While recognizing that J Thomas is employing some simplifcations and exaggerations in his comment, my view is that it pretty much encapsulates the essence or spirit of nearly all of the Pro-Iraq war arugments that I have encountered in numerous exchanges, both civil and not.

It's crazy, but it's the least crazy justification I've heard so far.

Although I don't agree with this.

Once you accept the assumptions everything fits.

Well, no. Even if we take the insane hyperbole out of those assumptions (we're not going to nuke every Muslim nation, for example, no matter what happens) then it still doesn't follow that "consumerism" will prevent terrorists from resorting to nukes.

Terrorists already know all about consumerism, they've already got the absurdly ugly expensive sneakers and the laptop computers. This stuff is perfectly compatible with the head-chopping and the medieval theology. I recall the Turk who advised his niece that she had dishonored her family and had to die - he notified her by sending her a text message on her cellphone.

Even if such an expedient did work, it would work much too slowly to prevent the nuke-and-retaliation scenario that is being assumed as inevitable here. It's unclear whether this is being presented as an argument, or whether it is being claimed that the government of the United States believes this. Either way, it's guano clear through.

The answer to Wretchard's Second Conjecture, I think, is that as soon as terrorism advances to NBC Warfare, the complacent pseudo-solidarity of the "Muslim World" will instantly shatter. A Muslim nation might well be the first target of such an attack. Every Muslim nation not ruled by complete lunatics will pledge their assistance to the victim and act to distance themselves from any suspected source of the attack. There will be massive arrests, and torture that will make waterboarding look like a friendly game of Twister. People like Ahmadinejad will be swept aside by any means necessary.

Such a convulsion would not wipe out Islam or Muslim nations, but it would give them one hell of a cold-water douche, and it would be mostly self-administered.

Glen Wishard-

This scenario is not batguano insane. It is pretty much guaranteed. Unless we have become so self hating that we do not wish to go on breathing and I do not think that is the case.

If we get one or more US city is nuked we're not going to nuke every Muslim nation immediately.

If we have a Liberal in the WH, we do nothing.

If we have any sort of real conservative in the WH, we are going to have about 3 days to one week of consideration and telling the other Muslim nations to turn over the perps NOW. Then we will begin sorting friend from foe the hard way, for them.

Just my take. Those who protest in this country may be beaten within an inch of their lives or charged and incarcerated.

BTW, I agree with the post. The supposed 'cowboy' diplomacy in the ME of Bush & Co. was the only rational course. We either set about implementing change in the ME because, after 9-11, the enemy had made the, until then, cold war hot OR we wait for it to get to the point where the 3rd Conjecture comes into play. Their casualties = 1 × 10^9 or so. (That's one billion in engineering notation for the math challenged here.) The ONLY rational course is to take the fight to the enemy and as much on our terms as we could.

It is amazing what fear will do to people.

TOC, what if the fear is mostly due to "mistaking a clear view for a short distance"? Would that moderate your amazement somewhat?

Also, I'm not sure it's fear. What if it's simple (severe) pessimism? Are they the same in your book?

Because, if all you've got to say is what you just said, -1 for drive-by (your score is still positive on aggregate, never fear).

Give him a break. I fear he's absolutely right.

Age old human question: when irrationality is a logical strategy, is it still irrational?

We've kicked that one around since the age of epics, through Shakespeare, we still use it.

It works.

The whole concept of MAD was basically, nuke us, we will go irrational on you, and kill everyone, everywhere.

The newer variant works on the premise that although the terrorist in the field has already forsworn rationality, his handlers haven't.

Ben

Ben -- and that cuts both ways in both spheres: torture (as discussed in the Patterico thread and countless other places) and massive nuke spasm:

Just how crazy are "our" chest-beating silverbacks? Will menacing overtures achieve good results cheaply, or will "we" screw up? What Leary and Robert Anton Wilson after him called "Circuit Two territorial brawling" is much less nuanced without posturing. And posturing in that context must be convincing to be effective, so it can't be totally and obviously a sham.

"When is a bluff not a bluff?"
"Tell you later."

Wicked problems. Wicked times? Tell you later.

Barry, that Harry's Place link you provided contained several sorts of awesome. Thanks! Now I know another guy I really want to know: Davem, the author of that piece.

"It's crazy, but it's the least crazy justification I've heard so far."

Although I don't agree with this.

Have you heard a saner justification for our iraq mess?

Even if such an expedient did work, it would work much too slowly to prevent the nuke-and-retaliation scenario that is being assumed as inevitable here. It's unclear whether this is being presented as an argument, or whether it is being claimed that the government of the United States believes this. Either way, it's guano clear through.

You're arguing that it's wrong, because you have some different starting assumptions.

But do you have a better excuse for the iraq invasion and occupation?

I'm curious as to which parts of that J Thomas finds insane. Do you think that terrorists can never, ever, ever get nuclear weapons, and we don't need to think about the unthinkable? Do you think if an American city gets nuked we should begin vigorous requests to be allowed to issue subpoenas across the Arab world to find the responsible individuals and prove them guilty in a court of law?

#11

Oil and profiteering, and "he tried to kill my daddy."

While worthy, I think you're giving our current leaders way too much credit for thinking through this. The Neocons wanted to invade Iraq and depose Saddam long before 9/11. Their man Bush and 9/11 gave them that opportunity. I am of the opinion that your post represents the add-on reasons that have been subsequently attached to the invasion/occupation by admin apologists and aggressive Israeli supporters (as well as other conspiracy-theory loving types). While interesting (even breathtaking) in their sweep and paranoia, it is also remarkable that so-called CONSERVATIVE people would support an action on the scale of this war, where many civilians can predictably suffer at our hands, on the basis of a house-of-cards argument where each element relies on assuming the most unlikely outcome of events or otherwise on theories of human behavior that are shaky, at best.

Then again, I may be wrong, and the administration actually also believes these things and is as crazy as you say.

J Thomas, how does the current situation in Pakistan affect your view of things one way or the other?

Obviously Pakistan's nuclear genie was out of the bottle long before Bush took office. The nation is deeply fundamentalist and has also been run by a military dictator preceeding Bush.

The AQ situation has made matters worse, because obviously we can't (and couldn't) just ignore Pakistan- and if anything this is making the red herring brigade that claimed to support invading Pakistan instead of Iraq look like lunatics. If there were US divisions slugging it out on Pakistani soil right now Musharaff could very well be dead and the nuclear arsenal up for grabs. That could still happen and that is NOT a lunatic what-if.

So with that in mind- doesn't non-proliferation take on a new light? I'm not saying it proves the conjectures, but they do have a point dont they?

That brings us to Iran. Im not in the camp that believes Iran obtaining a nuclear arsenal is certain to mean nuclear war (though its not out of the question). BUT- I have several huge problems with allowing Iran a nuclear get-out-of-jail free card, starting with the fact that they already brazenly support international terror. Once they become immune to conventional weapons via a nuclear umbrella, what will they be willing to support?

The other problem is that a nuclear nation such as Iran immediately enters the Pakistani dilemna. No matter how vile their government may be, it will be a vital national interest of basically the entire world to prop them up. We will find ourselves in the position of opposing democratic revolution in Iran, because we cant risk a mullah with his back to the wall and his finger on the nuclear trigger. I dont see fundamentalist Iran committing national suicide all things being equal- but if the roof is already falling in who knows? And at that point it doesnt take a National decision- you have a real Hunt for Red October problem where whoever physically controls the weapons (which would surely be the most ferocious and loyal supporters of the Mullahs) controls war and peace.

When I reflect on the application of this idea to the US court of public opinion, it makes a kind of sense.

If the likelihood of a jihadist nuclear attack on the USA is factored into the mix, what might the reaction be? Siren voices would bleat plaintively that "we should have tried to modernise" their societies and populations, before retaliating.

Having spent blood and treasure trying to do just that, future administrations could have a wider range of acceptable options.

Mark:

... doesn't non-proliferation take on a new light?

As Bobby Kennedy would say, non-proliferation is deader than Kelsey's nuts.

The only clear position on it coming from the left is the idea that anti-US and anti-Israel regimes have a right to obtain nuclear weapons, and a right to lie about it. This is also the position of the far right (see MORONIC CONVERGENCE, PHENOMENA OF).

The liberal center has no ideas about the subject, because the left has completely chased them off the field.

Bush has failed to rally a coalition against proliferation. This is partly his fault, and partly not his fault. It couldn't be done without some sort of Democratic and Republican consensus at home first.

"Once we convert all the Muslims into atheist consumers who're trying to live the American dream, the threat from them will be over and we won't have to kill them all.

This couldn't have been George W. Bush's intention, because he has shown in every way that he considers Islam to be a purely good thing.

George W. Bush thinks Methodists and Muslims love freedom exactly the same, and you can't show him any evidence that will convince him otherwise. He's said so. This is a religious belief for him.

And why would George W. Bush identify atheism with trying to live the American dream?

I'm curious as to which parts of that J Thomas finds insane.

First, the idea that the US government has to go crazy whenever the US public does.

Second, the idea that nonproliferation is still possible. Nonproliferation is dead. Now it's our job to survive without it.

Third, the idea that invading iraq would revive nonproliferation.

Fourth, the idea that we could install friendly puppet governments all over the muslim world starting with an invasion of iraq. There might be some subtle way to get friendly muslim governments but main military force had no chance to do it.

That's a start.

J Thomas, how does the current situation in Pakistan affect your view of things one way or the other?

Remember the old joke about the man who's looking for his keys at night under the lamppost? Somebody asks him where he lost them. "Over there" and he points out into the darkness. "They why are you looking here?" "Because the light's better."

it's like the germans are attacking through belgium so the french decide to strengthen the Maginot line more in case the germans decide to attack that way too.

If pakistan already had nukes and iran was on the way, why attack iraq over a nuclear program that we had only the vaguest evidence for? Because it was easy. We had no plausible way to get the results we wanted, so we settled for wishful thinking. Maybe if we conquered iraq it would sap the wills of all the other arabs. Maybe iran and syria would turn into peaceful consumerist nondenominational democracies without a fight. Or maybe they'd get so undecided they'd be easy to knock over. Maybe pakistan would be ripe for a true democratic government with complete separation of church and state, maybe a majority of them would stop being muslims.

If you believe in a deadly arab nuclear threat, invading iraq was an implausible solution. Stopping the threat that way depended on a whole series of unlikely assumptions. But it was probably the best military solution we could get, because invading anybody else would have been worth less and would cost more and would be even more certain to fail.

I say that invading iraq was a stupid response to this potential problem. You might feel I owe you a better solution. I have some ideas that might work (or might have worked) but they're kind of implausible too though far less expensive. The trouble is that the rules of the game have changed and we have to deal with that. We don't get to change the rules back, that isn't within our power. Nonproliferation had a good run, close to 60 years, and now we have to find a way to live with the new situation.

Thanks, J Thomas. I don't get it.

Taking your second point first, the argument you summarized does not mention nonproliferation, except to say that proliferation is inevitable. That argument takes the death of nonproliferation as a given, and suggests a way to survive without it.

As to your third point, the argument as you summarized it does not say that invading Iraq will restore nonproliferation. It says that invading Iraq will let us transform it into the kind of place in which proliferation poses much less of a threat - "a secular liberal democracy".

As to your first point, again, what would you consider a measured response to the destruction of a city? Further, what makes you think the government would be inclined to resist the near-unanimous demands for revenge that would follow that kind of event?

And your final point - I don't see what use the word 'puppet' plays. Could you explain why suddenly today it has become impossible to install friendly governments by military force, when every major power from Rome to the Soviets to the British to the Ottomans have been doing so for thousands of years?

This whole argument relies upon the inevitability along every step of a chain of events. Therefore, a bad plan is the only plan available to stop the first chink in the chain. And to do so, we must enact an "Act first, think later" strategy that cannot allow for time to think rationally: "ok, what next?", which I beleive to be the central flaw in Iraq war operations.

I think this "extremes to prevent extremes" logic works in situations like "Dr. Strangelove" where events have already been set in motion, and the dominoes can no longer be stopped. However, history teaches us that things almost never work out like you imagine (Consider one weekend in football, which should be much easier to predict than the strategic movements of over a dozen nations, and yet is sometimes very hard).

Crazy, unexpected things happen, but the cold war ended not as good as we hoped or as bad as we feared. Despite a dozen smaller proxy wars between superpowers that COULD have led to nuclear armageddon, we're still here.

Let's just sit down and consider this before we decided that using nukes is the only way to prevent the use of nukes.

Complete batguano, yes.

Number 1, even if "Islamic terrorists" get nuclear weapons - yes, a chilling scenario, and one to be vigilant about - this whole "invade Iraq" as a solution" is insane, is wishful thinking at best, and I believe, simple fantasy.

