I have a new pamphlet out on Amazon KIndle entitled the Three Conjectures for $1.99. It’s a look at whether societies can face the threat of nuclear terrorism without resorting to the same ruthlessness as their enemies. While it uses some of the material written in the original Belmont Club from 2003 to 2006, nearly half the content is entirely new. I’ve excerpted part of the new stuff after the Read More.
The motivation for turning old discussions into a pamphlet was to gather up scattered material and collect them all into a convenient publication. Aside from the fact that the pamphlet contains original material, putting things together in this way makes it easy for readers to see how the disparate essays come together in a theme.
Blog posts have turned out to be more useful at raising questions than providing answers. It turns out to be equally true of writing a pamphlet. The policymakers who presided over the birth of the nuclear age in the 1940s imagined that they were confronting a unique set of challenges in coming to terms with weapons of mass destruction. It was true in part, but not completely so. Humanity has for all its existence had to wrestle with the unavoidable necessity to cause evil in order to prevent worse. It seems as through every one of our ‘solutions’ gives birth to a new problem.
Unfortunately history has given us no way to stop the music. We are stuck on the ride to whatever end it take us. That realization can liberate us from the terrors of indecision. The pamphlet argues that we ought not be afraid to make hard, but rational decisions because the real alternative is to let things default to a more destructive outcome. What rationality consists of is a situational thing. About all that mankind has ever been able to do, even at the prodding of God Himself, is to make his best effort.
The Three Conjectures Cover
The Judge of All the Earth
If one were to search the Western canon for a clue to thinking about the unthinkable, a good place to start would be Abraham’s dialog with the three angels by the oaks of Mamre who were on their way to recon what might be thought of as the first recorded nuclear strike in history. Abraham comes out of his tent and finds three angels on a mission. He accompanies them on their trip, but the angels wonder whether Abraham can handle the truth about what they are going to embark upon.
And the Lord appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the door of his tent in the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men were standing in front of him … and they looked down toward Sodom. And Abraham went with them to set them on their way … The Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.”
God is considering a strike on Sodom and Gomorrah. Immediately the problem of moral ambiguity, so familiar to students of deterrence, makes its appearance. In the passage from Genesis, God is worried that Abraham cannot think about the unthinkable. He had instructed Abraham in the ways of “righteousness and justice”, and marked him as the founding stone of a great people. Would Abraham understand what He was about to do? For the destruction of an entire city was at first glance contrary to everything God had taught His servant to value. And sure enough, once the angels had confirmed the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, and God told Abraham of His intention to destroy them, the very scruples the Almighty had inculcated in Abraham rose up to confront him. The patriarch asked how the “Judge of All the Earth” could even contemplate incinerating an entire city, visiting destruction alike upon the righteous and the wicked — and still be God.
So the men turned from there and went toward Sodom, but Abraham still stood before the Lord. Then Abraham drew near and said, “Will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city. Will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” And the Lord said, “If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
The Lord’s reply in Genesis 18:26 are extraordinary. They are our first clue about to how to think about the unthinkable. For God immediately raised the issues of numbers, not moral absolutes in the calculus of whether to strike the evil cities of the plain. The discussion between Abraham and God hinged around estimates of collateral damage. If it was too great, then the Judge of All the Earth would stay His hand. But if the collateral damage were acceptable, the strike was on. Immediately the problem of what number was too big became apparent. God answered the question with a question by turning the problem over to Abraham. He bids him count the number of righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah. There follows a haggling which could have foreshadowed Harry Truman’s weighing of the casualties the Atomic Bomb would cause versus the casualties that would be prevented by using it to avoid an invasion of Japan.
[Excerpt Ends]
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $3.99, print $9.99
Wretchard,
I first started reading Belmont Club not long before you published THREE CONJECTURES. It was a brilliant piece of original strategic thinking, and I have incorporated it into my world view, and have repeatedly cited and linked to it in my own writings to explain what we are up against.
The concept of an updated edition excites me, but sadly your humble servant does not do Kindle. I hope eventually there will be a way to get an online or hard copy; for which I would gladly pay.
Subotai Bahadur
The conversation with God in this passage and the story of Job always moved me. And I always liked Abraham’s advocacy.
I don’t do Kindle either. I’m old-fashioned enough to still favor the feel of a real book in my hands.
I would pay more than $1.99 for a hard copy of the pamphlet.
@ Sabutai
There is an App available from Amazon to allow Kindle to PC reading.
Thought I had an Amazon account, needed to activate the “free” application let alone download the essay, but that may have been with a since canceled card. Grumble grumble.
Compare how Abraham bargains with God to spare the wicked foreigners with how such a situation would have been covered using Islamic ethics.
I shall go over to Amazon straightway and download all three conjectures. For 2 bucks, it is a good deal.
Help, Wretchard–my helpful comment explaining where to get the Kindle reader software was marked as spam.
I think paper books feel nicer. You can take them to the beach, read them on the boat, throw them in the pack. There’s something about reading a paperback in a trail shelter in a moderate rain, the light all green around you, as you stare at a family of leeches making their happy way up your leg that is not replicable in a Starbucks coffee shop.
You can compensate to some extent; because if you have a e-reader, it downloads the whole shebang onto a cache on the instrument which means you can read offline, as on a plane or in the airport or in some hotel that’s got no WiFi. I have read history books on my crummy 2 inch phone display where you fit one or two sentences per “page”. But it’s not the same as paper.
The main electronic book advantage is cost. They’re cheaper than paper. And you don’t have to mail them, which can be expensive if you’re sending stuff overseas. It’s quite a cultural leveler. For the first time ever a guy in some hick town can access a book (ok, an e-book) as fast as a person in London, Paris or New York. Of course the ebook selections are not as wide nor rich as paper, especially in the illustrated full color area, but I think that will change.
The low cost creates interesting possibilities for content distribution. First of all, you can give e-books as gifts to anyone with an email address. The recipients of the gift can download a free reader and get an access code that gives them that particular book. That kind of gets them going on the medium and they may buy more books simply because they’ve already got the danged reader. Sales volumes are vital because the margins are so small that you’ll never make more than pennies unless you get some quantity going.
Part of the way to offset the falling margins in the writing racket is to up the volume, and the ways for doing that haven’t been fully developed yet. But the potential is there. Every smart phone, every tablet, every computer in the world is now a target audience. This means that instead of being able to reach a hundreds thousand through bookstores you can potentially reach a hundred or thousand times that number, if you figure out how.
8. wretchard
“The main electronic book advantage is cost”
No it isn’t, at least not to the consumer. Most Kindle versions of books which I would like to buy are priced within a few dollars of the physical version. The entirety of the savings go to the seller, not the buyer.
“For the first time ever a guy in some hick town can access a book (ok, an e-book) as fast as a person in London, Paris or New York”
So what? Physical delivery times are usually a couple of weeks. It can take a week or two to actually read the book once it arrives, and if you’ve got a pile of unread books on your shelf, you might only read it half a year after it gets there. What does it matter if you save two weeks on delivery?
Also, last time I bought a new bestseller from amazon with international delivery it was sent before the book was available in stores in the US, and arrived only 1 or 2 days later. Some copies sent to Germany arrived before the official release date.
If you’re thinking about pamphlets like yours, then that revolution has already happened for free content – it’s the internet.
