🚀 go-pugleaf

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

>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." I mean, after
>all, these folks have countries to run [not very large or
>impressive countries, but countries, more or less, all the
>same].

most of these folks also have children, grand-children and
facored pets, whom they wish to bequeath justa  tad more then
some trinitite.

>It seems to me that it is in the natural course of events that
>if anyone in their leadership circles got a burr under his saddle
>about having "nothing to lose and everything to gain from
>humiliating the US" that there would be other folks within the
>leadership circles who would suggest that perhaps other concerns
>had somewhat higher priority, like overfulfilling the quota for
>the Third Five Year Plan, or sniffing out heretics up in the
>mountains, or doing in the chief of the security services, or
>something.
>
>Rather, the folks who rise to the top of the leadership circles
>of these countries are survivors -- otherwise they would have
>been purged a long time ago. They clearly recognize that nuking
>TheSoleRemainingSuperPower[tm] would be a really neat way of
>turning their dinky little country in to a SmokingRadiatingRuin[tm]

AS a few historical examples,  China, with which the US has had no
great interest, was eye-to-eye with the russians, and never tried
hurling their very small nuclear force at the russians, despite
massive provocation.  Even despite the fact china was being torn apart
by the forces of the cultural revolution (Millions killed, exiled,
injured mostly for crimes like wearing glasses or reading english)

Even in the final days of the third reich, when Hitler developed
the death fetish, the german high command sought to assasinate
him (Un-successfully) and refused orders to destroy Paris or
german industrial areas.  

Look at the collapse of the soviet states, rather then a fight to the
end, the government just collapsed.

pat


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Overbreeding leads to weakness, it is a slow death -- Major Katsunagi -