Nevertheless, I tend towards more prosaic explanations, and think that the Islamic threat had little to do with invading Iraq. I actually don't think that Cheney and company bought that. 9-11, allowed them to turn "crisis into opportunity", by making it politically acceptable to implement the invasion of Iraq, which had been wanted and wished for, for a variety of reasons:

a. Saddam, as well as being an insane ruthless, despicable dictator, ALSO
b. continued to be troublesome, for the stability of the oil flow, given his volatile nature, and actively seeking to throw a monkey wrench in the "international order". (He was no longer "our" despicable despot, who would work within the current international arrangement for oil, but would seek to break it.)
c. continued to have access (which gave him continued power and strength) to one of the biggest oil reserves in the world, which would (clearly) be better in other hands.
d. Reduced the threat of Iraq to a much more manageable arrangement (kurds, shiite, chaos, all the same. The final political arrangements in Iraq will be much less powerful and a threat to the economic stability of the region, and the stable flow of oil.)
e. Possible (but only possible) client state(s), based on the mutual backscratching approach that we have, for example, with Saudi Arabia.

There is a geopolitical argument to be made for the above, a very cynical one, but a defensible one, from the U.S. self-interest, if one ignores the moral implications. (Although I believe even that argument is wrong, given the costs involved.) And, by THOSE lights, it has been a bad decision, but there is at least SOME alignment with goals with the OUTCOMES, that have actually happened. (I'm saying, hey, yes, Bush and Cheney really aren't that stupid, just incredibly (and criminally) agressive and cynical who lie like others breathe.)

After all, it's just the American approach to latin america, weak democracies alternating with banana republics, but friendly, or at least compliant, to US interests. The U.S. just hadn't attempted this in the Middle East since the 50's, for a host of geopolitical reasons (detailed by Bush, and funny enough Cheney, in the 1st Gulf War.)

But "democracy, whiskey, sexy?". Complete idiocy.

I want to thank the thread participants for the overall satisfactory quality and tone of their posts. So... thanks!

Also, sorry for misleading anyone with my entry's lead paras, and thanks to JT for keeping things on-track despite any miscue of mine.

#23

So, in other words, the lesson in American Might that the war sought to teach, ostensibly, was directed toward Saddam Hussein specifically and not terrorists in general. I think a good case can be made for this.

That and the fact that certain America corporate interests stood to profit greatly from an all-out military action. Concidentally, these are the same groups of people that the Bushs have been involved in for generations. This is the only potential reason for the war that has been abundantly proven to come to pass. These companies are doing better than ever.

Deposing Saddam could have been done much more cheaply, for example. Worldwide terrorist organizations have been given a new inspiration and have thrived, so that alleged goal has backfired. The UN inspectors were closing in on the truth about the WMDs so if we wanted Saddam to be rid of them Bush would have let them do their jobs. There is little in the house of cards argument that J Thomas so diligently assembled that can stand up to simple scrutiny.

In my view that is the least "crazy" of all the theories surrounding Bush's War, given the particular brand of morality (really a lack therof) that these leaders have demonstrated over the years.

It only seems crazy to those who have even an ounce of empathy for your fellow man and do not feel supremely entilted to wealth and power and morally superior to everyone else that walks the earth.

J Thomas' article is nothing of the sort. It's a statement of an opposing view on his terms, followed by a verdict, without reference to anything resembling actual events, that this view is insane. Nor is there any example presented of what constitutes a "sane" view.

This would need to be improved, in order to even reach the status of an addressable argument.

J Thomas -- interestingly enough, in 1997 GWB gave an interview detailing why his Father was correct to leave Saddam in place in 1991 (guerilla war) and there was no appetite for uprooting Saddam. GWB ran on the explicit platform of "no more nation building" and repudiated even the limited stuff Clinton did.

After 9/11, and the limited response, the US was faced by provocations and a challenge from Saddam that could not go unanswered: kicking out the inspectors and posturing that he did indeed have WMDs.

Failing to respond to this provocation would have only encouraged every nation in the ME and (other Muslim nations) to conclude that the US could be successfully bullied on key national security threats to it and that cooperating with Osama had far less risks and more rewards than cooperating with the US.

[As we know from the Duelfer Report Saddam deliberately bluffed on WMD to deter Iran and the US, judging the situation to be like 1991.]

We only got rid of Saddam in response to a deliberate provocation by him, otherwise we would have been too weak.

You further misread Wretchard's Three Conjectures. IF a nuclear weapon is used on the US, how does the US deter further use? Osama's view is that the US lacks the will to retaliate and it's widely seen as at least partially true. Wretchard's prediction is that the US will do a very minimal response and the US will lose more cities. Thus raising the ante to require a civilizational response to prevent loss of even more cities.

This is straight out of the noted neo-con Machiavelli. I would add that Machiavelli has a lot to teach us, given that our position now matches say France of his time. Nuclear proliferation is a fact, it happened in the 1990's and there is no going back. The basic science is well known and the technology dates back to the 1940's. Even Pakistan which is impoverished and filled with many people who are not even literate (Pakistan is not known for it's smart people to put it mildly) can make nukes (they have about 300 or so).

How does the US deter "deniable" proxy terrorist nuclear attacks? What is our response if we don't know for certain who did it? How do we handle political stress given manifest failure to prevent nuclear attacks on our cities and massive loss of life? Very likely a Liberal weak response to our cities being nuked would lead to massive insurrection and perhaps even a coup. People understandably DEMAND NO NUKING OF THEIR CITIES. This is job #1 for the President and is even more urgent now than in the stable bipolar Cold War World with rational old men like Brezhnev.

Obama offers that his grandmother in Kenya, living in a mud hut on the shores of Lake Victoria, and being raised in Indonesia will make other people "like him" and thus refrain from nuking America. Edwards offers to send lots of money. Hillary says she'll strike back, but won't say how.

An announced list of nations set for destruction that would kill most of their people in response to the US being nuked would let everyone understand the stakes ahead of time. No guesswork. AQ Khan would think different perhaps about giving Osama nukes if he understood that all the Pushtuns in Pakistan would be dead as a result. This is deterrence though not MAD (adjusted for multi-power world).

Why not? Unless you are more interested in being moral than protecting us "little Eichmans?"

What works, and has been proven to work throughout human history? The ability to destroy an potential threat, but not being so fear inducing that people fear death regardless of what they do. Offer a clear path: this way death of all, that way being left alone.

"Deposing Saddam could have been done much more cheaply, for example."

Really? Please share your familiarity with the attempts made, the results, the available options, and their odds of success.

I'm betting straight zeroes, myself.

Alan (#25) "Worldwide terrorist organizations have been given a new inspiration and have thrived, so that alleged goal has backfired."

Note the hidden assumption that there would be no other pretext used in its place as motivation for the Islamic Khalifists (vid. Kashmir, Chechnya, overthrowing Pakistan, to mention just 3 that were active pre-Iraq).

Note also the second underlying assumption, which is that anywhere you fight terrorists, you provide them with "inspiration". Ergo, you must not fight them.

"Batguano insane" is a pretty good description... of that view.

What HAS been given inspiration, and IS genuinely new, has been the local revolts and subsequent killing of large numbers of al-Qaeda terrorists in Anbar, Iraq, and other areas. Coupled with a sharp decline in support for terrorism within a major muslim nation, something that is also new.

Add to the "new" category the intelligence gathered from tribes that have switched allegiance, after cooperating with Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Which partially makes up for the destruction of America's intelligence network in Pakistan as Musharraf has proven unsuccessful at resisting the Talibanization of western Pakistan (which has, and will continue to, move toward a larger war for Pakistan as well as Afghanistan).

But incorporating those kinds of thoughts into one's assessments goes against the party line, so we won't trouble people by asking them to think about that. We'll just hack out slogans.

Not honest, and not good enough.

Pakistan...

A country that seems to be doing an excellent job exhibiting the folly of allowing Muslim countries to get nukes, and the consequences that follow.

In addition to the genuinely batguano insane folks in Iran, nuclear programs are now officially underway in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco, and the recent strike at Syria raises more than a few questions.

Most of those regimes are LESS stable than Pakistan. Add up the collective odds of al-Qaeda getting nukes if those nations all have nukes, as failure in any one place hands them to an opposition that is essentially al-Qaeda (Morocco is the exception). This is a serial problem, so the percentages compile, they don't reduce with each new country added. Then ask what Al-Qaeda's published doctrine is re: nuclear weapons and its intentions.

Yes, there are crazy people out there. The chain of events they will set off, if allowed to do so, tends to strike folks as out of normal bounds, because it IS outside of normal bounds.

That does not make scenarios involving those plans coming to fruition "crazy". It makes the people who believe such things to be impossible sheltered and blinkered.

And, given the profuse amount of information out there to the contrary, borderline deceitful. Especially if all they offer is a completely unsupported "I think it's crazy," with no reference to anything real.

"J Thomas' article is nothing of the sort. It's a statement of an opposing view on his terms, followed by a verdict, without reference to anything resembling actual events, that this view is insane. Nor is there any example presented of what constitutes a "sane" view."

-

"This would need to be improved, in order to even reach the status of an addressable argument."

Desirable improvements would include saying what it is alleged George W. Bush (or else who, specifically?) thought, and on what basis are they supposed to have thought that, as opposed to what the writer thought.

I pointed out that one thought in this free-form rave was definitely not from George W. Bush, whose sole decision it was to go to war. He has committed himself publicly and with explicitly religious, fact-proof faith to a view wholly incompatible with the one that seems to be put in his mouth.

Beyond that, the piece was not coherent enough to be convenient to argue with.

#28

Really? Please share your familiarity with the attempts made, the results, the available options, and their odds of success.

The statement reads could have been done...meaning that plausible, reasonable alternatives can be envisioned. Don't waste my time in demanding that I state the obvious.

Note also the second underlying assumption, which is that anywhere you fight terrorists, you provide them with "inspiration". Ergo, you must not fight them

This is not an underlying assuption, it is a mischaracterization of the point in order to make a straw-man argument. Ergo...you must not be capable or couldn't be bothered to counter the real point.

#29

In addition to the genuinely batguano insane folks in Iran, nuclear programs are now officially underway in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, and Morocco, and the recent strike at Syria raises more than a few questions.

I'm impressed with your wordly knowledge. Really. But you left out the explanation for how the invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped to bring this about...or, um, improve the situation....or, what exactly? That is the point of the thread.

That does not make scenarios involving those plans coming to fruition "crazy". It makes the people who believe such things to be impossible sheltered and blinkered.

And, given the profuse amount of information out there to the contrary, borderline deceitful.

Sheltered. Blinkered. Not honest. Borderline Deceiptful.

Wow. So much for a civil discourse. Calling those who disagree with you liars. I really don't think that this rant deserves to be dignified with an effort at a substantive reply.

"If pakistan already had nukes and iran was on the way, why attack iraq over a nuclear program that we had only the vaguest evidence for?"

Because Pakistan already had nukes.

And i didnt hear many people arguing in 2002 that Iran's nuclear program was more advanced than Iraqs. That is a realization that is only obvious in hindsight. And please, lets not rehash the intelligence war yet again. Saddam from his own mouth admitted he was attempting to convince the Iranians he had WMDs and was also planning on building a nuke as late as 9/11. At the time it was a valid assumption- one most of the world shared (no matter what they thought of our solution, few were arguing the innocence of Iraq).

"Nonproliferation had a good run, close to 60 years, and now we have to find a way to live with the new situation."

Alright, and thats what we are talking about. Where are the good solutions? JT, you really skirted my question- if we agree that once a nation gets nukes, stability becomes paramount, how do we approach a nation like Iran at this point? Setting bygones aside, what do we do?

I set out a solution a while ago- inform every rogue nation that refuses weapons inspectors that they will be instantly assumed to be guilty if an unidentified nuke goes off over an American interest. The consequences of which are quite straight forward. That provides a powerful incentive at least not to share nuclear technology, if not to abandon it.

Alan: well, if you want to jump out of the pool, go ahead. I'd, in the abstract, extend Joe's assessment to include the possibility of self-deceit of the author -- we all know the human race has plenty of that, do we not?

I'm not making any claim about J Thomas here, or I don't mean to. I'm just trying to interpret Joe's text.

True, Joe does raise the possibility of deceit-intentional by the plain wording of one phrase.

May your hair-trigger huff save you much time.

[Wordng tweaked slightly. --NM]

Here is what fear does. It has people make up scenarios that essentially follow this pattern. Let's make up a scenario that

"These obstacles to terrorist capability are the sole reason that the War on Terror has not yet crossed the nuclear threshold, the point at which enemies fight each other with weapons of mass destruction."

Right there you are in looney land. "Terrorist capablity" consists of innumerable components. Putting them all in the "Terrorist capability" tent makes things easy though. Now you can start making these claims like

"Attaining WMDs will destroy Islam"

Islam has been around for a long time but that doesn't matter once you
doll this up with a few choice morsels like:

"The enemy was equally indifferent to inducement or threat. Neither making nice -- Jimmy Carter's withdrawal from Iran, Reagan's abandonment of Lebanon, Bush's defense of Saudi Arabia, Clinton's rescue of Albanian Muslims from Serbian genocide, the payment of billions in aid to Egypt and Pakistan -- nor the gravest of threats would alter the enemy's intent to utterly destroy and enslave America. Allah had condemned America. The Faithful only had to find the means to carry out the execution."

and some nifty tables that use some jazzy mathematical notation and you are off to the races.