If new ebooks were sold for half the price of the physical books, there might be a revolution. I haven’t seen it happen. The reason, I believe, is that the seller of the platform is the seller of the content. I have a Kindle. If I want to buy your pamphlet, can I shop around 5 different suppliers to see who gives me the best price? Or do I have to buy it from amazon? How much of those $2 reaches your pocket, and how much stays with amazon? How many more people would your ideas reach if there were 5 sellers selling it at $0.50 — $0.75?
Oooh – that cover graphic is suitably disturbing for the topic – worms doing the Gordian Knot?
What is the real point of the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis??? The effectiveness of the morality of Abraham to sway God? Or the effectiveness of God’s vengeance and terror to instill fealty to his laws?
I have lost faith in the West. In the aftermath of 9/11, I was stunned by our decision to “nation build” in the sewers of Islam rather than to wreak vengeance as a warning. Our subsequent bankruptcy, which I believe is a direct corollary of 9/11, is also a reflexion of the evil genius and effectiveness of Islamic terror and Bin Laden’s decision to attack when and where he did.
Had we wreaked massive destruction against our Muslim enemies and left it at that, we would have saved thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of wounded, trillions in squandered wealth, and warned the vile Muslim perps that much worse was in store for them if they chose to continue Jihad against us. But we chose to “nation build” instead. Worse, the satanic Saudi enemy remains unscathed, and he continues to export his doctrine of Jihad to our shores while remaining inviolate. He also continues sending his overbreeding Muslim masses to our shores, he continues to build and to fill his war mosques in the West with his venomous imams, and he continues to spread his Islam through terror, deception, and subversion.
On the surface, our “nation building” may be appear to be a manifestation of the morality of Abraham in his concern over the annihilation of the innocent, but what if we have failed in the most basic dynamics of the ancient laws of Talion? What if we have only encouraged our Muslim enemy by our failure to retaliate? What was God’s real purpose in the drama of Sodom and Gomorrah? Was it illustrate how He could be swayed by Abraham’s morality? Was it to spark Abraham’s morality itself through the terrible lens of His destruction and His power? Abraham faced no direct threat from the people of Sodom, so his moral misgivings happened in the alembic of abstraction. What if Abraham’s tribe faced direct annihilation from the people of Sodom? Would he have been so loathe to see them destroyed? I doubt it. Would it have been moral to worry over the death of innocents if the consequence would eventuate Abraham’s own extermination???
In the end, only Lot is found to be innocent – and he alone is saved, but God proceeds to annihilate those who transgressed against him anyway. The morality of saving innocents plays out, but the larger story about destroying those who transgress plays out too. What you take away from this chapter says a lot about you – is the lesson about the morality of Abraham, or the terror of God’s vengeance?
So was it moral for the West to decide to nation build and prevent “collateral damage” in the ME rather than wreak massive destruction on the Muslims to teach a lesson? If our choice ends up bankrupting us and preventing us from defending ourselves in the future, then it was one of the most immoral acts in history. If that choice fails to instill in our Muslim enemy a sufficient dread at waging more Jihad, or worse, encourages him that his terror is succeeding, then all that we have accomplished will be to encourage our Muslim enemy to eventually nuke our cities, assuring the deaths of billions. I fear that is the exact consequence which our so-called “moral” decision triggered.
“For God immediately raised the issues of numbers, not moral absolutes …”
Does this work the other way? Does the old saw about, “if it saves even one person it’s worth the cost” have some validity then?
I still buy printed books, but I love my Kindle for travel. It’s wonderful to switch from the nonfiction book you are reading to a something silly or comforting if you are stuck in a hotel room on a rainy late afternoon. If you see something on your travels that makes you want to return to a favorite classic–no problem. The older I get, the more I hate schlepping pounds of luggage through airports and train stations. Kindle is a great way to reduce the weight.
Jonathan Levy,
I live in Germany. Before Amazon, I would not have even known about many new books. The books stores around here were heavy into Michael Moore during the Bush era. I prefer browsing on Amazon. I also love it for sending gifts to folks back home.
Already purchased and downloaded. “The Three Conjectures” were my first introduction to the BC, when Stephen Den Beste linked to them, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I look forward to reading the update thoroughly.
As for e-books, the best thing about them IMO is the weight. I have moved frequently through my life (every year or two for the last 15), and let me tell you – I have always liked moving my books the least. I’ve pruned and pruned until now I am down to just four IKEA Billy bookshelves of “key” books (most of them pre-2000 titles that were never converted to digital). I am so thankful that in the last couple years I have only added half a dozen physical titles to the collection. But now no matter where I go I have the entire Western canon (from Genesis to Adam Smith), plus many Russian novels and Chinese works, with me at all times. Fantastic.
For God immediately raised the issues of numbers, not moral absolutes in the calculus of whether to strike the evil cities of the plain.
Um, I’m not exactly a biblical scholar, but I’ve never understood this as being a mathematical proposition or a shading of the morality issue, but rather the opposite, a lesson to Abraham that God knew what He was doing after all, and that Abraham’s questions were all already answered in the negative.
Sort of like Romney’s $10,000 bet, with Abraham playing the Rick Perry role.
Or perhaps, rather, a warning:
Know then thyself,
presume not God to scan;.
The proper study of mankind is Man.
Best $2 I’ve ever spent, Wretchard.
With the discussion between ebook and physical book, I would appreciate any progress you could make with Amazon allowing combo-packs with physical and electronic formats of the same title.
I love holding and reading from a physical book. I also love reading on the go with a light, quickly accessible copy on my Kindle. I would happily buy a physical book and pay an extra $5 to get the ebook with it, similar to how the Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital Copy bundles are sold. I do not and will not buy the physical book for full price and then the ebook for full price, which usually ends up being just a couple of dollars cheaper. Effectively, I must buy the book twice.
If Amazon started doing bundles, their market penetration with the Kindle would jump by leaps and bounds overnight. Creating the ebook and hosting it on their servers, once completed, is essentially a sunk cost. Selling it thereafter is essentially free cash flow. Buying physical books have the entire supply chain issue with materials, storage, shipping, etc, and is not something that is easy to change or adapt quickly to changing markets. Physical books seem to be getting more and more expensive all the time. I’m going to buy physical books. I’m not going to buy both at this point. I will buy some very limited electronic stuff. I would buy much, much more with a little common sense from the retailer.
A few years ago, The Three Conjectures may not have been publishable. Thank goodness (or Amazon!) for ebooks!
I have two different types of books scattered throughout the house and workshop: Escapist fare (my beloved murder mysteries and sci fi books) and how-to books. Escapist fare is perfect for the Kindle which will substantially reduce the clutter on my bookshelves (the older, out-of-print non ebooks will stay, of course). How-to books with intricate diagrams and schematics are NOT Kindle friendly, and I will continue to purchase those.
I have never really understood “liberal”, “progressive” fear-mongering about nuclear weapons. Knew ye not Dresden? It has been asserted that the Battle of Zama (Roman vs Carthaginian) had perhaps the highest one-day kill in history — before the invention of automatic weapons, it was simply not practical to take large numbers of prisoners. And way before the devastation of Europe’s Thirty Year War (with swords as much as with guns), there was a woad-covered Brit complaining that the Romans created a desert and called it peace.
Last time I checked, Hiroshima has recovered very nicely from a nuclear attack; Dresden did not recover so well from the tender ministrations of the fire-bombing Brits, although the real credit for Dresden’s slow recovery may go to socialism.
Bottom line is that nuclear bombs don’t kill people; people kill people. Nuclear bombs are just another weapon, that’s all.
