🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <31D7DB77.2AD9@fas.org>, John Pike <johnpike@fas.org> wrote:

> Greg d. Moore wrote:
> 
> > ...... remember, playing with some of the so called "rogue"
> > nations that may believe they have nothing to lose and
> > everything to gain from humilating the US is a dangerous game....
> 
> I guess that this is one of the fundamental issues here. If
> one believes that we are indeed confronted with utterly
> implacable adversaries who are completely Hell-bent on
> our destruction to the exclusion of all other possible
> considerations then perhaps we have a problem.
> 
> OTOH, I have a bit of trouble really believing that the leaders
> in Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea wake up every morning and
> start worrying afresh about how they "have nothing to lose and
> everything to gain from humiliating the US." 
> 
...
Much deleted for brevity

> So to the contrary, these countries have nothing to gain and
> everything to loose from messing with us, particularly in a
> nuclear fashion...
> 
> -- 
> John Pike

Here is where John disagrees so much with so many like myself. The goal
for these dictators is building their own political hierarchy without
resistance from the U.S.  Their gain comes from threatening the U.S. if it
intervenes in a "local" dispute, such as another Gulf War, or a European
conflict like Hungary in 1956.  In that case the U.S. and it's allies
refused to save the Hungarians because of the strategic threat of Soviet
weapons.  This was repeated in Cuba, and affected policy in Southeast
Asia. 

These effects on U.S. policy were successful when the Soviets had a VERY
small ballistic missile capability compared to later.  If I remember
correctly, there were only a few tens of operational Soviet ICBMs during
the Cuban Missile crisis.  A similar capability to this early Soviet
force, in the hands of any of the countries mentioned above, could have
very restrictive affects on U.S. actions.  The world would become a much
safer place for the type of governments we have opposed for so many years.

Of course, that's the whole point of it, given the Noam Chomsky wanna-be
attitudes that FAS has supported over the years.

They don't want market freedoms to become more common.

They don't want the U.S. to support relatively free-market governments.

They remain fellow-travelers, though now lacking a coherent Soviet example
to rally behind.

They want the U.S. to stop defending the market freedoms they and other
socialists dislike.

Strategic defenses will make it more possible for the U.S. to intervene in
the future in areas where opponents have nukes and the missiles to put
them on a U.S. or allied target.

FAS wants that intervention, and the strategic defenses that will make it
less risky, STOPPED. 

John's phrases, like "Blue Horde" to describe the U.S. Airforce and other
such insults to the Republic, are numerous enough to have shown up this
attitude before now.

I want those strategic defenses built because I oppose the restrictions
FAS would like, on U.S. support for market freedoms around the world.

FAS doesn't.

Regards,

Tom Billings

-- 
Institute for Teleoperated Space Development
itsd1@teleport.com(Tom Billings)
ITSD's web site is at,  http://www.teleport.com/~itsd1/index.html