Oh! one other thing call it "Three Conjectures" and tie the bundle up with the wonderful insight that:

"It is supremely ironic that the survival of the Islamic world should hinge on an American victory in the War on Terror, the last chance to prevent that terrible day in which all the decisions will have already been made for us. That effort really consists of two separate aspects: a campaign to destroy the locus of militant Islam and prevent their acquisition of WMDs; and an attempt to awaken the world to the urgency of the threat."

This is on the level of a huckster's rant at a tent revival. It is Jim Jones selling Millennial Kool Aid. It is on the level of tent revival is nothing on which to base a Foreign Policy.

The fact that anyone would take this seriously is a good example of what fear does to people.

"Here is what fear does. It has people make up scenarios that essentially follow this pattern. Let's make up a scenario that

"These obstacles to terrorist capability are the sole reason that the War on Terror has not yet crossed the nuclear threshold, the point at which enemies fight each other with weapons of mass destruction."

Right there you are in looney land. "Terrorist capablity" consists of innumerable components. Putting them all in the "Terrorist capability" tent makes things easy though. Now you can start making these claims like

"Attaining WMDs will destroy Islam""

Also, A = A.

"Darkness visible (John Milton)" (link)

"Fearful symmetry (William Blake)" (link)

"What, me worry?" (Alfred E. Neumann)

It is very sad that a conversation like this has to occur. In a government of, for and by the people one would think that a clear, rational, credible and true explanation for the invasion would have been provided to us by our elected representatives before, at the time of and periodically during the invasion/occupation. Instead all we get is shifting stories and goalposts that leave us speculating.

And please, no non-compliance with WMD comebacks. That lame dog won't hunt. By the invasion jump off the inspectors were enjoying relatively unobstructed access and and found nothing even though we had stated that we "knew" exactly where the WMD was. By that point there was serious reason to allow the inspections to wrap up and disolve the ostensible reason for an attack.

OK, I might as well report that I've been looking for my copy of an issue of US News and World Report dated shortly before the initiation of OIF.

I remember the Bush administration's stated (and analyzed) motivations and pretexts not emphasizing WMD anywhere near as much as people now tacitly agree they did, and the last time I looked at that magazine, some years after "Mission Accomplished" (*cough*)... ...well, I quite distinctly recall noticing that the content contradicted the latterday claims of claims of WMD.

Even if I find it, and even if I find time to type excerpts in, I don't expect it will make any difference. People remember what they want to.

Sure. Perhaps my memory of the magazine's contents is shaded. I acknowledge that possibility. I haven't heard any of the repeaters of the "imminent WMD pretext" story make any such acknowledgment. I wonder what evidence it would take for the passionate polemicists to discover or admit that the quotes about WMD that are brandished so freely now were only a fraction of the discourse.

Bartley's "Pancritical Rationalism" is a hard row to hoe.

I know of no way to convincingly reconstitute the zeitgeist of that time as I lived through it.

Too bad. To me, this overemphasis of the WMD angle reminds me of the first-year psych class all debating what knife was used in a mock attack staged in front of them when the actual instrument used was a banana.

Bgates, I have time constraints so I'll answer your last point now and the others later if I remember.

Puppet governments work sometimes, for awhile. They work better when the dominant government is much larger and is nearby. (like USSR/eastern europe or USA/latin america). Then if there's a rebellion you can move in your army and mop it up.

They work better when the public is mostly apolitical, as has usually been true everywhere for the last 3000 years but is less true within the last generation or so.

They work better after nationalist governments have been repeatedly overthrown, either by coup or invasion. People get tired of fighting for their country when they think it can't last.

Puppet governments tend to cost more than they're worth, but there could be exceptions -- control of the Panama canal is worth far more than the revenues, and control of iraqi and saudi oil may be worth much more than the money. The USSR no doubt felt much safer with a big buffer zone between them and western europe, and it's hard to put a money value on that feeling.

Puppet governments work better when there's a degree of ethnic conflict. If a bunch of people support the government because they're afraid if they don't there'll be a civil war and they could be murdered in their beds, then they'll put up with a lot from that government.

Puppet governments work better when the dominant power doesn't mind doing genocide. Kill off as many of the locals as it takes and the survivors will learn fear. When you have people to move in to replace them, or you're fine with leaving the place depopulated, then you don't really need the locals and after a little while they'll see that and respond. This approach works better for large nations that have a surplus of people (rome, china, imperial england, imperial france). And for nations that want a lot of horse pastures (mongols, huns).

For thousands of years people have thrown out their governments when the economy fails, and puppet governments have not been very good at keeping their economies from failing. They're all temporary (as are all the others). Sometimes there's hard feelings for the dominant nation afterward, but sometimes they just get over it. Russia is doing fine with the eastern europeans, and nobody much in latin america is angry at the USA, while the tibetans are quite happy with their chinese immigrants.

In general, puppet governments allow more control now in exchange for less control at some unknown time in the future. They cost, now. Depending on how fanatical the locals are, they may require genocide.

Not good for a puppeteer government with a declining population, foreign debts, and an ideology that favors democracy. That last is important in the long run; you don't want your idealists to turn cynical.

Seems to me there's a basic misunderstanding of what a "puppet government" is. (Among the other general confusion....)

Does it mean an actual government installed (in this case, by the US)---in other words, a quisling government?; or does it mean a system of government promoted by the US in order to elect (and then, one hopes, re-elect, and again re-elect, etc.) a government?

It would seem to me that what has occurred in Iraq is the latter, no matter how much one would like to believe that it is the former.

And if the latter is, even so, considered to be a puppet government, then it would seem that for consistency's sake, the governments of Japan and Germany would also have to be considered puppet governments.

(On the other hand, who needs consistency?....)

#35 from David Blue at 8:26 am on Nov 20, 2007

At the risk of being smeared as a fear-crazed loony, I will venture to say that putting all the innumerable components of "terrorist capability" in the "terrorist capability" tent is a good idea.

Also, A = A.

I was not clear, forgive me. My point being, it is easy to say "terrorist capability" without stating the odds of all the things that are necessary to happen to put everything into that tent. To mimic the Conjecturer if three components are necessary and they are all 100 to one, the chance of "terrorist capability" coming into play is 1 X 10^6. Next thing we know the Conjecturer has wiped out the Muslim world and the "fact"

"the survival of the Islamic world should hinge on an American victory in the War on Terror"

I agree that A = A, If you look at each tents skin. My point ws that we are being mislead s to the contents of the tent.

I don't follow you Nort. Congress specifically authorized the use of military force in Iraq because of the pretext of WMD that was fed to them by the Bush admin. After the inspection process that pretext should have been nullified.

Furthermore, there was all that talk of mushroom clouds over New York by admin officials, Rumsfeld stating that he "knew"where the WMD was, presentations and appeals to the UN referencing WMD, discredited aluminum tubes,etc. How can you possibly say that WMD wasn't the cause to war?

Here is a link
that pretty well summarizes what was stated by the admin.

Again, I ask, why do we have to speculate as to cause? War is serious business. Why isn't the reason(s) for our involvement in a war and occupation clear to us? Don't you find it at least a little disturbing that after all the cost in blood and treasure we don't know why this was done?

There might be some subtle way to get friendly muslim governments but main military force had no chance to do it.
is a long way from
Puppet governments work sometimes, for awhile.
Let's see under what circumstances the friendly government we set up could last (ps - you quit calling them 'puppet' and I'll refrain from talking about the objectively pro-terrorist desire to withdraw, k?)

-They work better when the dominant government is much larger (check)
and is nearby. (check - we can project force anywhere)
-They work better after nationalist governments have been repeatedly overthrown (1958, 1963 [twice], 1968, 2003 - check)
-[They] work better when there's a degree of ethnic conflict (check)

...so obviously you agree that installing a friendly government in Iraq is doable. But I just reread your comment, and you were actually objecting to the idea of using military force to change regimes in other Muslim countries. Do you have any examples of where Bush has tried that? I only know of the two attempts that were successful.

Avedis - that link might be a fair summary of what was stated by the administration, but you should know that the President does not have the authority to declare war. Fortunately, the branch that does have that responsibility writes things down, so there can be less dispute over why things happened - provided people are willing to look at primary documents, instead of assuming a globally editable document is going to present a completely accurate picture of a controversial topic.

BGates, care to point to where that document - which I am familiar with - states anything contrary to what I said?

It's all about WMD and related terrorism threats potentially coming out of Iraq.

Furthermore, I missed the part where war was declared by Congress. Could you point to that as well? Or was that just a non-sequitor from you?

Avedis - well, your comment "It's all about WMD and related terrorism threats" is contrary to saying WMD are the cause of war ("How can you possibly say that WMD wasn't the cause to war?"). Do you really want me to copy the pdf? Clauses 1-5 talk about Iraq's conduct up until 1998, which was 'about WMD,' yet I suspect you don't dispute that part.
Clause 6, WMD and related terrorism threats;
Clause 7, brutal repression threatens peace and stability in the region;
Clause 8, past use of WMD, which I suspect you don't dispute;
Clause 9, shooting at US personnel thousands of times (in a simpler time, thousands of shots fired at the military would have been considered a casus belli all by itself);
Clause 10-11, presence and support of terrorists;
17, regime change has been US policy since 1998;

all these things prove that Congress did not act specifically in response to the Bush administration's presentation of the state of the WMD threat as of 2002.

Now, if you want to get tendentious, Congress did not declare war, it authorized the use of military force. But if you want to go that route, I'll remind you that I never said Congress declared war, I said only they had the responsibility, and they wrote down what they did. And not on wikipedia. No matter what the administration said, the Congress said they authorized the use of military force for several reasons.

In answer to your earlier question - we have to speculate as to the cause of the war for the same reason we have to speculate as to whether the moon landing happened - because some people refuse to look at the overwhelming documentary evidence in favor of inventing fanciful conspiracies.

Victor Davis Hanson, from the bottom of his heart and with all the analytical skills he commands, gives thanks to all those opponents of the war in Iraq for helping the US learn the lessons it has had to learn on the way to achieving (one hopes---or all too often, one doesn't) the desired objectives.

That man is a class act.

...And a happy Thanksgiving to all!

Re #46: bgates, thank you for getting to that before I could.

And to respond to Avedis's challenge on one other small relevant point: I only remember one "mushroom cloud" quote from the administration -- Condy Rice's "We don't want the smoking gun to be[come] a mushroom cloud" was widely (and I do mean WIDELY) reported and regurgitated.

Catchy sound bite, had lots of legs. Her writer probably got a cookie for that one. Also a sentiment hard to gainsay on its face in the moment. Being hammered into consciousness due its very memetic (emetic?) qualities -- constant repetitions of that particular slogan were NOT, as best I remember, the doing of the administration. It was the fourth estate's. I must have heard it twenty times from those folks in the week after she said it once. Since then? Croggle

So, her saying that was maybe another sort of "Mission Accomplished" moment in retrospect. But the propaganda heavy lifting, in this particular instance, with regard to this specific phrase, was not done by the gubment.

Can someone/anyone provide sources for other administration figures quoting Condy's utterance in public? If so, how many?

Me, I hold it as possible that even Saddam thought he had WMD. I held it so before I ever heard it suggested by others. His burden of omniscience, like most busy dictators', was pretty high. Want to keep your complexion, tongue, hands, relatives? Tell him what he wants to hear, Tikriti....

I've seen some reading comprehension challenged individuals in my day, but rarely to the extent that there is a failure to comprehend what the individual, himself, has written.

More than 90% of the clauses you cite in #46 contain language refering to WMD. Arguably, these clauses and other similar ones are the meat of the resolution. The resolution was passed based on fears of Iraqi WMD. There is much in the Congressional record that proves this.

I don't know where you are going with your, "yet I suspect you don't dispute that part." comment. So what? What Saddam had done in the past and what he was feared (by some misinformed parties) of being up to circa 2001 became even more irrelevant after the inspectors inspected and found nothing. And that, Nortius, is why not only Condi, but also Cheney, began running around making numerous comments - for which I will supply links to quotes later on - about an "iota" of a chance of nuclear development being a sufficient causus belli.

Furthermore, the WMD used in the past was gas. I have understood why gas became included in the WMD catagorization schema. I suspect to scare people and gain support for the invasion. The per ton of ordnance kill ratio is not greater than conventional HE artillery or ariel bombs. Unless one was to believe that Saddam would establish a fire control base on Long Island, the threat from gas was no greater - and probably much less - than that from fuel fertlizer bombs.

At any rate, the inspections had proven before the invasion that Saddam had no toxic gas weapons.

Finally, the evidence of a Saddam/AQ/terrorist connection that you mention as being included in the resolution was also deemed shaky and vague at best long before the invasion.

So, again, we are left wondering why the invasion took place. And that is wrong in a system of government like ours is supposed to be.

Come on Nort, I thought you were better than severe revisionist history.

Just a few of the numerous available quotes from the WH stating, essentially, that "The danger (from Saddam) is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today -- and we do -- does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?" Bush

Classic Cheney fearmongering pre-invasion

Here's another

Yet another

Cheney on Meet the Press

George Bush

etc, etc, etc, etc, etc......................

This is the type of talk that pushed the American public to get behind an Iraq invasion. If the talk had been only about bringing democracy to Iraq the war would have never happened - and you know it.

Avedis: Whoa up there, pard.

I'm not engaging in revisionism. I was addressing the specifics of your "mushroom cloud" reference.