This, of course, has nothing to do with the moral calculus about the circumstances in which one human may kill another, or about the circumstances in which it is acceptable to kill bystanders in the course of killing the intended target. Although any reader of the New York Times would recognize that this difficult calculus is apparently dominated by whether the Establishment President of the USA happens to have an R or a D after his name.
Excellent idea, Richard!
I was thinking the other day that there has been so much good material you have produced over the years, that you should do a treatise in book form. The digital pamphlet idea perhaps works even better. I bought a copy of the Three Conjectures immediately and I would love to see some of your other brilliant observations pulled together in such a form in the future. Even a compilation of your best posts over the years would be worth the effort, perhaps with some updated analysis.
I am looking forward to many more years of your brilliant prose. You are a welcome beacon of sanity in an insane world. Thank you for being here.
WG
I’m a late arrival to the Belmont Club, so this topic is a welcome addition to my retinue of conceptual conundrums. The issue of mass-scale retaliation need not be an analysis based largely upon conjecture and moral ambiguity. When various “peoples” are modeled using game theory computer-based simulation, tit-for-tat is frequently shown to be the most robust survival stratagem. If you view worldwide societies as being participants in an existential evolutionary competition, then basic long-term survival trumps moral high ground, by whatever measure is used.
Kinuachdrach @ 17 said:
“It has been asserted that the Battle of Zama (Roman vs Carthaginian) had perhaps the highest one-day kill in history — before the invention of automatic weapons…”
If we’re to believe Wikipedia (bad idea), the body count for the Battle of Zama was 20,000. Our old friend Lucius Cornelius Sulla may have had the body count record for the ancient world with the Battle of Chaeronea which had the unbelievable number of 110,000. The Battle of Chaeronea can be thought of as the Greek world’s last attempt at throwing off the Roman yoke. Modern body count statistics are more believable. Napoleon’s political power was broken in the Battle of Leipzig were between 80,000 to 110,000 total were killed or wounded. The Battle of the Somme during WW-I had about 300,000 total killed or wounded. The Battle of Stalingrad during WW-II had about 1.7 million total killed or wounded. There appears to be a significant increasing trend in total body counts for climatic battles.
Kinuachdrach @ 17 also said:
“Bottom line is that nuclear bombs don’t kill people; people kill people. Nuclear bombs are just another weapon, that’s all.”
The body count statistics concerning nuclear weapons are interesting. The Little Boy atomic bomb had a yield of only 15 kt and killed about 100,000 people. A modern W87 thermonuclear weapon has a yield of about 300 kt. If we assume that body count scales with yield then a W87 should kill about 2 million people. The statistics at the Pantex Plant indicates they have about 14,000 plutonium pits currently in storage. If one assumes that one plutonium pit can produce one W87 warhead then there is a potential body count of 28 billion (4 times the world’s total population) at the Pantex Plant.
Important point: This nuclear weapons capability currently existing and in place at the Pantex Plant has the capacity of destroying the entire human race multiple times.
Repeat after me: “It was a miracle that we survived the Cold War”
I was re-reading and talking to an old timer about the fire bombing of Japan. Things that came up were they ran low on the napalm bombs because they used so many on Tokyo so Kobe got hit with a bunch of the older thermite bombs. The number of people killed boggles the mind. I also wonder about the other various plans to take down Japan without using nukes. US Army Ordnance pushed using up all the mustard gas they had stock piled. The Navy plan involved holding off the ground invasion of the islands, establishing bases on Mainland China, then doing constant naval and air raids. blocking the ports, destroying transportation infrastructure and waiting until starvation and disease depopulated the country. It was the no people no resistance plan. I wonder sometime what would have happened if the militant group had actually succeed in capturing the Emperor before he could surrender the country.
Okay, I downloaded the Kindle app for PC and bought both the Three Conjectures and Storming.
But that was on my computer at work, where I have a high speed connection. Anyone know if you can transfer Kindle books from one computer to another?
Toadold #21:
Yes the “best” alternative to nukes was not invasion but blockade, along with air raids, destruction of the Japanese fishing fleet, and bombing the railways, which had been almost untouched. Given the poor road system and limited rail lines in the mountainous areas of the country the result would likely have been starvation so extreme to cause the practical extermination of the Japanese race. Maybe we could have repopulated with Nesi and made them the 49th state.
And also, of course, the Soviets would have ended up owning the whole of Korea as well as the northernmost home islands.
22. RWE
On my computer (Windows 7) Kindle for PC downloads get stored into a folder …/My Documents/kindle content
Once you find out where they go to on your machine then technically you can copy them to memory card, USB stick, or email, upload to your ftp site etc etc. In other words, technically, you can move them around just like any other file to other machines or storage devices.
Eggplant (20),
I would assume the count scales with the square root of the yield. I base this conjecture on the curiously-name “square law”
— though of course local questions might totally swamp that, i.e. if a single blast sets the whole closely-packed wooden city on fire, it might hardly matter if that blast were Little Boy or Tsar Bomba.
RWE (22), your Kindle account allows for N multiple devices (where I forget the exactly quantity for N, but so far my purchases are showing up on my phone, my PC reader, and my just-created Cloud Reader account.)
You can open your entire Kindle library on multiple devices. Once you register you devices (say an Android phone and a Windows 7 laptop) you can check out your book from your shelf on the cloud, then it downloads the pub to your local device. It also checks to see you “last read position”. So if you get up to location 12345 in the Android phone, while squinting luxuriously in bed at your 2 inch screen, you can resume in 12346 when you get back to your laptop.
Re ““It has been asserted that the Battle of Zama (Roman vs Carthaginian) had perhaps the highest one-day kill in history — before the invention of automatic weapons…”
No, many ancient battles had higher casualty tolls. Perhaps most famously in this regard, c. 55,000 (some say as many as 70,000) Romans were slain in the double envelopment Hannibal executed at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Earlier, in 390 BC, a Celtic army killed about as many Romans in the Battle of Allia. In 58 BC a Roman army commanded by Julius Caesar killed as many as 90,000 Gauls in the siege of Alesia. Jumping forward in time, in AD 1221 a Khwarezmid army of about 50,000 was annihilated by the Mongols in the Battle of the Indus. Possibly 50,000 or more Hungarians and Serbs were killed by the Turks in the Battle of Mohi in 1241. Battles in the prolonged Mongol conquest of China produced enormous casualty tolls in what was probably the deadliest war in history (by some estimates, 180 million Chinese were done to death). Those are all just from memory. There are, I know, many, many more.
@9
To the financial aspects of digital publishing, an author gets a pittance from traditional publishers, that’s true. At $1.99 at kindle, wretchard gets 35% of the sales price, essentially double than from legacy. At $2.99 he gets 70%. (So do I, that’s how I know.) These numbers make it incredibly attractive to self/indie publish at Amazon.
As for the consumer, what traditional publisher prices any of their books that low? None. I’ve seen digital books priced higher than their hardcover counterparts. There have been ding-down attempts at Amazon when readers see a tradpub book in digital format they believe is priced too high.
That’s why traditional publishing, no matter how good the paper books “smell”, is drawing to its clumsy demise. They’re pricing themselves out of the market after stiffing authors for decades.
Well, I hope that some smart publisher will collect “Three Conjectures”, “Storming The Castle”, and a few others and put them out in a print edition.
David P. Goldman/Spengler put out a collection of his columns (“It’s Not The End Of The World …”) via a house called RVP publishers and that is offered at Amazon. It seem like a respectable option.
Kindle has its advantages, but I read Churchill’s “World Crisis” at various remote Combat Outposts in the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan and that had a certain charm and utility.
