The Problem with Nukes

The problem with nukes is they make the perfect suicide bomb.

They really can get the job done for genocide also and the option must be left on the table. You may not care if your neighbor wants to kill me but you might if I promise to obliterate you if you let him pull it off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Kahn

My comments regarding nuclear weapons has been driven by the nagging feeling that with the apocalyptic mission of Tehran and other Islamic dooms-dayer’s, that it is a forgone conclusion that we will have to fight a war with them.

I also believe that if such could be forced to happen, the fortunes of the United States will be changed forever. What little good will the US holds and international leadership in so many nooks and crannies in Eastern Europe and other bastions of anti-communism will be once and for all squandered and the tensions between us and Russia, China, North Korea, France, Germany, and even Britain will become untenable.

We are being nudged into a position that our inevitable response will draw scorn just as the Israeli’s have been painted an international pariah.

The conflict in Lebanon rages on and Hezbollah’s refusal to accept the peace fire agreement that has been proffered on the Lebanese governments behalf suggest that the tenuous peace that has existed in that country is about to dissolve into the constituent components that it always was, a diverse Diaspora of ethnicities and religions caught up in the conflict of a world wide religious cult hell bent on the total world domination or total world destruction on the unwavering faith that God wants the religion of Islam to be the one world religion or wants the destruction of all. That is some religion of peace.

Still doing victory laps?

Looking at the campaigns in Europe and the in the Pacific, I wonder if there were those that expected somehow that greater more decisive progress could have been made. Why Tarawa, why Iwo Jima? Isn’t the fight with mainland Japan? But in the end the war came to what looked like a decisive end because of big bangs one and two and yet the post war period was not without it’s difficulties and calamities. The Soviets fullfulling their pledge to attack Japan within three months from the end of the war in Europe attacked the IJA in Manchuria and later occupied Northern Korea. Not the exact outcome we were looking for but and expedient of the time. As long as we are reactants in the larger chemistry of the world it is unreasonable to demand perfection of action, reaction, or non-action.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, and a long war is comprised of many skirmishes and battles. In the post industrial world it seems unlikely that total war will be waged by any industrialized nation, particularly when it is trade and commerce that allows those societies the necessary wealth to wage war. Our adversaries have religious zeal and abject resignation to the futility of the future. They harbor the suicidal dream that they are heroes in their death and their leaders foster that illusion. We need to try harder to disabuse them of such apocalyptic fantasies and I believe that the West, as pervasive as it is, has time on its side. I have recently witnessed a crusty redneck Vietnam vet and a Vietnamese refugee, both alternately rib one another with racist stereotypes, and bond with what could only be mutual respect. There is first a tenuous peace, a period of ridicule, and then a longer period of acceptance. Welcome to Americanization. This is a process favored by time and I don’t think that this is an event that could have happened twenty years ago. Alas, twenty years ago we’d of said that our cultures are too diverse to ever find common cause. Several years ago in the wake of Rodney King and the O.J Simpson debacle I found myself drifting from and becoming more distant to my African American friends but after 9/11 I have gotten the strongest feeling that when the sh!t hits the fan, they got my back. Only time can create such bonds. Conflict is creating more Jihadi’s granted, but whether it is evident or not, I believe that it is making stronger Americans as well. The world isn’t so polarized that it is impervious to reciprocity and if we can somehow find a way to diminish the effectiveness of the Madrassas of Jihad and their counterpart in the Liberal universities we can shorten this war, stem the fountain head of its fuel, and reduce the overall casualty count and the pain that future generation will feel.