I share at least some of your distaste for administration "triangulation"/revision. But I'm not a member of the Ministry of Truth.

Also, while I thanked bgates, mixing bgates up with me is probably a bad idea. I never said "yet I suspect you don't dispute that part", etc. So coming back at me about it is confused/confusing.

#51 Nort:

Avedis: Whoa up there, pard.

I'm not engaging in revisionism. I was addressing the specifics of your "mushroom cloud" reference.

Based on these comments, I don't think you bothered to read the link to Bush's SOFU address in October 2002, provided above. Also, apparently, you don't recall hearing the speech contemporaneously. I don't know how anyone could forget it.

And we (anti-war people) are accused of being dishonest for ignoring supposedly obvious data in forming our viewpoints....

Some choice quotes:

Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today -- and we do -- does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?

Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

Actually, it's pretty hard to find just one or two sentences from here that highlight the distortion and dishonesty that went into that speech. Almost every claim about the Iraqi regime at the time has been proven wrong or is a selective distortion of weak facts.

But anyway, no need to rehash all this, just wanting to make sure you recognize that the "mushroom cloud" line was integral to comments made at the highest levels possible to justify invading Iraq and deposing Saddam.

Alan: Thanks. OK, so that's two people, Rice and Bush.

You're correct that I didn't follow the links; I figured if they were germane, in the way you kindly reported, that Avedis would pull quotes -- as you did.

Yes, I now remember Bush saying that. And yes, it was sort of the rhetorically dubious feel-bad brother of Mom & Apple Pie.

I still don't remember the zeitgeist the way you guys do (WMD being the whole selling point to the masses).

But then, I'm eccentric and tend to not adopt or even track crowd sentiment on other matters. My dad was a politician among other things; I wonder if this trait of mine is just protracted adolescent rebellion.

I do not doubt that WMD worries acted as a trump card. I do think that a lot of reasonable people figured that if Saddam was going to keep acting flaky, his bluff-if-it-was-that had to be called.

This concern was independent of the administration's mummery/triangulation/exaggeration. As I have already said, I do dislike that drunkard's walk of justifications which is a big component of the current administration's behavior. Noncompliance, painting planes with SAM radars, plus spooky shell games. His clock ran out. I wonder if any document Hans Blix's team could have produced would have been conclusive, but I need time that I do not have right now to pursue that thought.

As an aside, I think it's hard to conclusively prove anything about stuff rumored to have been squirreled away or trucked to Syria, but that's an unknowable that ought not to enter into current policy absent clear new evidence. Right now, it sure does look as if Saddam was a paper tiger, WMD-wise.

I will try to do something diligent about researching the latter reports of Hans Blix. I don't think what those people were doing was ever going to be finished in a satisfactory way, given how Saddam's people were acting. But that's something I need to dig into rather than just spout off about.

Quoth Avedis:

Furthermore, the WMD used in the past was gas. I have understood why gas became included in the WMD catagorization schema. I suspect to scare people and gain support for the invasion. The per ton of ordnance kill ratio is not greater than conventional HE artillery or ariel bombs. Unless one was to believe that Saddam would establish a fire control base on Long Island, the threat from gas was no greater - and probably much less - than that from fuel fertlizer bombs.

I think we agree more than maybe you think we do.

I share this sentiment with you. I think "WMD" is an infelicitous phrase, and I think that if you adopt a term that they used to use in First Responder classes -- Mass Casualty Weapons -- you have to confront the inconvenient fact that a single cluster bomb on a hardpoint can qualify more easily than a single gas artillery shell.

I do think that calling NBC/MC weapons "WMD" is a kind of Newspeak. But then, so is calling field expedient mines "IEDs" and calling car bombs "VBIEDs".

Where chemical weapons are concerned, I'm not sure you can prove nonexistence of anything but ready inventory in known bunkers. Best you can say is "no evidence found, no indications of misdirection, all materials accounted for". I don't think they got or were going to get even that.

Nukes are harder to conceal, I think.

I still don't remember the zeitgeist the way you guys do (WMD being the whole selling point to the masses).

Nort, I certainly am not arguing that WMD's were "the whole" selling point, but that they were a critical claim that played the role of the linchpin in the case, especially WRT the alleged imminent need to invade in 2003. As such, I might imagine that the use of the phrase "mushroom cloud" may have swayed a large number of people to give Bush et al. the benefit of the doubt on this (although I was not among them; I doubted their claims strongly and was wholly unconvinced by the case).

However you may want to attempt to place this in a "Zeitgeist" context, this is as clear an example as I can come up with of playing the Fear Card.

Avedis writes: "Furthermore, the WMD used in the past was gas. I have understood why gas became included in the WMD catagorization schema. I suspect to scare people and gain support for the invasion. "

Chemical weapons have been categorized as weapons of mass destruction for decades. To imply that this category was created to scare people and gain support for the Iraq operation is a rather grotesque distortion of reality and history.

Avedis - 7 of the 12 clauses I cited refer to WMD. That doesn't make them the cause of war, as you tried to say first. 7 out of 12 is also less than 90%, as you stated last. If you want to try insulting people for reading comprehension, get a nine year old to double check your math first so you don't expose your mental capacity to the world.

You may think what Saddam had done in the past was irrelevant. The AUMF says Congress disagreed with you.

#57 deals with your delusions about what qualifies as a WMD.

the evidence of a Saddam/AQ/terrorist connection that you mention as being included in the resolution was also deemed shaky and vague at best but not by Congress, though it does only occupy 5 of the 12 clauses I cited - that's what, 6%?

So enough wondering about why the invasion really happened. Go tell somebody your theories on the Kennedy assassination.

And lets not forget those scheming FBI agents shilling for Bush by cozying up to Saddam himself during his incarceration:

"Until 9/11, Saddam thought UN sanctions would go away and he could make a nuclear bomb. His prewar weapons of mass destruction deceptions were a ruse to convince Iran - whom he feared - that he had an arsenal."

source

The evidence shows that the number one reason we believed Hussein aspired to WMDs was because he did. The number one reason we thought he had stockpiles was because he intentionally led the world to believe that. Those are the facts.

The administration sold the American people the Neo-Con agenda by disseminating fear. That in itself is an odious fact, no matter how one remembers the details. The administration whipped up war fever. The administration presented a ridiculous and pathetic rationale before the U.N. that aimed top get the Security Council's go ahead for the invasion. They deliberately pinned the 9/11 tale on the Iraq "threat". They deliberately undermined the U.N. inspectors, saying that they didn't realize the threat. ETC. ETC.

This administration was not only wrong for doing that, but what is worse is how they compounded this blunder with their incredible ineptness they have exhibited since the start of the occupation. The whole crew of them make my skin crawl.

Mark, your link to the NYDaily News (?!!??) doesn't work. I wouldn't consider that article evidence of anything other than you grasping at straws. A lot of countries aspire to get nukes; especially those run by tin horn dictators. However, aspiring to get nukes and actually getting them are universes apart. I'm not impressed by the cards with which you build your house.

BGates, the points in the resolution that address terrorism do so in the context of supplying terrorists with WMD. Thus I stand by my 90% calculation. Again, try to think more about the words you are reading.

Nort, apologies for juxtaposing you with BGates. I didn't mean to insult your intelligence.

Yes, I think we agree on some key points. I must reiterate that it is sad we must have this speculative conversation.

Mark in #59:

The evidence shows that the number one reason we believed Hussein aspired to WMDs was because he did.

Whoops, Mark, I think you must have accidentally substituted the word "aspired" for "possessed" in this sentence. Unless you too failed to remember, or remind yourself by re-reading, Bush's speech linked to above which conveys little if any suggestion of uncertainty about Iraq's contemporaneous possession of WMDs.

Because I would hate to think that you're purposefully trying to misrepresent, or soften the strength of, these claims in order to deflect attention away from the credible accusation that the "facts were fixed around the [pre-ordained] policy".

"the Neo-Con agenda", eh, TOC? Do we really need that kind of rhetoric here?

TOC: You write

They deliberately pinned the 9/11 tale on the Iraq "threat".

Nope. Unless by "they" you are talking about a different they. Did they try to find a connection between members/players in AQ, past and present, and Saddam? And did they find such? They say they did. They reported some. Safe refuge or benign neglect? Hard to tell. One "jharbored" guy died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

But were they trying to imply that Saddam had a direct hand in 9/11? Saying it without saying it?

I say probably no, or at worst deniably so, and I certainly never got that impression myself -- though they probably also would not bitch at anyone left with that impression, since it doesn't present any stumbling block for their aims re deposing Saddam. A convenient misapprehension. Useful idiots? Maybe. I think the comments I remember, parsed literally by someone with competence at close listening migth support all of what I just said. I think they feed directly into "look, he's more on their side than not, and who knows what we don't know, including what he'll do next now that AQ looks like a stronger horse?"

So yeah, fear/threatbuilding was being done. But tying Saddam H to 9/11? Not so much.

I don't know for sure what you say, but I'm guessing you say a big HELL yes, and that it was willful and heinous.

Were they hoping that listeners were as poor at close listening as you seem to be? Could be. See Idiots, Useful. Hard to demonstrate unless you find a mushroom cloud memo, so to speak. Can you find people who say they think there was a direct connection? Oh, sure.

But then, re listening and thinking skills, most people polled around here would probably agree with the statement "cholesterol is bad for you". Nuances such as cholesterol's useful functions in the body, the importance of a nonzero cholesterol reading, and the distinction between HDL vs LDL, don't make it through the rhetorical strainers most people carry.

Doctors probably shrug and tell each other "Well, at least they're thinking about their diets".

And I think you might be happy to get people to agree with you even if you used innuendo, too. It's an addictive thing, rhetoric to persuade.

Perhaps the cholesterol analogy is strained, but I think it fits somewhat. Very tired, hope this makes some kind of sense.

Best Thanksgiving wishes to all,

Nort

Alan, if you acknowledge the possibility that Saddam wanted the world to believe he had nerve and mustard gas, because it made him more of a player, then how does that change the equation for you?

If the facts were fixed, then maybe so was Saddam's fate. Metaphorically: We busted into the wrong crack house on the tip, maybe, but we didn't bust into the totally wrong house. There was a lot of material-unaccounted-for when Blix's people came to call. By your lights, that plus Saddam's posture is supposed to lead to permanent stalemate? Really? We're supposed to believe they were so scared they flushed everything down the toilet?

Well, maybe they did. But we didn't / couldn't know that.

How does it change the equation, Nort? I guess it depends on how Saddam was conveying the notion that he possessed nerve and mustard gas versus what the evidence that was being accumulated said.

As far as how this impacts on "the mushroom cloud" question, however, I'd say not at all.

I remember the Bush administration's stated (and analyzed) motivations and pretexts not emphasizing WMD anywhere near as much as people now tacitly agree they did, and the last time I looked at that magazine, some years after "Mission Accomplished" (*cough*)... ...well, I quite distinctly recall noticing that the content contradicted the latterday claims of claims of WMD.

I'm getting a quick breather and haven't checked the recent posts. So what if Bush made a laundry-list of reasons? The one that got emphasised, and the one that had traction, that people cared about, was the nukes. The rest of it was business as usual. OK, Saddam was a bad man. There are lots of bad men, There are bad men in burma, in algeria, in ethiopia, in chad, in paraguay, in bolivia, there's no shortage of bad men to kill. Chemical and bioweapons? Silly. Lots of nations have those, notable israel and syria. It isn't something you invade nations for. We want to set up democracies? Fine, but not something we'd spend 3 months of our army time and $80 billion for. (But of course Bush didn't give any estimate of the cost until after we were fully committed. All we had before the $80 billion estimate was Wolfowits saying the oil would pay for it all.)

The issue was Saddam's nukes. That threat made it credible, and without that there was no consensus at all for a war of aggression the UN didn't approve.

Too bad. To me, this overemphasis of the WMD angle reminds me of the first-year psych class all debating what knife was used in a mock attack staged in front of them when the actual instrument used was a banana.

Yes. Bush was overemphasising the WMD angle while Saddam was holding the banana.

#64 from Nortius Maximus at 3:48 am on Nov 22, 2007

I say probably no, or at worst deniably so, and I certainly never got that impression myself -- though they probably also would not bitch at anyone left with that impression, since it doesn't present any stumbling block for their aims re deposing Saddam. A convenient misapprehension. Useful idiots?

In the rush to war, a lot of components were mixed into a witches brew of
fear mongering, in greater and lesser quantities. The usual recipe for stirring up war hysteria.

*Alan, if you acknowledge the possibility that Saddam wanted the world to believe he had nerve and mustard gas, because it made him more of a player, then how does that change the equation for you?

If the facts were fixed, then maybe so was Saddam's fate. Metaphorically: We busted into the wrong crack house on the tip, maybe, but we didn't bust into the totally wrong house. There was a lot of material-unaccounted-for when Blix's people came to call. By your lights, that plus Saddam's posture is supposed to lead to permanent stalemate? Really? We're supposed to believe they were so scared they flushed everything down the toilet?*

We are not talking about a crack house and everyone who has been killed in Iraq during the occupation and the life that the Iraqis have had to lead does not equate to roughing up a few innocent bystanders in a crack house raid.

This sort of flippancy does nothing for your arguments.