Toadold @ 21,
America’s total deaths from WW-II were 416,800. Comparatively speaking, we got off easy compared to Germany, the Soviet Union, Japan and most of Europe.
Germany’s capitulation was seen as only the half-way point during WW-II. The US probably would have had about 100,000 additional deaths had we invaded Japan. I suspect that RWE@22 was correct that we would have simply blockaded Japan and annihilated the population through starvation.
An additional consideration was the American economy. Supposedly near the end of WW-II, the United States government was almost bankrupt. That fact is often obscured by our amazing economic performance after the end of WW-II. However that economic performance was due to our being the only people left standing after WW-II with an intact manufacturing base and economy. Also, we had enormous surplus industrial capability left over after demilitarization along with legions of young men with extensive on-the-job do-or-die management training. How much of that capability would have been destroyed had we wasted it on reducing Japan into defeat? Perhaps the world would have never recovered from WW-II?
To my mind, there is little doubt that if we engage in WW-IV against Islamic fanatics using nukes there will be no economic recovery. The world will find itself in a new dark age that will last for many centuries. What particularly worries me about this possibility is our inability to make rational decisions. Again, it was a miracle that we survived the Cold War. The Soviets saw thousands of thermonuclear weapons pointed at them and correctly realized that victory through armed conflict was impossible. Assuming their own survival, their only option was to trick us into mass suicide by poisoning our minds with Gramscian agitprop. The Soviets spent billions of dollars over several decades pumping poison into our minds in the desperate hope that we would self-destruct. Fortunately, the Soviet Union imploded before we lost our collective mind. However here we are today, facing the Islamic fascists but we’re still punch drunk due to Gramscian agitprop. The MSM’s behavior after 9/11 and the election of Obama are clear evidence of people who have simply lost their minds. Is clear thinking even possible given the legacy of the Cold War?
Given Wretchard’s suggestion that “If one were to search the Western canon for a clue to thinking about the unthinkable, a good place to start would be Abraham’s dialog with the three angels by the oaks of Mamre who were on their way to recon what might be thought of as the first recorded nuclear strike in history.”
Morton’s question,”What is the real point of the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis??? The effectiveness of the morality of Abraham to sway God? Or the effectiveness of God’s vengeance and terror to instill fealty to his laws?” is thus, highly relevant.
Morton suggests two ways to think of the question but perhaps there is a third; like any virulent cancer, Sodom & Gomorrah must be cut out of the body…God’s nuclear strike being the equivalent of regional chemo therapy. Yes, hell to go through but necessary for the survival of the body (civilizational progress).
I’ve long thought this to be the only rationale that can resolve the conflict between the stern Old Testament God and the loving New testament God.
Consider the historical context God faces at the time of Abraham (and Moses); the world is largely ignorant of the Ten Commandments (as a simple guide for human behavior). The Greeks haven’t developed democracy, Rome’s republican form of government based upon laws, nor Christ’s example hasn’t happened yet, neither has the reformation and the enlightenment. All of western civilization has yet to develop, so how does God nurture and protect the progenitor (arguably) of all that must come if mankind is to emerge (to the extent we have) from the darkness?
Arguably, God does what he must if mankind is ever going to emerge from the horrors of Sodom & Gomorrah (child/virgin sacrifices, slavery, rampant sexual licentiousness, i.e. a life nasty brutish and short). And God must work with what he has, not what he might wish for; Adam and Eve’s taking on, prematurely, the knowledge of good & evil without the maturity to handle that ‘weapon’.
When Joshua leads the Israelites into Caanan, they face much the same situation; friendly interaction with the tribes already there shall surely result in cultural ‘contamination’ of the Israelites, those other cultures, if allowed to fully interact with the 12 tribes, being ‘cancerous’ to the nascent Israeli culture. Such contamination would have, arguably, neatly derailed the development of the Jewish culture, necessary to the emergence of the unique personage and most importantly, example and message that Jesus would bring to mankind.
It’s quite possible to be loving and tough minded at the same time, in fact, love without the acknowledgement of reality, always results in greater sorrow and pain.
So maybe the ‘old guy with the long beard up there’ has gotten a bad rap from those who see but the surface of his(its) actions.
20. Eggplant The body count statistics concerning nuclear weapons are interesting. The Little Boy atomic bomb had a yield of only 15 kt and killed about 100,000 people. A modern W87 thermonuclear weapon has a yield of about 300 kt. If we assume that body count scales with yield then a W87 should kill about 2 million people.
The diameter of the zone of destruction goes up with the cube root of the yield.
So the diameter of a W87′s footprint is only 2.7 times that of the Hiroshima bomb, with 7.4 times the area. So we must adjust your body count down to 740,000. Also, there’s not so many people in paper houses anymore, especially in Iran.
egg @ 29: To my mind, there is little doubt that if we engage in WW-IV against Islamic fanatics using nukes there will be no economic recovery.
Don’t agree. As long as Russia stayed out of it, they could hit us with three or four nukes, we would hit them with thirty or forty, and hopefully implement more rationally ruthless policies going forward. We might recover fully in ten years and do better over twenty. We really are that big and rich.
Assuming their own survival, their only option was to trick us into mass suicide by poisoning our minds with Gramscian agitprop. The Soviets spent billions of dollars over several decades pumping poison into our minds in the desperate hope that we would self-destruct. Fortunately, the Soviet Union imploded before we lost our collective mind. However here we are today, facing the Islamic fascists but we’re still punch drunk due to Gramscian agitprop. The MSM’s behavior after 9/11 and the election of Obama are clear evidence of people who have simply lost their minds.
Ha. Maybe they should have saved their efforts, since it’s exactly when they *stopped* that we (our “leaders” Pelosi, Obambus) came to believe that stuff.
Islamic propaganda, which consists mostly of brazen lies, whining, and insults, seems more effective with us. Maybe there’s a lesson there, for those studying the art.
Remember we had socialists in the US before the Russian Revolution, not to mention Woodrow Wilson.
–
sb @ 33: We could have blockaded and starve Japan into non-existence.
And they just would have sat still for that? Blockade is expensive and boring and slow, especially when the blockaded still have an entire nation-state. We’ve been blockading Cuba for fifty years now. Is blockade even an appropriate response to the original military attack? Note that Japan sometimes complains the whole thing started because we did blockade them.
#29 eggplant
We could have blockaded and starve Japan into non-existence. However, it was a far different America in 1945 than today. This war was not politically correct, and the average American wanted what they viewed as the sub-human Japanese dead or conquered as soon as possible. Selling a strategy of long term blockade when we had the largest fleet in the world, had driven them back to the Home Islands, AND we had defeated all of the Axis powers by closing with them by means of amphibious invasion would have been difficult. That was the tool that we had mastered and changing to an entirely different strategy at the moment of victory would not have been likely. All of our internal propaganda from Guadalcanal on justified the casualties we suffered by the necessity of closing in on Japan and finishing them off.
We did realize the cost, especially after Okinawa. Detail: we are still using up the stock of Purple Hearts minted in preparation for the invasion of Japan; 60+ years and 4 hot wars and a number of smaller conflicts later. Disclosure- I am grateful for the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. If they had not surrendered, my father would surely have been sent to be part of the conquest of Japan, along with the rest of 3rd Army. There was an additional risk to my father. A Chinese fighting in Europe is far less likely to be mistaken for a Japanese by our side than a Chinese fighting in Japan.
And there are other factors outside the scope here that could have made the delay catastrophic.
