sea lanes, industrial production, communications/control and minerals are the long term things to worry about, for all of those nuclear weapons for deterrence are still "useful".

      Religion isn't the threat, ideology is, be it pan-Islamic, Maoism, White Supremacy, etc

    2. Re:In the suicide-bombing age... by Runaway1956 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Someone who happens to be on target. The mewling idiots complain about "religion" being a danger. And, within the past 100 years, we've seen that ATHEISTS rank among the cruelest, most inhuman monsters on earth.

      It's "ideology" that is the real threat. Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, and Joseph Stalin never went to a Christian mass, and they certainly never took an Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca. Ideology. Any time some sumbitch starts thinking that he knows what's good for the rest of humanity, we are in trouble, no matter his religion, or lack of.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  2. Re:Like Robert McNamara by erice · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Did you actually read the article? They aren't complaining about what they did in the cold war. They are saying that those strategies don't make any sense *now*. And they are right, although like any committee opinion, they did not state it forcefully enough.

    Why do we have *any* nukes pointed at Moscow? Russia is not our enemy. Who else then? There are no nation states with motivation to nuke the US that have the means to do so. Who are these missiles supposed to deter? The only purpose these weapons ever had was deterrence. If they aren't any good that then they actually make us less safe by making nuclear war by accident possible when it wouldn't happen deliberately.