Nor does this sort of unnecessary driveby

Were they hoping that listeners were as poor at close listening as you seem to be? Could be. See Idiots, Useful.

I come here for a serious exchange of ideas, not for adolescent gotcha's. Please respect that or please ignore my posts. Thank You. I accept your apology, in advance.

obviously you agree that installing a friendly government in Iraq is doable. But I just reread your comment, and you were actually objecting to the idea of using military force to change regimes in other Muslim countries. Do you have any examples of where Bush has tried that? I only know of the two attempts that were successful.

It's far too soon to say whether our two attempts will be successful. Both look unlikely to me.

If you remember, right after the tremendous quick victory in iraq, Cheney made a public announcement to iran and syria that they were next. I thought at the time that was unwise.

Iraq was too large, too many people, too nationalistic, and too muslim for us to succeed. We could have used the ethnic conflicts but we bungled that, instead of us being the alternative to ethnic cleansing etc we turned into the hapless bystanders who couldn't stop it.

We're doing better in our sixth year in afghanistan than the russians did in their sixth year, but that's partly because we haven't tried to take the southern part of the country but just ceded it to the enemy. So we haven't taken the casualties they did, and there's a chance we can hang in there much longer than they did -- they pulled out after 9 years.

TOC:

I agree the tone of my post was flip in parts. I don't regret my alleged flippancy anywhere near as much as I regret that when I wrote

Were they hoping that listeners were as poor at close listening as you seem to be? Could be. See Idiots, Useful.

...I wrote it in such a way that you could quite naturally read it as calling you an idiot. What I meant to say was that listeners who listened poorly to you would be useful idiots for your points, with a much less strong suggestion that you (like everyone) can sometimes be poor at close listening.

But I tried to be too fliply concise and the result was most clumsy. I see now that the equation included you insultingly, and I do regret that indication. I aimed for wit and got only half way there, at best. I will strive to not do such a thing unintentionally in future. It was ungentlemanly of me.

"If pakistan already had nukes and iran was on the way, why attack iraq over a nuclear program that we had only the vaguest evidence for?"

Because Pakistan already had nukes.

That's an argument that nonproliferation is dead, not an argument to lock the barn door after the barn is on fire.

And i didnt hear many people arguing in 2002 that Iran's nuclear program was more advanced than Iraqs. That is a realization that is only obvious in hindsight. And please, lets not rehash the intelligence war yet again.

We keep going back to that, don't we? The intelligence information turned out to be all lies. Now almost everybody believes that Bush was lying about it, and a few dead-enders argue that it isn't proven, that the evidence is weak that he knew he was lying. But people believe it anyway, just like they believed in Saddam's nukes. You'll never persuade the public that Bush wasn't lying just like I couldn't persuade them the evidence for Saddam's nukes wasn't there.

Bush lied. Everybody knows it, whether it's really true or not. Get over it.

#63 Robin

"the Neo-Con agenda", eh, TOC? Do we really need that kind of rhetoric here?

Only if we're trying to have an honest discussion on the cause and motivation for the invasion of Iraq, Robin.

If not, then I guess we can leave it out, along with all the other evidence that contradict the (albeit garbled) Official Reasons.

TOC, on point, when you write

We are not talking about a crack house and everyone who has been killed in Iraq during the occupation and the life that the Iraqis have had to lead does not equate to roughing up a few innocent bystanders in a crack house raid.

Sorry, I agree the analogy is poor and I was only meaning it in the context of "Why 'do' Iraq?" as framed by J Thomas's entry/top post. Addressing that aspect of possible batguano-craziness, specifically and exclusively.

I don't mean to say anything one way or the other, here, about the denouement. For the purposes of this thread, anyway, it seems to me the question of "Was it time to stop treating Iraq as sovereign by use of main force, to Settle the Question of Saddam?" is separate from "Were the aggregate of actions taken in doing so and all other actions to date justifiable?".

The one thing can be batguano crazy and the other not, or vice versa, at least in theory.

Alan: Because "the neo-con agenda" is such a precise portmanteau expression for "Whatever I don't like about what all those folks thought/said/did"? Yeah, nothing garbled about the phrase "the neo-con agenda". Right. It just means whatever the utterer thinks it means. That there's some mighty fine evvydence, Tex. Let's find a tree and string 'em all up! Them'r neocons and they got ways about 'm.

Am I a neocon, Alan? What gives it away? Would bathing more often help?

I don't agree that its use ought to be banned. It's too hard to mock if you ban it.

Alan, I find nothing "honest" about the phrase. It is completely meaningless at its best and far less substantive at its worst. It is a substitute for argument, and an invitation for people without real argument to nod in a pale imitation of sage thought.

The absolute last thing it is is an "honest" discussion of motivations for the invasion. For at its worst, which we find too often, it is a code phrase for the assertion of some form of xenophobic conspiracy theory. Those who do not intend that meaning should not use the phrase, and those that do ought to be more honest and forthright in proclaiming their adherence to the conspiracy theory genre.

The differences between Iraq, Pakistan and Iran's three nuclear programs and our reactions ought to be obvious.

First, Pakistan already had nuclear weapons, had a neighbor that was a nuclear power for a regional deterrent and we had and have ongoing influence in the nation.

Second, we had an ongoing justification in international forums for our intervention in Iraq due to the Gulf War, had an ongoing military confrontation in embargos and no-fly zone enforcement that long needed resolution and we had long standing alliances on the ground such as the Kurds that made intervention more practical.

In the case of Iran, we did not have an existing alliance organized to confront it, had a far larger hostile population with fewer factions willing to ally with us. Far poorer intelligence assets and poorer strategic and operational position.

Pretending that there was an equality of strategic options between Iraq and Iran as targets for changing the Middle East but for that evil-lying-Bush is rather obviously not a realistic view of the historic facts.

@#75: Thanks for creating a more reasoned and sensible response than my rather florid #74, Robin. Perhaps I should recuse myself from this thread; I keep putting on the same tone J Thomas did in the top entry. No offence intended to JT.

@#76: There is a rhetorical tendency for people to pick something big and obvious and use it like a rock to try to smash the other side.

"Pakistan has nukes, why didn't we invade them?" is one such. Often, the supposedly crushing blow delivered, even a response such as yours goes unheard. As would a more socratic "Well, I don't know, but let's think about it..." sort of lead-in. The point isn't the question, it's the crushing blow. It is not dissimilar from the "reasoning" siblings use at parents when one gets something and another doesn't.

Anything more I say right now will play into the Team America -- World Police ambience too much to satisfy me.

Having delivered that opinion, I am going to take a few days off from this thread. See y'all later. And thanks again, RR.

Nortius, nonsense, you are doing fine. I just got the opportunity to fire down lanes already established.

I don't think the "neocon agenda" should be ruled out on the basis of vagueness of definition (or any other grounds).

The neocon agenda can be reasonably defined as that which is contained in seminal PNAC documents and neocons can be defined as those that signed those documents. In fact, may of the those that signed the documents have self defined as neocons.

The PNAC documents unambigously call for a militaristic neocolonial approach to US foreign policy in the 21st century; including an invasion of Iraq.

There is no mystery here for aware people; only for ostriches.

I think it's hard to conclusively prove anything about stuff rumored to have been squirreled away or trucked to Syria,

We found that stuff. It turned out to be gold bars.

I didn't intend to argue why we actually attacked iraq. That was a group decision where various people had inputs and various people might have hadf a veto or almost a veto. We can expect to run into problems whenever we discuss why somebody does something -- there's the freudian explanation and various jungian choices, we can assume he's a rational actor and look for the logic he'd have to use, we can look at who might be blackmailing him, etc.

It's easier to assign causes in unique situations since there's no control group to test your idea. "After you control for every variable and experimental condition, the organism will do whatever the hell it wants."

Completely apart from the question why Bush actually followed the neocon strategy, there's the question what beliefs would make it justifiable.

I presented one justification, the best I'd seen in print. If you believe that americans are crazy or easily driven crazy, and that we will inevitably kill something like a billion people unless we invade iraq, then it's better to invade iraq.

Hypocrisyrules in #23 presented a better justification, one that I never see in print. We wanted control of the oil, we didn't want iraq to threaten other nations (like israel), and we might possibly get a viable client state out of the deal.

I think his scheme was too audacious. We might not get control of the oil. The collapse of iraq leaves us without an adequate buffer state between iran and saudi arabia, and the client state isn't working out. It's costing more than it's worth. The downside risks were too high, and the gamble isn't paying off. But if you believed that those risks were actually minimal and all the alternatives were worse, then it made sense.

Again, I'm not accusing Bush of following an amoral but rational plan. I don't know what was happening in Bush's mind. While the neocons published their proposal, there's no real evidence that they actually intended it. They're known liars, after all. Their published plan (which included a 9/11-like event as a necessary part) could easily have been a cover story for something else. The army needs a war every 10 years or so and would naturally welcome a chance at a quick victory with no occupation afterward, so they didn't discourage the idea. They were told there wouldn't be any occupation and they were forbidden to plan for one. (Now they're being told there won't be any withdrawal and they're forbidden to plan for that too. I hope they learned their lesson from last time.)

What we said we were doing, and then what we did, neither of those particularly make sense. But it's possible to come up with ideas that make sense of it, if we assume some beliefs that are probably not true.

"Nonproliferation had a good run, close to 60 years, and now we have to find a way to live with the new situation."

Alright, and thats what we are talking about. Where are the good solutions?

First let's go over a couple of bad solutions.

I set out a solution a while ago- inform every rogue nation that refuses weapons inspectors that they will be instantly assumed to be guilty if an unidentified nuke goes off over an American interest.

This is insane. It's MAD gone mad. It requires us to be the mad-dog nuclear power that's ready to nuke multiple innocent nations. There's no particular reason for the rest of the world to put up with this, unless they can't find any way to stop us.

A second bad solution is to attack any nation that appears to be working toward nukes, hoping to conquer them before they can get nukes. Iraq leaves us stretched thin, how many others can we occupy?

A third bad solution is to attack any nation that appears to be working toward nukes, hoping to destroy their nuclear program without needing an occupation. Then we leave them to rebuild their economies etc, and if they rebuild their nuclear program too then we bomb them again. Once again, there's no reason for the rest of the world to put up with this unless they can't find a way to stop us.

If we have to use these methods for nonprolferation then nonproliferation will fail. If for no other reason -- countries we don't currently think of as enemies will build nukes and we will not attack them, and later they will become our enemies.

MAD starts to fail when we aren't sure who's nuking us. If we can't keep nukes from being smuggled into the USA, then we can't keep our cities from being bombed. The only thing that leaves people proposing these ridiculously bad solutions is that we think that letting our cities get bombed is unacceptable -- so anything else, no matter how idiotic, has to be better.

JT, you really skirted my question- if we agree that once a nation gets nukes, stability becomes paramount, how do we approach a nation like Iran at this point? Setting bygones aside, what do we do?

I've noticed in mathematics and other things that sometimes when a problem looks very hard, it's actually easier to solve a bigger problem. Sometimes that doesn't work -- programmers often do better to solve just the immediate problem instead of generalising it, the general problem is too hard and that solution is not needed yet. But sometimes it does pay off to handle the bigger problem now.

The problem of disarming unfriendly nations and only unfriendly nations looks very very hard. Nations we're unfriendly to have the biggest incentive to make nukes -- we hesitate to invade countries with nukes; we treat them much more seriously. We have it set up so they have too much to gain by getting nukes. The harder we try to stop them, the more they want them.

The original plan behind NNPT was disarmament. The non-nuclear nations that signed promised not to make nukes and the nuclear nations promised to disarm. We have basicly broken that promise. We maintain a large nuclear stockpile, and we threaten other nations with it. We threatened iraq and no we're threatening iran. (We publicly say that if we can't destroy iran's nuclear energy capability without nukes then we're considering using nukes. That's a threat.) Every public threat to use nukes has been by the USA, every one that I know of. Except for the semipublic threat by israel in 1973. Oh, and I think there was a recent generalised threat by france, wasn't there? Can anybody think of any others?

There are other implicit threats besides us. India presumably felt the need for nukes given the threat from china. Pakistan presumably felt threatened by india's nukes. (And at the time weren't we tilting toward pakistan and away from india, so we didn't try to stop pakistan? And here we are now....) But we are the main threat. We are the only truly global power, so we are the only one that threatens everybody.

Suppose we were to work for universal nuclear disarmament? If we could succeed at that then our cities wouldn't get nuked. We wouldn't have to attack nations we thought were making nukes, leaving us in an endless series of otherwise-unnecessary wars. We wouldn't be stuck with awful solutions.

To succeed at disarmament, the main thing is to persuade most government leaders in most governments that nukes are not worth having. If they think they benefit from nukes then we need stringent inspections and countries will try to evade the inspections and we'll be paranoid that the inspections are failing, and we won't feel safe at all. Not good enough. "When it's time to build canals, then men build canals. When it's time to build railroads, men build railroads." We need to persuade the world that the time to build nukes is over, that nukes are obsolete.

They won't believe it unless it looks like we believe it. Can you believe that nukes are obsolete?