To my mind, there is little doubt that if we engage in WW-IV against Islamic fanatics using nukes there will be no economic recovery. The world will find itself in a new dark age that will last for many centuries.
YMMV, but once we decide that it has to be done, Islamic society [the Ummah] has unique vulnerabilities that gives opportunities to leverage their complete downfall with a smaller effort. My personal estimate is that it will take on the order of 68 carefully placed nuclear detonations, about half of which will take advantage of the EMP effect and not blast, thermal, or gamma radiation. We have the capability. We do not have the will, for we are a far different people than we were in 1945. Not all of the changes have been to our benefit.
Subotai Bahadur
MarcH (28), Amazon does have some kind of POD affiliate; not sure what the details are or if there are any other ramifications–i.e. will it accept the same files for producing a Kindle version and give good results? For sure if there’s some *separate* hand-tuning required to prep for print vs prep for Kindle, that would be a reason to think twice…
Subotai,
Not arguing for or against your suggestion at the moment, but in regard to this: “…carefully placed nuclear detonations…” let me just say that I hope we don’t even know how to do any other kind!
Thank you Kirk Parker, #34.
Wretchard #25:
Well, when I loaded the Kindle app on my PC at home and registered it that automatically downloaded the two phamplets of yours I had bought earlier today.
Eggplant #29:
I recall reading that juvinille deliquincy was on a rapid rise in the US at the end of WWII, a result of so many of the adults being away at war or at work building weapons. But then again, in mid-1945 the govt allowed the production of consumer goods to resume, including even light aircraft, and pilot and aircrew training was greatly reduced. With Germany and Italy gone and Japan’s days numbered we knew we had enough to win.
As for the number of people killed by nukes, Terisita makes a point. I guess it is not taught in regular college classes but in AFROTC we learned that rather than using a bigger nuke to take out a large target it is better to use a few smaller ones, such as three 4 MT weapons instead of one 50 MT bomb.
On the other hand, nuking Japan sure gave the Soviets something to think about. It showed that we were not just technically capable but ruthless when required.
Josh #323:
Sit still for it? The Japanese were doing everything they could but had got to the point that we had to come to them for them to do anything much to us. They had subs on the way to launch airplanes to bomb the Panama Canal when the surrender orders came but that was just a futile gesture, like the last sortie of the IJN Yamato. But what no one recalls was that the war was continuing in China, in Indochina and in various other places in the Pacific. Think of the great many people who would have died in those places had we been squeemish about dropping the nukes and done a blockade and expanded bombing campaign. In fact that was what Lemay planned. He said, without knowing about the nukes, that the war would be over in the fall of 1945 without any invasion. Aside from the B-29′s he had, he was bringing the B-17′s and B-24′s from Europe over to hit Japan from Okinawa and Iwo Jima. The heavy bomber force would have been at least doubled in size – there would be not one hut left standing in the entire country, no functional railroads, no usable roads, no unmined harbors.
Teresita @ 31 said:
“The diameter of the zone of destruction goes up with the cube root of the yield.
So the diameter of a W87′s footprint is only 2.7 times that of the Hiroshima bomb, with 7.4 times the area. So we must adjust your body count down to 740,000.”
Assuming that body count goes as the cube root of yield and Hiroshima had 100,000 deaths then the W87 produces a body count of 271442 (Teresita’s math is correct). However there are still 14,000 plutonium pits at Pantex so the total body count based upon this assumption is 3.8 billion (more than half the world’s total population). If I assume the square root of yield as Kirk P @ 24 suggests then the total body count is 6.26 billion (the world’s total population is currently 6,840,507,000).
The nuclear yield to body count relationship is actually more complicated. To maximize death from a single nuclear detonation, an air burst at optimal altitude is necessary. Ideally, one wants the blast wave to perfectly reflect from the ground for as large a surface radius from ground-zero as possible. Eventually due to surface roughness and soil properties, the blast wave reflection lifts up from the ground and rides on a “Mach stem” resulting in a significant reduction in blast wave overpressure and a larger survival rate. Note that this is for a single detonation. Standard practice during the Cold War was for multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) delivery systems. MIRVs were used precisely to overcome the geometric limitations pointed out by Teresita and Kirk P. During the Cold War, there were people whose job it was to evaluate specific target cities in the Soviet Union and determine optimal reentry vehicle (RV) air burst altitudes and locations. Years ago, I once had dinner with one of those people (the wife of a friend). The dinner time conversation was “different” to say the least. A conclusion that I came away with from that specific dinner was that Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) was not a bluff. People had turned MAD into a science and spent their careers optimizing the whole process.
A proposal:
If we are to avoid Wretchard’s Three Conjectures, instituting an effective deterrent strategy is necessary. MAD won’t work because religious apocalyptic fanatics welcome death. Which is not necessarily proof that no other deterrent exists.
In fact I believe one does exist, instituting it however will require a profound change in the American public’s attitude, unlikely of course without sufficient provocation. Which undoubtedly Islam will eventually provide.
Once a successful WMD/nuclear terrorist attack(s) upon American city(s) occurs, then the public in its thirst for revenge will be open to considering what response is appropriate. Retaliation against the nation or organization responsible will not permanently stop the attacks however and retaliation alone, will eventually lead to the Three Conjectures resolution.
Which, if an alternative does exist, nobody really wants. So retaliation itself is not enough, which is not to say we shouldn’t retaliate but that something more will be needed if we are to avoid the genocide of the Three Conjectures resolution.
I believe that in dealing with a nuclear Iran and a nuclear terrorist attack upon any American city, there is only one effective deterrent strategy because there is only one thing that radical Muslims cherish above their hate for Israel, Jews and Western civilization’s values.
In order to accept that deterrents effectiveness however, one must recognize and accept the actual reality of the conflict.
That strategy recognizes that the West is under assault from Islam itself, that ‘rogue’ nations and terrorist organizations are merely Islam’s agents in its war with the West. This is because the Qur’an, Islam’s holiest of holies, proclaims that armed struggle to establish Islam over the entire world is the absolute duty of every Muslim. Muslim’s believe the Qur’an to be written by Allah, not Mohammad (who merely took dictation from the Archangel Gabriel) so revision of that dictate is impossible without fatally undermining Islam’s theological tenets. Which means that Islam will continue to throw logistical resources at the West, if necessary for the next 1000 years, just as it has, off and on, for the last 1400 years.
This strategy recognizes that culturally, Muslims do not value their nation’s or even an individual’s survival, as Muslims have no individual value. Only family and tribal allegiance matter but short of genocide, no effective physical threat against Islam’s Ummah can be made and short of survival’s necessity, the genocide of one billion Muslims is beyond the pale. But there is an alternative and that alternative is revealed by realizing that there is only one thing that radical Islamists cherish more than the death of the West…and that is the survival of Islam itself.
Therefore, the only strategy that has even a prayer of deterring a nuclear terrorist attack upon the West, is to make Islam, the religion itself, responsible for any nuclear or WMD attack.
How do you attack a religion? Not the people, you merely make them martyrs, ala the early Christians. No, you compellingly hold hostage, the physical symbols of that religion. The physical symbols and places that hold that religion together and which are uniquely fundamental to Islam.
This strategy would consist of a new American doctrine, that would declare that any nuclear or WMD attack upon any US city or ally, by any nation or terrorist organization… will bring a nuclear response upon Islam’s holiest shrines; with the utter destruction of Mecca, Medina, the City of Qom and the complete demolition of the Dome of the Rock. That policy would also provide the proviso that any new Islamic shrines would be destroyed as well.
