Showing posts with label nuclear weapons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nuclear weapons. Show all posts
Saturday, 3 November 2007
Sunday, 26 August 2007
Idiots' corner
I never cease to be amazed by the apparent insanity of supposedly serious 'statespersons' and their political partisans who talk what seems to me utter lunacy. The fact that such idiots are influential in our contemporary world is deeply dismaying.
The two worst examples are first, advocacy of 'nuking' anybody, and even the pretence that nuclear weapons have a deterrent effect that makes investment in them, and their retention, a credible policy. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the horrific effects of the criminally irresponsible Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs of 1945, and of the widespread malign atmospheric and health effects of the Chernobyl disaster, must know that there can be no 'winners', but only a doom-laden future for humanity, if nuclear weapons are ever used again. Therefore, the only sane policy is for them to be universally outlawed, and their dismantling supervised by an international authority. Hearing the gung-ho comments by some [usually American] politicians about the feasibility and even desirability of 'nuking' Iran, North Korea, or anywhere else sends shivers down my spine. These people should be carted off by the gentlemen in white coats, and locked up for life.
The second idiocy is the eager anticipation of many knee-jerk anti-Americans for the withdrawal - or ignominious expulsion - of US troops from Iraq. As someone who fiercely opposed the Iraq adventure before it was launched, on the pragmatic ground that it was bound to be disastrous, knowing the nature of the people of the region, I obviously wish that no US or British forces had ever gone there. But that is an entirely different matter to wishing to see them driven out with their tails between their legs. Such an outcome would have only one result: a weakening of Western influence in the world, and a strengthening of Islamic, bitterly anti-Western, forces. Is that what the Bush-hating, lickspittle Left really want to see?
Thanks to the egregious folly of the most crapulous US administration in living memory - and mine goes back to the 1930s - the West and militant Islam have been put on a collision course which can only be resolved by a combination of [unused] military strength and international diplomacy, probably over a considerable period of time. Churchill's dictum that 'jaw-jaw is better than war-war' was never truer than in this instance. Any other outcome would be so horrific as to be unthinkable. But these days, with the lunatics running the asylum, we are, alas, forced to think the unthinkable.
The two worst examples are first, advocacy of 'nuking' anybody, and even the pretence that nuclear weapons have a deterrent effect that makes investment in them, and their retention, a credible policy. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of the horrific effects of the criminally irresponsible Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs of 1945, and of the widespread malign atmospheric and health effects of the Chernobyl disaster, must know that there can be no 'winners', but only a doom-laden future for humanity, if nuclear weapons are ever used again. Therefore, the only sane policy is for them to be universally outlawed, and their dismantling supervised by an international authority. Hearing the gung-ho comments by some [usually American] politicians about the feasibility and even desirability of 'nuking' Iran, North Korea, or anywhere else sends shivers down my spine. These people should be carted off by the gentlemen in white coats, and locked up for life.
The second idiocy is the eager anticipation of many knee-jerk anti-Americans for the withdrawal - or ignominious expulsion - of US troops from Iraq. As someone who fiercely opposed the Iraq adventure before it was launched, on the pragmatic ground that it was bound to be disastrous, knowing the nature of the people of the region, I obviously wish that no US or British forces had ever gone there. But that is an entirely different matter to wishing to see them driven out with their tails between their legs. Such an outcome would have only one result: a weakening of Western influence in the world, and a strengthening of Islamic, bitterly anti-Western, forces. Is that what the Bush-hating, lickspittle Left really want to see?
Thanks to the egregious folly of the most crapulous US administration in living memory - and mine goes back to the 1930s - the West and militant Islam have been put on a collision course which can only be resolved by a combination of [unused] military strength and international diplomacy, probably over a considerable period of time. Churchill's dictum that 'jaw-jaw is better than war-war' was never truer than in this instance. Any other outcome would be so horrific as to be unthinkable. But these days, with the lunatics running the asylum, we are, alas, forced to think the unthinkable.
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