Nukes were mostly obsolete from the days of MAD. We specialised in "brinksmanship", getting small temporary advantages by bluffing the russians that we were more willing than they were to kill everybody. Looking back this was probably a mistake. We have occasionally thought we gained by nuclear threats. Like, we told Saddam if his army used bioweapons or chemical weapons on our army while we invaded, we'd use nukes back. If they were planning to use those things they decided not to after our threat. When israel threatened to nuke egypt in 1973 as a way to convert a stalemate of a war into a victory, and the russians shipped some sort of nuclear material through the dardanelles -- perhaps to create a nuclear stalemate too -- we threatened russia with MAD to get them to stop. We were ready to get all our people killed to prevent a MAD situation between israel and egypt, as opposed to israel having all the nukes. Looking back, this was probably a mistake.

The advantages we got from nukes have never been worth the risk. Now the risk is going up. All along, at least from the time the russians got nukes, we've felt like we couldn't climb down off that tiger. The only way we could keep from getting nuked was to threaten to nuke others. We stayed on because we didn't think we had a choice. Now the risks and the costs are going up. Do we really have to play that game? If we could find a way out, would we take it?

This has gotten a bit long and it's a bit late at night here so I'll continue later. I have a couple of paths laid out that might lead to much-reduced nuclear tension. We could try both of them at the same time, if we wanted to.

But consider it. If we could get away with disarmament, would it be worth it? Are the advantages we get from being a nuclear power (apart from MAD) worth the risks? If we could mostly persuade the rest of the world that nukes aren't worth having, but to do it we had to get rid of most of our nukes, would that be a bad trade?

Avedis, thanks for proving my point.

Robin: Please check your email. Thanks! --Nort

How did I prove your point, Robin?

Are you denying that the PNAC is real, that its ranks were/are filled with many who are movers and shakers in the current admin, that the documents generated by the group don't say what I say they do? What? What are refering to Robin?

Do you generally deny that throughout history various cabals have led nations down disasterous (or maybe even positive) policy roads?

Again, what is it about the PNAC that you find so hard to believe.

And facts please - or at least opinions based on facts....I won't except, "that's just crazy" as an argument.

Avedis, you proved my point by behaving as I noted. The PNAC exists, but you exaggerate its importance. It is no more than a collection of arguments for policy, arguments that were possibly made in the administration, together with a host of other arguments. But viewing the resulting policy as the result of a "cabal" is just conspiracy theory thinking.

The real world does not work that way. The overemphasis on this, the belief that just spraypainting "NeoCon" on the wall as an argument, is not a healthy view of current events.

JT -

Is this what you meant to say?

"If we can't keep nukes from being smuggled into the USA, then we can't keep our cities from being bombed. The only thing that leaves people proposing these ridiculously bad solutions is that we think that letting our cities get bombed is unacceptable -- so anything else, no matter how idiotic, has to be better." ??

And I'll note that your post #82 continues the long tradition by one group in these policy arguments of presuming that only the US is an actor in the geopolitical space.

A.L.

AL, I did mean to say that but that wasn't all I meant to say.

And I certainly don't mean to say we're the only actor. Just, we are one of the major players and what we do makes a big difference.

So, do you see brinksmanship as worth the risks? Do we get significant benefits from our nukes beyond MAD?

MAD is nothing to sneeze at, when it works. But the main reason we're going crazy now is that we face the prospect that MAD will stop working.

What do you think our present course is? Do you feel it is heading toward acceptable outcomes? Is it worth considering alternatives? Is it worth thinking out whether any alternatives look safe enough compared to the default?

The PNAC exists, but you exaggerate its importance.

Can you present solid evidence to support your claim?

The irony of the world's biggest nuclear threatholder preaching (selective) nuclear non-proliferation invites comment. Let's assume Canada is concerned that the equation of U.S. 'national security' with U.S. 'economic security' is leading to a real threat of invasion in order to secure the U.S. oil (and soon water) supply. Also (in line with U.S. urgings) Canada feels compelled to step up its military capability - say all the way to nuclear weapon capability. Most likely, nothing short of this, could be expected to deter a destabilized U.S. hell bent on survival. Should Canada do it - of course... ask any patriotic Canadian. Of course not... ask any patriotic American. As JT points out NNP only makes international sense if interpreted as nuclear disarmament. I sense that's not what is being proposed in the runup to the next stabilizing manoever by the U.S. in the ME.

J Thomas, #89, are you deliberately trying to illustrate logical fallacies?

Robin Roberts, #91, no, I'm pointing out your logical fallacy.

You appear to be conceding that you cannot possibly provide evidence for your claim, and yet it's your assumption that your claim is true that you use to say that somebody else proves your point by disagreeing with you.

#63 from Robin Roberts at 3:29 am on Nov 22, 2007

"the Neo-Con agenda", eh, TOC? Do we really need that kind of rhetoric here?
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You have to come with a lot more than that.
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#75 from Robin Roberts at 6:09 pm on Nov 22, 2007

Alan, I find nothing "honest" about the phrase. It is completely meaningless at its best and far less substantive at its worst. It is a substitute for argument, and an invitation for people without real argument to nod in a pale imitation of sage thought.

You mean like this:

#83 from Robin Roberts at 5:32 am on Nov 23, 2007

Avedis, thanks for proving my point.

and this?
#91 from Robin Roberts at 11:42 pm on Nov 23, 2007

J Thomas, #89, are you deliberately trying to illustrate logical fallacies?
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The absolute last thing it is is an "honest" discussion of motivations for the invasion.
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Care to elaborate?
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For at its worst, which we find too often, it is a code phrase for the assertion of some form of xenophobic conspiracy theory.
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I do not see how you are using xenophobic when we as Americans are discussing American policy. Neo Conservatism is an American political philosphy, No?
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Those who do not intend that meaning should not use the phrase

Are you alking about the xenophobic meaning? Also, this appears to me to be another one of your cryptic pronouncements that I would like you to elaborate oN.
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and those that do ought to be more honest and forthright in proclaiming their adherence to the conspiracy theory genre.

Now you have lost me completely. No one has mentioned a conspiracy, only an agenda. A group of people, who onece in power wanted to test their Foreign policy vision, which was extremely flawed and naive. You are the one coming up with a conspiracy? Might you also elaborate on who is involved in this conspiracy and what it is they are trying to do?

That is right. I said nothing about xenophobia. Nor did I talk bout conspiracies.

As TOC said, a group of people clearly and seriously stated their foreign policy agenda (PNAC). Those same people attained power to exercise their philosophy. The foreign policy of this admin - including the invasion of Iraq - corresponds closely with the approach and philosophy they had stated before they attained power. Ergo, I am making a reasonable assumption that the thinking they outlined in their various documents explains what they have actually done.

The neocons (again, this is a label they - not me - gave themselves) were actually very upfront about what they thought and what they very much wanted to do. Why is there any question that, given the opportunity, they would do it?

Where is the conspiracy? Where is the xenophobia?

It is encumbent on Robin to explain why this reasonable logical chain doesn't hold.

Instead, all he does is attempt (lamely) to smear the logic by insinuating it is loonely (conspiracy theory) or mean spirited (xenophopia) - or, as the title of the post would have it - Batguano - because, I suppose, he simply doesn't like logical conclusion.

It is easy to build a conspiracy theory about the neocons. After all, they published a strategy that depended on a 9/11-type event. And then 9/11 showed up right on schedule, just when their plan needed it to happen. Their plan would look pretty stupid if 9/11 hadn't happened. So it's only natural to suppose that they might have somehow been involved in its timing.

What would you think about a bunch of space travel enthusiasts who made elaborate plans to get the space program revived based on the idea that public opinion would be all for it after we got attacked by bug-eyed alien monsters? That would be a silly plan, right? And then if the BEMs showed up just as predicted....

Conspiracy theory. We did follow the published neocon plan right up to the point the iraqis didn't joyfully generate a spontaneous israel-loving democracy and shower us with thanks as we set up a few permanent bases and mostly pulled out. But the published plan didn't call for creating a 9/11 attack, it only depended on one happening. Thinking that they were involved turns it into a conspiracy theory.

It is beyond me, why the Neo Cons aren't reviled. No matter what the outcome in Iraq, the Neo Con agenda has been failed the test n the real world. I think even GWB, after being abandoned by this guys when their delusions went sour, would no longer embrace them.

What would be the most hilarious thing about them, if we could look past the havoc they have wreaked, is the fact that when you hear them speak or read anything they have written, they com across as a Saturday Night Live parody of condescending eggheads. I mean, how could anyone listen to Richard Pearle's pompous pronouncements and keep a straight face.

As I have said before, none of these guys seem as if they have ever been in a fist fight and they come up with comic book delusions of ruling the world.

Apart from the sparring about neocons, I want to go back to the point. We're afraid we'll lose one or more cities to nukes. There's nothing we can do to guarantee that won't happen.

Imagine that by some magic we could get true total nuclear disarmament. Would that be good for the USA or bad for the USA?

Suppose we had a plan for disarmament that we could follow in steps and keep checking whether it was working. Would it be worth following a plan like that, or are we better off with multiple nuclear nations?

JT, please notice that I have never (anywhere, any time) said that I think the neocons conspired to cause or allow 9/11 to happen.

What is clear - as you note - they definitely siezed upon the window of opportunity that opened after 9/11 to implement their desired (and pre-calculated) course of foreign policy; especially that concerning Iraq.

And then you had some of the neocon true believers (at least one a signer of the PNAC papers) commenting (pre-9/11) that the US would benefit from - nay needed - another "Pearl Harbor" to stimulate the implementation of the neocon agenda.

So, if conspiracies develop around 9/11 and the neocons, it's because they brought it upon themselves with such reckless talk.

Personally - and for the record - I do not think that the neocons were behind 9/11. I also think that we would have invaded Iraq even if 9/11 had not taken place. There would have been some other hype as well as that which we did receive concerning WMD, sanction violations, etc. So 9/11 wasn't necessary to their agenda. Bush just got lucky - hit the "trifecta" with 9/11, as he put it (sick bastard!).

On the other hand, I think it would be sloppy and irresponsible to not at least give consideration to the notion that a group of true believers from an elitist school of philosophy that includes such fundemental concepts as the "noble lie" and the exceptionalism of the "philosopher" might not allow a "sacrifice" to achieve a "greater good"; a greater good that the sheep would not unite for and strive for absent the motivation of a "new Pearl Harbor".

Even in this vein I would rule out idiotic theories like pre-placed explosive charges bringing down the towers, Bin Laden working for the CIA, etc.

I would limit the consideration of a "conspiracy" to the admin having knowledge of a terrorist attack being highly probable, the admin. purposefully doing little to nothing to prevent it, but probably being surprised by the scope and scale of the results of the attack that they faled to prevent.

Again, I am not saying that this is what happened; only that all of the evidence should be carefully examined. I could live with whatever conclusion was reached as long as the investigation was thorough, unbiased and transparent. And again, I place little emphasis on this angle concerning the invasion of Iraq because I think that would have happened regardless of 9/11.

"It is beyond me, why the Neo Cons aren't reviled."

I have wondered about this myself.

I think you answer your question, though. Their thinking appeals to those that are intellectually lazy and are satisfied with a comic book level outlook on reality.

Under the umbrella of comic book intellectualism there is an emotional appeal to the American archetype that reached its zenith in WW2. There is an appeal to those with a simple and overly romantic view of American exceptionalism.

There is also an appeal to those who profit from war.

In other words, the neocon approach has appeal to a large (majority?) proportion of Americans.

Avedis, agreed, I didn't intend to imply that you had presented a conspiracy theory.

JT #97, that is a very interesting hypothetical, but I don't think it can be discussed until you define terms.

The first term that must be defined is "good"; as in what is "good" for the US?

I think you'd be very surprised at how little agreement there would be to this simple concept of "good".

I suspect the answers would run a spectrum with good being defined as the US being some kind of world ruling hegemenous colonial military might at one end of the spectrum to being just one of many relatively equal and mutually cooperative and suppotive partners in a global economy where international relationships are based on peaceful business exchanges at the other end.

Avedis, assuming we won't agree what's good, there's no sense trying to define it.

But we can look at the likely outcomes and say what we each think is better or worse.

Like,

Current approach: We get to threaten other nations with our nukes. We are the premier nuclear power in the world. On the other hand, we feel threatened whenever an unfriendly nation develops nukes or whenever a friendly nuclear nation suffers a change in government. We don't know how to keep unknown agents from smuggling nukes into the USA and nuking our cities. We're involved in a potentially endless sequence of preventive wars to stop some of our enemies from getting nukes, after others of them already have done so. We're discussing nuking a nation that doesn't have nukes and claims it isn't developing them, because we don't trust them. We're discussing nuking multiple nations after we get nuked and don't know who did it.

Successful disarmament: Nobody nukes us. We don't nuke anybody. We still have the most powerful conventional military in the world. On the other hand, we lose the special advantages that come from being the premier nuclear power in the world.

Would that be better or worse? We might agree that it would be better without agreeing about anything else. Or we might disagree about that and have particular reasons for the disagreement.

"Successful disarmament: Nobody nukes us. We don't nuke anybody. We still have the most powerful conventional military in the world. On the other hand, we lose the special advantages that come from being the premier nuclear power in the world.

Would that be better or worse?"