Many westerners fail to fully appreciate the inestimable value Muslims (and the Mullah’s and Imams most of all) place upon their holy places. Mecca, with its Kaaba, Islam’s holiest shrine, the foremost in value is so revered that it is the holy duty of every Muslim to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in their life. It is so important that it is the fifth of the seven pillars of Islam. Every Muslim in the world is theologically required to get down on their knees and pray toward Mecca five times, every day. These obligations are fundamentally integrated into the foundations of Islam and literally unchangeable.
I must stress that the goal of this doctrine is not the destruction of Islam’s symbols. The goal is to effectively deter Islam’s radical Mullahs and Imams who drive Islamic radicalism by holding those symbols hostage, effectively gelding the Imams and Mullahs until Islam itself is eventually made extinct by its inability to cope and compete with the 21st century.
“There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun [or] joy in whatever is serious.” Ayatollah Khomeini
It is my assertion that any religion that abhors laughter, fun and joy is eventually doomed, if made to confront those qualities honestly and fairly.
Radical Imams and Mullahs are the primary force driving Islamic radicalism. Once they are thoroughly convinced that Islam’s most cherished sites, which act as a talisman for their power… are mortally threatened, they will be profoundly reluctant to put them at risk by sanctioning a nuclear attack upon the West. In fact, they will actively oppose it.
“Those who oppose the mullahs oppose Islam itself; eliminate the mullahs and Islam shall disappear in fifty years. It is only the mullahs who can bring the people into the streets and make them die for Islam– begging to have their blood shed for Islam.” -Ayatollah Khomeini
Islam would now face a choice; a nuclear or WMD attack upon the West will result in all of Islam’s holiest shrines, ceasing to exist within moments of a nuclear terrorist attack.
It is a virtual certainty that elements within Islam will not believe America capable of following through with such a policy, so inevitably we will have to demonstrate our resolve.
When the new doctrine is announced, Islam should be warned that if sufficiently provoked, such as by non-nuclear mass attacks, an appropriate demonstration of resolve will be the conventional bombing of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. And that its survival, as well as all of Islam’s holiest shrines are hostage to their good behavior.
Islamist radicals will be certain that it’s bluster, so when their proxies attack, the immediate and total destruction of the Dome of the Rock would, with Israel’s cooperation, commence.
When Muslims around the world fly into a predictable rage, we should be ready with a response at the UN. We would look the world and Islam right in the eye and say, “OK, now you KNOW we’re serious. Would you like to go for Medina next or do you want to throw Mecca into the ‘pot’ too and go ‘all in’?
Ultimately, avoiding nuclear terrorist attacks upon Western cities is all we must do, for Islam, based upon 7th century tribal codes is doomed in its confrontation/interaction with modern western civilization.
It cannot survive and arguably, that perception, conscious or unconscious is what is driving current Islamic aggression against the West. We just need enough time and the avoidance of WMD attacks to win this conflict.
Geoffrey Britain @ 39,
I suspect most educated Moslems already assume that their various religious symbols will be vaporized before the end of the century. I also suspect that part of Islam’s psychological pathology is driven by the assumption that Mecca will be annihilated (they are seeking revenge for insults not yet inflicted).
I do not wish to imply insult to Judaism (a religion that I respect) by comparing it to Islam. However the holiest of the Jewish holies was the Temple of Solomon which was destroyed, then rebuilt, utterly destroyed again and then built over by successive antagonistic religions. Also, Christianity took major body blows after Alexandria, Damascus, Jerusalem, Carthage and Constantinople were conquered by Moslems. It seems that a religion can thrive if its physical aspects are attacked. I would argue that a better way to reform Islam would be to encourage the emergence of a Martin Luther. Arrange for some young brilliant charismatic scholar to reform Islam from within. That’s the best way to keep the body count under 2 billion.
[Comment #4 of 4, I'm done]
Although the effects were lagged, I think we’ve discovered to how great an extent the threat from terrorism has been ameloriated by the “War on Terror”, despite its mistakes. The world is not safe — it will never be safe — but the last 10 years have not been spent in vain.
There has been no nuclear terrorism since 2001. Some of the states which supported terrorism have either been knocked back or are fighting for their lives. Even Pakistan, which is as insolent as ever, may have been given pause.
This means that the Great Catastrophe may remain just that — a reminder of what will happen if we fail. So far we have not. This is encouraging. To quote the Terminator 2 ending — the road stretches dark and far ahead — but now we know there is a glimmer of hope that it will not lead to an endless night.
The danger is that we will extinguishes the root sources of hope through the operation of our fantasy. The safety of everyone — including the Islamic world — depends on the vigilance and precaution of what can collectively be called the leadership of the world.
If we fall back again into the Long Weekend of 1990s, the vacation from History, then the dangers may arise again Catastrophe near to us. I think the Message of the Three Conjectures, in terms of the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, is that these terrible dilemmas can be avoided if we never let the number of righteous in this world fall below a certain number. Once neglect lets a situation go too far, all courses run ill. The point is not to get to that dismal point at all, or else there is nothing for it, but to flee like Lot and his family from engulfing catastrophe.
gb @ 39: “There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun [or] joy in whatever is serious.” Ayatollah Khomeini.
Humorless, hypocritical twerps, all the Saudi princes who run off to London, Los Angeles, Monaco, Vegas, even Dubai, and live it up, then go home. OTOH Oriana Fallaci made Ayatollah Khomeini burst out laughing just by confronting him.
Blue
Meanies!
Eggplant @ 40,
Educated Muslims may expect it but I suspect that Mullahs and Imams, whose sole ‘education’ consists of the Qur’an, Haddiths and Sura’s, do not. Ahmadinejad’s 12th Imam apocalyptic is a minority view. Khamieni reportedly enjoys his luxuries and material men do not welcome martyrdom.
As for the parallels to Christianity and ancient Israel, had the Temple been held hostage, (my strategy) rather than impulsively destroyed in retaliation, the outcome perhaps might have been different. Nor does Christianity place anywhere near the same reverence upon religious artifacts, as Islam does.
Then again, if Islam’s psychological pathology is driven by a cultural need for martyrdom, then perhaps nothing can stem the path toward Wretchard’s Three Conjectures. In which case it’s not genocide but cultural/racial suicide.
My assessment of Islam leads me to the conclusion that Islam’s fundamental theological tenets make the emergence and acceptance of a Martin Luther impossible. Indeed, arguably the Bahai religion’s founder was just such a figure and Muslims utterly reject the Bahai, because they must, simply because reform of Islam requires rejection of Islam’s fundamental theological tenet; Allah through the person of the Archangel Gabriel dictated the Qur’an to Mohammad. Since the Qur’am is thus the DIRECT words of God it cannot be changed in even the slightest of ways or the revisionists are admitting that Allah didn’t get it right in the first place OR Mohammad (the final prophet) was lying or delusional.
Either proposition utterly destroys Islam’s theological foundation and the entire rationale for the religion collapses.
What drove Islam in the early centuries was conquest and loot. When the West’s military/industrial technology became good enough that the Islamic states could not continue raiding us for slaves and gold, Islam went into decline for centuries, only to recover when they found another source of unearned wealth: oil.
What currently keeps the Global Jihad going is Arab oil wealth. It’s petro-dollars that fund the radical schools and pay the salaries of the radical imans that keep the crowds stirred up. Take away that oil wealth, and Islam collapses after a couple of generations, as people decide they need to learn a trade more than they need to learn the Qur’an.
