[thechat] What happens next?
deke
web at master.gen.in.us
Sat Sep 22 09:25:21 CDT 2001
On 21 Sep 2001, at 13:53, Judah McAuley posted a message which said:
> I was particularly disturbed by the interview of Donald Rumsfeld by Sam
> Donaldson in which Rumsfeld refused to rule out the use of nuclear
> weapons. Scary stuff.
If you rule out the nuclear option, you are performing unilateral
nuclear disarmament.
If you are going to rule out nuclear bombs, you really ought to
rule out *all* bombs. There's no real difference between nuclear
energy and chemical energy. There *is* a real difference between
staring your enemy in the face and deliberately killing specific
human beings than there is to planting a land mine without knowing
who will trigger it, or firing a mortar or missle to a location you only
know by number, or dropping bombs out of the bay of a B-52 on
rectangular images that are probably buildings.
Bill Mahar is a jerk, but he was right. The terrorists in those planes
could see the faces of at least *some* of their victims, and they
willingly killed themselves. There are lots of words for that. Cowardly
isn't the one I would choose.
deke
------------------------
"The church is near but the road is icy;
the bar is far away but I will walk carefully."
-- Russian Proverb
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