Sunday, December 05, 2004

It's a MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD World.

David Atkins has a plan to prevent nuckear terrorist attacks on the US. Announce that we will nuke North Korea and all of the major Muslim countries, including the cities of Mecca and Medina if an atmoic bomb is detonated anywhere in the US.
Don't bother tracing the bomb, just nuke. That way, these countries will not only avoid deploying nuclear terrorists against us, they will also work hard to prevent anyone else from doing so.

I see a problem.

I'm not saying that there isn't a justification for this sort of thinking. Indeed, if a nuclear blast were detonated in our country, I'd say, find out which country was responsible and wipe them off the face of the planet.

It also isn't a bad thing to hint that you may do these things, as that will serve as a deterrent (the goal of any MAD-like doctrine is, of course, to make it clear enough that you plan on following the doctrine that no one decies to test you.

The problem here is though that if we clearly delineate certain countries to be nuked, won't that encourage people who don't like those countries to detonate a bomb?

I mean, what if some rogue Indian or Israeli agent decides that he finally knows how to get the US to destroy all of his countries' enemies?

Moreover, it wouldn't matter if we later found out who was responsible, because our government would almost certainly cover it up (not because we are especially corrupt, but no one would want to admit to being duped into killing millions of people).

That is all.

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