Josh @ 42,
Hypocrisy is always tacit admission that one holds higher allegiance to what one actually does, than to pious platitudes. Neither rich Saudi’s nor Mullah’s & Imams were on the planes that struck on 9/11. They sent cannon fodder and thus reveal the limits of their commitment.
I doubt if the Ayatollah Khomeini was laughing with Oriana Follaci but rather in derision at the temerity of any woman to dispute his views, which in his view were Allah’s views.
Michael @44,
Absolutely true and achieving energy independence is quite doable.
Build American nuclear power plants using French recycling technology. Place the reactor underground, addressing safety and security concerns. Crash develop upcoming (in the lab and in field testing as we speak) battery technologies which would allow for conversion of our personal transportation needs (72% of oil use) to electrical from oil based. Allow private industry to develop oil reserves while we transition from an oil based economy with severe economic penalties for environmental accidents. Let them drill, make them responsible and accountable for results.
My strategy above gives us time, your proposal eliminates their economic ability to make war.
This goes back to the Herman Khan terms, Counterforce and Countervalue as a basis for deterrence – and therefore as punishment.
One again, what is “value” to Islamic Fascists? One word: People. Individuals may not mean anything to them but people do. Take people away from them, away from their control, and that hurts. As Al Zarquie said before he got kerpowied, “This is suffocation!” They were being suffocated for lack of their life force: control of people.
Operation Iraqi Freedom was a Countervalue operation. Deprive the Islamic Fascists of people under their control. Which makes Obama’s approach there all that more stupid.
Our operation in Afghanistan was Counterforce. Eliminate the forces that attacked us. Which makes Obama’s approach there all that more stupid. In doing counter-insurgency in Afghanistan we are trying to convert the Islamic Fascist equivalent of the Gestapo to Democracy.
#39 Geoffrey Britain, #40 Eggplant,#43 Geoffrey Britain
In point of fact, in the estimate I noted; groundburst dirty bombs were targeted at the following locations:
The original estimate was made at a time the situation in Iraq was very much in doubt. And indeed, it is in doubt again. Allowance was made, in various scenarios, for certain sites in Iraq. Similarly for the Dome of the Rock and the Great Mosque of Cordoba depending on who held them. Rebuilding may be possible, as you could possibly work 24/7 given that the ground will be glowing. As will any workers.
Islam has not progressed to the point that Judaism had by the time of the destruction of the Temple. Like the temples of the gods of the Mesopotamian city states, like the temples in Tenochtitlan; the loss of the temple implies the impotence of the god. In the case of the Muslim holy places in Saudi Arabia, the theology is, I believe, that Allah himself has placed them under his protection and they cannot be harmed by the infidel.
Ooops.
#35 Kirk Parker
Touche, sir. A palpable hit. *smile*
Subotai Bahadur
gb @ 45: I doubt if the Ayatollah Khomeini was laughing with Oriana Follaci but rather in derision at the temerity of any woman to dispute his views, which in his view were Allah’s views.
Hey, he’d just got back to Iran from twenty years in Paris, he knew very well what his views were worth in the world. As you say, we shouldn’t expect that he really believed all that crap that he fed to others, and Fallaci called him on it. IIRC, she had just asked him why he made all women wear the burqa, and he answered that it was only the woman’s choice and he was fine with it any way. She responded by tearing off the scarf she was wearing, and her interpreter thought she would be horse-whipped or beaten on the spot. Instead, Khomeini burst out laughing and they finished the interview. Then he went back to his quarters and abused a young female goat, I assume, before watching a satellite broadcast of Knight Rider, this being before the Innerwebs.
Eggplant: Assuming their own survival, their only option was to trick us into mass suicide by poisoning our minds with Gramscian agitprop. The Soviets spent billions of dollars over several decades pumping poison into our minds in the desperate hope that we would self-destruct.
This is a subject I’m very interested in but don’t know much about the specifics. Can anyone recommend a good book that really details what the Soviets did?
PS – Got a Kindle Fire for Christmas. Just in time! Three Conjectures downloading now.
@Geoffrey Britain, the Arabs have been squawking for 100 years that the Joos are on the verge of destroying the al Aqsa mosque. They don’t care that it’s not true. It’s a big money-maker for them and it makes the Palestinian Arabs more important than they otherwise would be, as defenders of the faith against the evil Joos. Do you really want to make it true?
Threatening to destroy their symbols doesn’t make them afraid. It’s what they do. Their schtick is blood feuds. That go on forever. And ever. That’s what they do. Playing their game is not how we win. We win by sticking to our own script. We win by sticking to our own beliefs.
Making threats like this puts them in the driver’s seat. It’s like all the geniuses who say “if the Arabs fire a missile from Gaza we fire back ten missiles.” It doesn’t work that way. They fire missiles from schools and hospitals and people’s back yards. We win by firing one missile back that hit’s the car that the three SOBs who fired the missile from Gaza are riding in. They blow up some sand. We send three SOBs to hell. We don’t blow up mosques just to blow up mosques. That’s what they want us to do.
We don’t need to fight dirty. We need to fight smart.
Ayatollah Khomeini spent about six months in Paris. Most of his time in exile was in Najaf, in Iraq. He and Ayatollah Sistani spent the time debating each other about the proper political role of Islam.
The Shah bugged the hell out of Saddam Hussein to exile Khomeini as he was stirring up trouble in Iran from Iraq. When Hussein complied, Khomeini vowed revenge.
Khomeini goes to Paris for a few months, and just like Lenin being smuggled into Russia, he shows up in Iran. Foments a war with Iraq by day and night propaganda broadcasts calling for the downfall of Saddam Hussein.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Again a brilliant post and responses Wrechard and Team. I am downloading from Amazon to Kindle on my Andriod phone now. The Amazon Page says my orders are “Pending” for the last 20 mins for your 2 pamphlets . Any idea how long the downloads take? (I am in Syd Australia on 4g).
Thanks again w
4th and final post this thread
#51 Utopia Parkway
In the tactical or operational theater, your specific retaliation is on point. And when dealing with the Ummah, issuing threats is pointless. We have lost any credibility with our threats. It will take action to get their attention.
I envisage the strikes on the critical Islamic sites as a response to an existential strategic crisis. The use of nuclear weapons or nuclear materials, CBW, etc. on a western country would be just such an existential crisis. At that point we will be beyond tit for tat. The sole rational response would be to do whatever is necessary to eliminate any possibility of a repeat attack coming out of the Ummah. And actually, strikes on the critical sites under discussion would be more humanitarian than massive retaliation. Of course, after we lose a city, being more humanitarian may be viewed as more a bug than a feature.
Subotai Bahadur
Peterike @ 50
You quoted “The Soviets spent billions of dollars over several decades pumping poison into our minds in the desperate hope that we would self-destruct.” and added “This is a subject I’m very interested in but don’t know much about the specifics. Can anyone recommend a good book that really details what the Soviets did?”
You could try starting with JR Nyquist at http://www.financialsense.com/user/164, and then look back into his older articles, many of which are about specific Russian defectors and their descriptions of Russian long-term efforts to destabilize the U.S. by ruining its culture, economy, government, etc. Then go to YouTube and search for Russian defector Yuri Besmenov and his series of interviews in which he describes in specific detail how they ran such operations. Other such defectors will show up on the right-hand side of that YouTube page. Search for Sergei Tretyakov too. At Amazon, you could start with “Venona” and “The Venona Secrets.” But Besmenov is the best place to begin in my opinion.
