[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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