Brandioch, you have a point, from a Western left-liberal point of view.Is that the same as reality?
For small enough values of "reality".
What I was trying to address in the post you responded to was the "let's help the poor people" arguments. I didn't realize we'd reverted to your particular question, since the rest of the thread had drifted away from that.
Reversion--
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I showed that there were "poor" countries that have nuclear weapons (India and Pakistan). The reason they have these weapons is because the original technology is 57 years old. Can you tell me anything else that is 57 years old that Iraq or Iran couldn't build?
Oh, OK, we're coming from that direction. Well enough. I got distracted by the version of the argument that basically says, "Well, let's pay them off." Which is what the "let's help the poor folks so they'll love us" notion basically comes to in the end.
Realistically, India isn't a "poor" country from my point of view. They do have an industrial infrastructure and a considerable amount of wealth... that they don't spread around much. Pakistan is a little below that, but recall that there are essentially two Pakistans -- an industrial one, rather small, centered around the capital, and a viciously poor hinterland. India and industrial Pakistan are what I'd call "medium wealth".
The only Muslim country other than Pakistan that I can see having the ability and the will to come up with nukes is Iran, and I don't think they will. Somebody posted the url for IRNA; I've been visiting sporadically. Interesting.
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> Which is what doomed the Russians, and is gonna doom just about anybody else for the next couple decades (after that, no predictions -- too chaotic).>The Russian economic model doomed the Russians. Central planning just isn't efficient enough. But, again, that doesn't matter. My point was that our next enemy won't even TRY to match us in conventional forces. Well, the next enemy that chooses us as a target. You get WAY more bang for your buck when you take out a US city with a nuke. Why spend massive (insert local currency unit) on building up conventional forces that you already KNOW will not be sufficient?
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> Recall my ORIGINAL statement about our nuclear policy regarding Russian tank columns moving through Germany?
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> We didn't even TRY to match them tank for tank. We put a token force there and we let them know that we'd nuke the German landscape just to deny it to the Russians.
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> So, ObL wakes up and realizes that martyrdom just isn't effective. So he takes a million or so and send lots of young martyrs to school. Just so they can soak up all the nuclear information available. Then, he funds basic research into duplicating The Manhattan Project. And delivers the result to NYC in an unmarked van.
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> See? No massive buildup of tanks by the Afghans or Iraqi or Iranians or anyone else. No huge defense budget for them.
Yeah, that's a nice paranoid scenario, all too possible. Probable? I don't think so. A million wouldn't do it, but of course that's irrelevant; he can probably scare up the cash, granted.
Where we disagree is on whether Osama [taken as an avatar for thousands of people with similar ideas] is likely to reach that conclusion.
[snippage]
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We were starting to talk about, and admit, some of the things that had been done over the years when we were contesting with the Soviet Union using proxies.Strange. I've been talking about it for years. Even in these forums.
Do you suppose these forums are all there are? Or even very notable?
I was talking about the general society, the jingoistic Joe Sixpack types. The issues were starting to be discussed around the coffee shops and redneck bars here -- pre 9/11.
[snip]
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Do you really think we'd even be discussing this sort of thing in a Stalinist Empire headquartered from Moscow?Ah, the old "My Country, Love it or Leave it".
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>...which is precisely what those folks were after, and if you don't believe it, go check out the files from the NKVD and KGB that recently became public.Ummm, you're going to have to be a little bit clearer on your verbage. When you say "which is precisely", what do you mean?
Brandioch, this is an example of the kind of thing that gets people fuming at you. Are you being deliberately obtuse here? The subject of the second sentence, which I rather dramatically introduced with the double dash, is "Stalinist Empire".
Votes here, folks. How many other people had to separate the two sentences out that way, and thus lost the point?
And, actually, you missed the point of the first sentence... which was addressing the stuff we did in the Fifties and Sixties. Much of it was nasty. Much of it was necessary. The jury is still out on how much the two sets intersect.
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Poor people around the world deserve our help, and part of that involves reducing our consumption.Actually, reducing our consumption will hurt the poor people. Take a look at the mid-east 100 years ago.
Something I'm truly astonished to see that you realize.
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>Scenario, ObL builds a few nukes and takes out NYC, LA, and DC. So, what do you do?
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> You see, your gun-slinging, macho talk is only good when you face an enemy who isn't willing to die as long as he can take some infidels with him.
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> Which is the flaw in your position. When we faced the Russians, their leaders didn't want to lose their country to our nukes so they held off their nukes.
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> If ObL did that, whom would we retaliate against? How?
Hard question. I don't think there's an answer, or that one is needed -- I don't think the man (or his group) has the resources. Furthermore, I don't think they could deliver the goods.
And you miss the point of the "gunslinging macho" attitude, which is why you called my discussion of the end of Desert Storm irrelevant. It is relevant. How is left as an exercise for the student.
BUT to give an answer --
The result would be a spasm. Baghdad, Tehran (despite the fact that we shouldn't; if there's hope in the Middle East, it comes from Iran) and Damascus. Then tell the Sons of Ibn Saud, "bring us the people who did this, alive, for questioning." Two weeks later, Riyadh, while they're still expostulating on Al Jazeera about why they can't do it.
Not that I'm saying it would work, mind you. That is what I think would happen. I don't think it would be Mecca and Q'om, at least not on the first round.
We have no leverage on ObL himself; the only leverage we have is on the people who sponsor him, which is what the President has been saying from the beginning of this episode. What we have to do is work with the leverage we have. I hope the Sons of Ibn Saud have the same opinion of nuking the U.S., and what would happen afterward, that I do.
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