Better, say I, for the long term because, ultimately, we will be unable to prevent other nations from developing nukes - the geni is out of the bottle.

We can threaten all we want to, but alliances will form that thwart our ability to pick off any single country without starting a world war. See that even with Iran we may have to face Russian and, perhaps, Chinese intervention. This is the trend and it will progress rapidly. The rest of the world will not stand long for US hegemony; nor does it have to. Installing "Democracy" (registered trademark) around the world won't help either - sorry neocons - because there is no reason to think that elected governments or their peoples would be either pro US or be favorable to US hegemony.

"Bush lied. Everybody knows it, whether it's really true or not."

JT, thanks for at least acknowledging that the facts dont mean crap to you. You have your bumper sticker and thats all that matters to you. Fine, see if anybody takes you seriously with an attitude like that.

"Bush lied. Everybody knows it, whether it's really true or not."

JT, thanks for at least acknowledging that the facts dont mean crap to you. You have your bumper sticker and thats all that matters to you. Fine, see if anybody takes you seriously with an attitude like that.

You and I disagree about which facts are more important. You want to make excuses for Bush while I want to find out how to save the republic. The facts mean a whole lot to me, but I don't care that much about lame-duck Bush. I just think it's amusing to see the biter bitten.

So, for you it's important to establish the facts about what Bush really thought. For me it's important to establish facts like whether iraq had nukes and whether we had any reason to think they had nukes.

For you it's important to establish that Scott Beauchamp was lying and the NR staff was trying to hurt the war effort. To me it's important to find out who did 9/11 -- for which Bin Ladin's testimony would be very useful, if we had him, no?

You have shown that you only want to set the record straight when it helps Bush. I want to set the recort straight on all the crimes. Meanwhile the larger part of the population isn't paying attention and they get vague impressions. They had the vague impression that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and that Saddam was making nukes that could reach the USA. They were lied to, and of course you'd set the record straight and say it wasn't official administration figures who told the lies, that it just happened somehow and no one is to blame.

I note that the public now has the same kind of impression about something else -- just like they thought Saddam was part of 9/11 and almost had nukes, now they think Bush lied about it. You can't tell them otherwise any more than I could tell them that it was lies in 2002/2003. You can argue with me or with anybody till the chickens come home to roost and it won't do any good. Live by the media lie, die by the media lie.

It couldn't have happened to a more appropriate liar.

J Thomas, #92, ah, I see. You don't understand what logical fallacies are. Your demand that I prove a negative ( that the Bush administration foreign policy is not simply the Neocon PNAC puppet show as in your simplified conspiracy theory fantasy ) is a good example of one. And no, what is proven by your comments is my assertion that your view of the world and the Bush administration's foreign policy is a cartoonish one of Punch and Judy sophistication. Certainly your #95 and Avedis' #98 are just icing on the cake.

Robin, do you actually have a counter argument or is bitching and name calling the best you can do?

The evidence for the neocon philosophy being the explanation for Iraq is at least as strong as that which would get a grand jury conviction in a murder case (eg. Mr. Jones has motive to kill Mr. Smith. Mr. Jones states numerous times in public that he wishes to kill Mr. Smith if he ever gets the opportunity. Mr Jones gets the opportunity. Mr. Smith is found murdered and Mr. Jones was seen at the scene at the time of the murder).

Robin Roberts, I've spent too much attention on this trivial side issue. You don't understand that you are presenting a fallacy.

You claim a negative and assert that it's definitely and definitively and completely true. You have no evidence for your claim and you yourself point out that there's no way for you to have any evidence for your claim. But you continue to assert that it's true and that people who don't believe you must be dishonest.

Think about it.

But more important, imagine that we could have disarmament that worked. Would the USA be better off with real nuclear disarmament, or would we be better off the way we are now?

I believe you're parading around fish-in-a-barrel arguments because you want to distract people from the issues. It's worth it to you to look like an idiot if you can derail the discussion.

Am I wrong about that? I don't intend it as an insult, it's a clever strategy for you and to a large extent it's working.

#97 J Thomas:

We're afraid we'll lose one or more cities to nukes. There's nothing we can do to guarantee that won't happen."

Wrong. We all know what ideology, and nations adhering to it, are most likely to take one of our cities off us. Google "Three Conjectures" and take the argument a bit further. There is a way to guarantee that militant Islam will not nuke one of our cities.

However, the price is unacceptable. Not because the enemy is dead - crying over enemy casualties is just plain stupid. No, the reason is that what would need to be done would scar the West for centuries, if not forever, in terms of our sense of moral superiority. Another answer needs to be found - and my attempt at part of it is to cut down the money tree for the extremists, by making oil irrelevant.

"But more important, imagine that we could have disarmament that worked. Would the USA be better off with real nuclear disarmament, or would we be better off the way we are now?

I believe you're parading around fish-in-a-barrel arguments because you want to distract people from the issues. It's worth it to you to look like an idiot if you can derail the discussion. "

That isn't a discussion, its a fantasy.

We all know what ideology, and nations adhering to it, are most likely to take one of our cities off us. .... There is a way to guarantee that militant Islam will not nuke one of our cities.

However, the price is unacceptable.

I agree that the price is unacceptable. If we were to do sufficient killing to eliminate the possibility that our current enemies would nuke a US city, we would generate enough new enemies that it would be even more likely to happen.

There is no way to prevent our cities from being nuked, while there are nukes in the world designed to destroy cities.

Given the increasing breakdown in the american consensus, it's possible that within 20 years or so we might have enough instability in US government that US cities get nuked with US nukes. I wouldn't say it's likely, but 20 years ago it seemed unthinkable to me and it doesn't seem unthinkable now.

J Thomas, if you go out 20 years, a lot of things are conceivable.

I don't think true relinquishment of nukes is one of them, no matter how preferable it seems.

I suspect that unfortunately we might be headed for a world where at least a couple of nukes get used in anger every 15 years or so. If population and resource pressure are not relieved by "magic tech", that is.

There are a lot of ways for the world to end.

I'd say that there are too many people/factions who want to dissemble for global nuclear disarmament to be undertaken and convincingly proved, modulo (a) an oppressive, invasive world government, or (b) something like the Batttlestar-reminiscent neutrino scanner posited by that Japanese-led team... (see (a), above). And even granting something like (b), there are issues of transparency and accountability.

Who bells the cat(s)? Who wrestles the intransigent ones to the floor?

And as long as anyone has even one nuke, someone else is going to want one, nie? And maybe a spare, because they do have "freshness dates". And then you need the apparatus to rotate the fresh one into service while you decommission the old one...

@#109: There's also the semi-famous "Core and Gap" model. It might not be accurate, but it could be instructive. It is, of course, a straightforward matter to reinterpret that as the "Empire vs. Uncolonized" spheres by those of a mind to do it. I won't take a side on that one, beyond mentioning that my Che Guevara t-shirt has him wearing Mickey Mouse ears.

Edit: My attempted point being that, ignoring the specific issue of Islamic involvement, if any sufficiently powerful sentiment sweeps "The Gap", there's going to be trouble.

Nort, ah yes, Barnett's (sp?) model. I can't help but get the sense that he is some sort of snake oil salesman. Can't put my finger on it exactly; yet the sense remains.

Again I have to ask what makes anyone believe that if "gap" countries became developed they would be friendly to the US. True, there would be at least form of trade relationship if not directly then indirectly. However, that situation is a far cry from accepting and bending to US will. Furthermore, as these countries became economically stronger they would be even better able to establish themselves as military forces - including nukes - that are able to militarily counter the US. This would include nuclear capability.

At some point we must accept that the US must compromise with other cultures; not dictate to them. We must also accept that - as you noted - nuclear weapons aren't going to go away and that before long every technologically developed nation will have them. We can't stop this.

We will have to create new policy approaches based on this acceptance. And no, we will not resort to pre-emptive nuking of the Islamic world as much as our resident lunatics think that might be a decent option. Nor will the Islamic world resort to nuking us.

Working with the Islamic world might ensure that they sufficiently police their own trouble makers so as to improve a spirit of mutual acceptance and cooperation.

J Thomas, if you go out 20 years, a lot of things are conceivable.

I don't think true relinquishment of nukes is one of them, no matter how preferable it seems.

The biggest thing in the way of substantial nuclear disarmament is the US government. If the US government favored the idea and looked for a workable plan, maybe somebody else would get in the way. But we won't find out about that until we stop being the main force stopping it.

Just like everything else (iraq invasion etc) it isn't enough to have a good goal, you need a specific workable plan. I have the start of one, but that's worthless if it's a goal that americans don't want.

So apart from the question whether we can mostly get universal nuclear disarmament, are there americans who wouldn't want it if we could have it?

I deny the prime premise of workability.

Arms reduction, maybe. Relinquishment, no.

If you hold that a sensible policy of relinquishment is achievable in a finite time frame, I don't see how. It's your thread: if you want to hold forth at length on it, go ahead; but I honestly don't foresee harmonizing our outlooks on this.

avedis - I don't (and I think most Americans don't) care if foreign countries are 'friendly' to the US, or necessarily bow to our geopolitical interests (see: France). All I ask is that their political and cultural elites refrain from suggesting as a matter of course that murdering us and our allies is a Good Thing, and that they both refrain from taking steps that result in dead Americans and take steps to find and subdue those people that act on the notion that a good American is a dead one.

I'm perfectly prepared to accept economic and cultural competition. Murdering filmmakers and credible threats against authors as a form of cultural competition is Right Out, however.

Does that framework make Barnett more sensible to you?

A.L.

Nortius, first things first. Would a very large reduction in nuclear arms be desirable if it could be done? Would a total disarmament be desirable if it could be done? Not us disarming while somebody else keeps a few hundred nukes, but an actual temporary total disarmament where nobody sneaks more than a few?

If it isn't worth having then it isn't worth figuring out whether it's possible. But I say it's likely possible, given competent execution, and so it matters whether it's worth succeeding at.

"If a job isn't worth doing, then it isn't worth doing right."

Analogy: If zero crime for every country isn't worth having, then it isn't worth figuring out whether it's possible.

I've already opined that the level of oversight needed would be Draconian.

Now, we might get there anyway, given a likely imbalance of surveillance rather than the one Brin advocated in "The Transparent Society", but if the Draconian oversight is not desirable, then maybe the intended ("temporary"? oh really?, that's a new wrinkle, why "temporary"?) outcome isn't.

I leave you in possession of the field without prejudice. Assume all the spherical cats you want to. :)

AL, you are being naive.

By "friendly" I mean doing business in way that benefits US corporations and other interests.

The US has shot up plenty of governments and people (see Latin America especially) simply because it was perceived there was a possibility they wouldn't do business the way we wanted them to.

And big wars have started over economic conflicts as well. Many serious scholars credit our conflict with Japan in WW2 to this sort of causation.

BTW, which current government is issuing threats to murder US citizens?

avedis, it isn't 1890, or even 1930. If we were true mercantilists, we'd have invaded the OPEC countries in '73 and taken the oil.

I won't say it's ludicrous (to match your 'naive') to think that; but I will suggest that it's not a useful analytical framework. Yes, we were massively heavy-handed in the banana republics of Latin America (Monroe Doctrine), and yes we did topple come governments in the arm-wrestling we did with the Soviets post WW2 (so did they). But to suggest that as a matter of national policy we see commercial wars as being solved militarily is reading a different history than I'm familiar with.

As an example: Our mercantile war with Japan had a lot to do with their behavior in Manchuria.

A.L.

AL, you misunderstand me.

I am not addressing US mercantilism.

All I was trying to do in my #120 was respond to your #117 which I took to imply that other countries would not be at war with us if the only conflict was only economic in nature; if the "gap" countries" became integrated into the "core".

I did this in defense of my #114 wherein I assert that integration of "gap" countries will not prevent warfare and will not necessarily further our own interests because there is no reason to believe those countries would become friendly to the US. You said that as long as they weren't trying to murder us it would be an improvement. In #120 I was just trying to show that they might very well still try to murder us in war; there is precedent for economic conflict driving armed conflict - even the US has been stimulated to start shooting for this reason.

I will also add that wars have been started over cultural and religious differences as well.

Yes, this is the 21st century, but haman nature has not changed. I would like to believe that you and Barnett are on to something that would lessen the frequency and intensity of armed conflict. However, I remain skeptical for the reasons I have given.

Sorry, JT, for yet another sidebar discussion on your thread, though not completely unrelated to the original topic.

avedis, it isn't 1890, or even 1930. If we were true mercantilists, we'd have invaded the OPEC countries in '73 and taken the oil.

We couldn't. We were still reeling from vietnam.

Whether we would if the opportunity presented itself ... the way I remember it we discussed it at length in public. The saudis pointed out that their refineries and such were so easy to sabotage it took very skilled operators not to sabotage them by accident. No way could we take them. A US general said that we could take the saudi oilfields in about 2 weeks and get "some" oil exports going in a month. There was a lot of talk about how saudi arabia couldn't feed itself and we could use the "food weapon" to counter the "oil weapon". Blockade their food imports and they'd starve. I remember a lot of talk about how it was really our oil, that we created the technology to pump it and we installed that technology and the only thing the saudis contributed was that they happened to be living in the area. Why should we let them have it?

You can argue that the reason we didn't invade then was that our hearts were pure. But I think it's plausible that part of it may have been that at the time we had a hollow shell of a draftee army.

Off topic but amusing: I note that the top hit I get from WoC's search textbox for

batguano

is the print version of JT's entry / top post.

So, I guess it was worth sticking on somebody's fridge. :)

Nortius, I note that mostly nobody is willing to discuss whether it would be a good thing if we could get a lot of disarmament. I will assume that it would be a good thing for the USA. That the minor brinksmanship victories we've had this way are not worth the continuing risk to US cities. So far no one disputes this.

Given that disarmament is worth doing, there are two issues. One is to deal with nations that don't disarm, or that actually use their nukes. The second issue -- the more important one -- is to persuade the US public and the world that nukes are not worth having. The better we do on the second goal the less important the first one becomes.

I will look at the second part first, because it's the vitally important one. We can't disarm until the US public goes along with it, and the US public is still kind of crazy on that topic. And we need to persuade the rest of the world too.

So we'd need a concentrated public information effort. I'll try an example -- a multimedia presentation by the US president. (If the US president isn't convinced then it won't go anywhere.) Presidents usually recite dull speeches, but this is the 21st century.

"Nuclear weapons have dominated us for more than sixty years." [old film of nuke going off.]

"At first we thought our nuclear monopoly meant we were the boss." [Quick soundbyte of US leader threatening russia]

"It was a bluff. At that time we had only eight working bombs. For years more than 10% of US electric production was consumed to make bombs." [shot of impressive TVA dam. shot of poor starved-looking tennessee woman holding a thin baby]

"Before we could get enough nukes to destroy the USSR, they got nukes too. We were scared." [shot of big nuke going off. shot of Rosenburg getting electrocuted. Shot of classroom children ducking and covering.]

"The soviets thought that we had enough nuclear bombs to destroy them, and they did not have enough to destroy us. They built something called a doomsday device, a single bomb that they thought was big enough to kill everbody in the world. They had no way to test whether their bomb would do that, but they threatened us with it. If we destroyed them they would kill us back." [Quick soundbyte of Khrushchev. "The Soviet Union will never be the first to make a nuclear attack. However. Any nation that with nuclear weapons attacks the Soviet Union or her forces, will be destroyed."]

"Our leaders never wanted the US public to see them back down. And so we had some very tense negotiations with the soviets. [photo of Kennedy looking stressed.] We nearly had a nuclear war that might have killed everyone in the world, but the US public was not told -- they only guessed." [quick film of convoys of army trucks heading south toward florida. quick film of missile launchers being readied. photo of kennedy beside air photo of soviet missile. film of US citizen in his bomb shelter. "The machine gun is for my neighbors, if they try to break in. They need to build their own shelters, if they want to live."]

"Our negotiators learned to out-bluff the russians. If we threatened to kill everybody in the world unless they accepted our minor demands, the russians would back down. Our bluffs had to work because we were not in fact bluffing. Each time, we would have destroyed the world rather than lose the negotiation." [video of trembling US diplomat. "I'm sorry. We -- we -- cannot accept that." He looks like he's about to throw up, but he refuses to back down.]

"Our plans to win a nuclear war were not workable." [Soundbyte of Herman Kahn to general. "You don't have a war strategy. All you have is some kind of horrible spasm!"]

"A new way of thinking became important, game theory. We made theoretical explanations of our strategies, designed to get the best possible result in any possible situation." [quick photo of J von Neumann. photo of Kahn. film of mathematician explaining to generals. "...what if they destroy one of our cities and apologise. They could hurt us severely. So we must be ready at any time to destroy a comparable soviet city and then accept their apology." Back to Khrushchev. "The Soviet Union will never be the first to make a nuclear attack. However."] "It soon became clear that a national leader would have to be insane to think he could win a nuclear war." [film of earnest young man in t-shirt and baseball cap "You don't understand those communist dictators. They aren't like us. They'd be fine with all their people getting killed if it killed us too. Because then there'd be nothing to stop international communism. They could come out of their bomb shelters and they'd have the whole world. Those communists are fanatics. They don't care how many communists die as long as communism wins in the end."]

"We prepared to defend western europe against communist attack. But an adequate defense would be very very expensive. [video of us-german officers meeting. US general is explaining plan for orderly fallback, nuking each german town or village as we leave. German officer asks where will the civilians be. US answers, "We can't run an effective evacuation so we want civilians to stay in their basements until end of hostilities." German looks blank, picks up mushroom-cloud symbol and puts it on Dresden. US says, "If we are prepared, then the russians will not attack. The nuclear landmines make sure they will not win anything worth having, not even places to dig in against our airstrikes." Back to Khrushchev. "The Soviet Union will never be the first to make a nuclear attack. However."]

"Now a quick look at Israel. In 1967 Israel won one of the most decisive wars in history." [video of celebrating israel soldiers on tanks driving past egyptian wrecks.] "Israel took the sinai peninsula from egypt, the golan heights from syria, and the west bank from jordan." [map showing israel in green, and the green spills out across sinai, west bank, and golan.] "After the cease-fire the egyptians wanted to negotiate for their land back. The israelis laughed at them." [video of israeli general laughing. "Land for peace? Why should we care about their 'peace'? If they want to fight us again they're welcome to, we'll treat them like last time. They have nothing we want or care about, why should we talk to them?"]

"Sadat did threaten to go to war. The israelis laughed at him. He said that 1972 would be the year of decision. But nothing happened. [video of israeli commedian making joke about arabs who can't fight.]

"Finally in 1973 Egypt and Syria did attack. Israel lost. They lost their maginot line along the suez canal." [photo of destroyed bunkers, photo of israeli POWs.] "They lost the tanks they sent against the egyptians east of the canal." [quick video of celebrating egyptian soldiers on tanks driving past israeli wrecks.] "They lost the planes they sent against the egyptian air defenses." [video of plane getting shot down.]

"Then the egyptians sent their own tanks past their air defenses and the Israeli Air Force smashed them. The israelis set up a defensive line in the middle of the sinai, and it was a stalemate." [picture of israeli soldiers hunkered in desert. picture of egyptian soldiers hunkered in desert.] "Israel had run out of most military supplies, but their enemies couldn't attack either. Israel would be forced to negotiate."

"But the Israeli government had nuclear weapons, and they threatened to nuke Egypt." [photo of document, with voice reading translation in english.] "The egyptians appealed to the USSR, which sent bombs by sea. The USA detected nuclear material moving through the Dardanelles and threatened the USSR with a global nuclear war unless they stopped, and the russians stopped." [map of near east with blinking light on dardanelles. video of old man with his old uniform on a hangar beside him, holding his medals. "They announced on the TV that it was DefCon Three. But they told us DefCon One. Prepare for immediate nuclear war. We were all going oh shit. But it came out OK."]

"We gave the israelis all the weapons and special weapons and intelligence they needed to win. They won the war and then we negotiated for them. We made them give back the sinai and accept a peace treaty with Egypt but not Syria. We were ready to kill everybody in the world to make sure Israel won that war, instead of getting stuck in a stalemate where they'd have to negotiate. We wouldn't let the russians give Egypt a nuclear stalemate like we had with the russians. We were ready for every american to die to make sure Israel could threaten other nations with nukes and not be threatened back. But the american public was not told." [video of Kissinger talking about global necessities.]

"Incidentally, when we resupplied Israel we gave them so many of our tanks and planes from western europe that the russians could have conquered europe easily, apart from the nukes. But the russians did not attack. Europeans never again took us seriously when we claimed we were defending them from military attack by the soviet union." [photo of dutch troops that looked like hippies. photo of belgian troops that look like civilians playing dress-up. photo of column of Leopard tanks with german commander in first hatch, grinning]

"During Reagan's time, some american strategists thought that our missile targetting was so good we could win a nuclear war against the USSR. Our new bombs were 'clean', they wouldn't make as much fallout. Many small bombs could precisely destroy the russian nukes -- all the nukes -- and they would be helpless and would have to surrender." [video of Reagan announcing attack on USSR.] "Luckily this plan was not attempted. It was decided that even 20 russian bombs falling on the USA was too many, that it wasn't worth that risk. But if we got a defense that could stop those 20 bombs then we could do it. Reagan started a massive nuclear defense program. It could never get the results claimed, protection from a USSR first strike. But it might provide protection from a USSR second strike." [video of Reagan earnestly proposing Star Wars, picture of shield to stop missiles.]

"This plan was risky. The USSR put their missile silos close to their cities. We couldn't blow up the silos without killing a lot of people. Would they surrender after that? And they still had their doomsday device. Would they set it off? How could we know?" [Photos of title pages of various US classified documents]

"Reagan talked to Brezhnev and tried to negotiate nuclear disarmament. Brezhnev agreed. But then US nuclear experts told Reagan he couldn't do it and he had to back down." [video of Brezhnev. "The Soviet Union will never be the first to stage nuclear attack on any nation. However. Any nation that with nuclear weapons attacks the Soviet Union or her forces will be destroyed." video of US attack planner. "We have every significant soviet objective targetted multiple times. Additional warheads are being targetted at crossroads in order of importance."]

"Nobody knew whether the USA could survive the side effects of a large american nuclear strike on russia, even if they chose not to hit back at all. Nobody knows to this day how much of the increase in cancer worldwide is because of the nuclear testing we used to do. There are reasonable guesses that four-fifths of it is because of pollution, but we can't be sure -- there is no way to undo the fallout. [photo of title pages of various medical documents. video of men in white coats arguing.] We don't even know what side effects to expect. There's no reason to think we've thought of them all." [photo of title page labeled Nuclear Winter]

"At this point there is no reason to think the trillions of dollars we have spent on nuclear weapons has ever made us safer. We made up stories about what the Russians would do. We insisted that when they told us their intentions they were lying. We spent very large sums of money to defend against threats that we made up with game theory -- for games that we were the only ones playing." [picture of von Neumann. Video of mathematician. "This system lets us move missiles along underground tunnels from one launcher to another. The russians can inspect any one site they want and if we have too many missiles there they will find out. We had to solve the problem of letting them inspect our weapons without finding out where the weapons are. It's like a trillion-dollar shell game."]

"It's a seventy-year nightmare that we couldn't wake up from. Nuclear weapons have never done us the slightest bit of good, but we have insisted that if we give them up someone will nuke us. At the moment there is only one nation that has enough nukes to mostly destroy the USA and that is Russia. There is only one nation that has enough nukes to destroy Russia, and that is the USA. If we could use four thousand nukes to destroy Russia and we thought the russians would hit us back with only twenty nukes, would we do it? No. Russia is not particularly our enemy, and we do not have issues with Russia that are worth losing twenty american cities. Or for that matter one american city. I do not believe the russians would choose to destroy us and lose twenty of their cities either." [video of russians walking on street, at a birthday party, arguing about politics]

"My chief of staff says it will take three months to take apart all but 250 of our nuclear weapons. I have told him to go ahead with that. For the moment we will replace the extra warheads with dummies. The only thing nuclear weapons are good for is to keep others from nuking us. 250 is enough for that purpose. I want to invite Russia to do the same, but I don't need a treaty or inspections to prove they keep their word. If they choose to spend lots of money to be the only nations in the world with thousands of nukes, that is their choice."

"Now here is a different matter. I will make the same pledge that Khrushchev and Brezhnev and other russian leaders did. While I am president, the United States of America will not be the first to use nuclear weapons. I hope that Congress will pass a law binding future presidents to this. And it wouldn't hurt to make a Constitutional amendment to say we won't ever do it. We don't need to threaten other nations with nukes to get them to do what we want. It isn't worth it, anyway. But while I am president, if any nation attacks another nation with nuclear weapons, and has not been attacked itself, we will hit them back. I invite Russias and China and India and any other nation that chooses to build expensive missiles and detection systems to join us in this. I repeat -- the only thing nuclear weapons are good for is to keep other nations from nuking you. And if you can depend on several other nations to make that threat for you, then nukes are completely worthless."

"I want to note for the game theorists among us that this strategy does not keep nations from secretly smuggling nukes into other nations to explode them without leaving a trail to say who did it. But it does prevent nations from making nuclear threats. You can sneak a weapon into another country and set it off, if you're sneaky enough. But you cannot say 'Do what I want or I will nuke you' and keep that secret. There is nothing -- now -- to keep nations from smuggling nukes into other nations, except that they might get caught. Having 7000 nukes instead of 250 does not help us. We are better off with fewer nuclear weapons in the world. Everyone is better off with fewer nuclear weapons in the world. If my country could have avoided spending the money these weapons cost us [note: ask OMB to estimate compounded costs in current dollars, ask senate majority leader to ask GAO for same estimate] we would be X trillion dollars richer today."

"Attempts to inspect other nations to make sure they aren't building nuclear weapons have led to a lot of turmoil. I'm not sure that approach is workable. But I want to attest to every foreign leader -- nuclear weapons have not gotten the USA anything we wanted, that was worth anything close to what they cost. Several times we have risked extermination over them. We were wrong to drop nuclear bombs on Japan. Each time we threatened other nations with nuclear weapons, we were wrong. We would probably be better off without them but we don't have the nerve today to stop them entirely. They are likely to do you no more good than they have done us."