Peterike @ 50:
P.S. Also try this blogsite concerning Besmenov, at http://uselessdissident.blogspot.com/2008/11/interview-with-yuri-bezmenov.html.
So there is no difference in the amount of death that can be delivered between great armies supplied with lots of materiel and that delivered by a nuke strike. The difference lies in perhaps the lack of logistical planning and headaches necessary between the two if one has the shortcut of a plane or a missile to deploy said nuke strike. That’s the problem eliminated by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuke strikes: we need not have staged a landing assault and the killing and death the mainland japanese would have meted on us for our trouble. We were trying to end the war, and destroy imperial Japan and bushido. It was a proposition with only one option- We Win, they lose. The question was as to how they lose, or by what means. It is worth repeating that Japan did not surrender after Hiroshima. Eight days passed and… nothing, from the Japanese. Then Nagasaki. Imperial japan cared not about Nagasaki, all things japanese pledged to include death and destruction for the emperor. But, when contemplating losing everything to destruction, they started to see things our way and then surrendered. Their own imaginations prodded them to surrender. That was their choice. They made a good choice.
No one can pull off trying to sneak a nuke into the U.S. So how can they deploy one? Deterence still works.
I also recall when you first published the 3C’s. I was in Israel at the time.
I later cited the original post in a law review paper (which was never published). The gist of my paper was that all of the arguments that US forces fighting terrorists are bound by the Geneva Conventions and humanitarian law generally can only be relevant when we enjoy a tremendous power advantage against our enemies. If push came to shove, the gloves would come off.
Re 14. Josh
“I’m not exactly a biblical scholar, but I’ve never understood this as being a mathematical proposition…”
I am a biblical scholar. Part of it is indeed mathematical: ten is the minimal number that constitutes a community (10 is the number needed for communal prayers). Less than 10 righteous individuals make be worthy of being rescued from the destruction (as Lot was). However, less than 10 cannot be expected to influence their society to improve. If the society will not improve it will continue to degenerate and must be pruned like a rotten branch.
All of the numbers Abraham mentioned are consistent with this approach: 50 was 10 for each of the 5 cities. 45 brings 9 each and add the Creator to complete the quorum. Then Abraham requested to spare some of the cities, down to 10 righteous to spare one city. Less than 10 would not work – after all, Noah and his family, totaling 8 people (plus one for the Creator for 9) did not suffice to prevent the Flood.
The obvious comparison is this: do the jihad-sponsoring societies contain moderate internal factions that are significant enough to influence their communities to turn around? If they do, can we find and strengthen these elements? Can these moderates actually succeed in countering the influence of the radicals? If not…
“No one can pull off trying to sneak a nuke into the U.S. So how can they deploy one? Deterence still works.” 57. Gaffe Prices
I pray you are right but greatly fear you are sadly mistaken.
See: Planning a Sea-borne Terrorist Attack
Four of the five largest US cities have port facilities.
Subotai Bahadur @ 48,
I had missed your prior mentioning of these targets, thank you for completing the list. I also concur with your response to ‘Utopia Parkway’s’ objection. Such a doctrine would only be used in response to a WMD attack upon an American city. It’s purpose is deterrence and I too perceive Islam as particularly susceptible to holding its physical symbols hostage to a credible threat. I believe that the key to winning this conflict is to deter use of nukes and avoid the Three Conjectures scenario, which buys us the time to transition away (10-20yrs) from an oil based economy. When oil no longer commands the importance it currently does, Islamic terrorism’s economic funding is cut off. Then the whole region, with the exception of Israel, can go pound sand.
Jay @ 58,
“Can these moderates actually succeed in countering the influence of the radicals?”
No, they cannot because Islam’s most fundamental tenets forbid reform. Reform by definition, being necessary for moderates to gain lasting ascendancy.
Again, Mohammad claimed that he didn’t write the Qur’an, that he merely took dictation from the Archangel Gabriel. If that claim is accepted as factually true, (necessary to accept the first pillar of Islam;”there is no god except ALLAH and Muhammad is the Messenger of ALLAH”) then no mere man may revise the DIRECT words of Allah. So to revise the Qur’an requires either rejecting Mohammad’s claim,(which makes him either a liar or delusional) OR proclaiming that Allah got it wrong. Either proposition completely destroys Islam’s theological foundation.
Within the context of Islamic belief it is the ‘radicals’ who hold to the firm theological ground and the ‘moderates’ who base their actions of moderation upon the quicksand of implicitly denying their own religion’s most fundamental tenets. To openly do so of course would make them heretics, which is why moderates are silent.
There’s simply no theological basis for the moderates wielding the influence necessary to reform Islam, which is why Islam has never experienced reform. It’s easy to mistake periods of historical quiescence for moderate ascendancy.
eggplant 29: “Here we are today, facing the Islamic fascists but we’re still punch drunk due to Gramscian agitprop. The MSM’s behavior after 9/11 and the election of Obama are clear evidence of people who have simply lost their minds. Is clear thinking even possible given the legacy of the Cold War?”
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously [the lie and the truth], and accepting both of them [Insanity]… with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth… Those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is; in general the greater the understanding the greater the delusion; the more intelligent the less sane… If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality… If human equality is to be forever averted; if the “high,” as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently; then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.” George Orwell – 1984
“Crimestop…includes the power of not grasping analogies; of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc [Socialist Principles of Oceania], and of being bored or rebelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop in short means protective stupidity… The world view of the Party imposed its self most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm because it left no residue behind; just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird… In the long run a hierarchical society was only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.” George Orwell – 1984
Totalitarian government can only exist through the clever or blatant use of lies – which can be accepted by millions of people through the controlled insanity of Orwellian Doublethink or the controlled sanity of Crimestop Stupidity. Orwell’s 1984 character, Julia, an enemy of Big Brother’s Totalitarian government, “did not feel the abyss opening beneath her feet at the thought of lies becoming truth;” where “the heresy of heresies was common sense.” One way free people can remain free is to think – to recognize and accept self-evident truth – to reject the labyrinthine world of Orwellian Doublethink – to reject the depraved world of Orwellian Crimestop – to exercise the sanity of common sense. Common sense means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously (the truth and the lie), and accepting only the truth… with the truth always one leap ahead of the lie.
Hope you make a lot of money, Wrechard! I’d also like to see more of your reportage on jihadist activity in the Philippines.
Does the old saw about, “if it saves even one person it’s worth the cost” have some validity then?
No, it doesn’t. Not a reflection on you, but my opinion of that stupid old saw: It is usually used in conjunction with selling some program or project costing millions. If only one person is saved, then some people need to go to jail, for they have committed massive fraud.
Genesis was about God at his most destructive and wrathful. The Great Flood was even more devastating and all-encompassing than Sodom and Gomorrha.
I just downloaded the Three Conjectures onto my iPhone 4S using Kindle. Worked like a charm. Thanks, Wrechard! I will also download your book.
The problem for us in dealing with Islamic nut jobs is our own problem of morality. Through centuries of struggle and experimentation, western civilization has tried to get off the endless war wagon, and use more humane methods such as laws, the courts, etc. to do battle and to settle disputes without killing.
When we confront groups with ideologies that have no qualms about using mass killing and maiming, we first try to *ahem* reason with them, which is a sign of weakness to them. Once they up the ante, then we resort to the appropriate force. Despite all of the brouhaha about Americans using nukes, we have showed tremendous restraint, and actually have found our nuclear weapons to be a burden. This, I believe, is a sign of a society with tremendous self restraint. However, when pushed too far (and that is the quantity that needs to be defined)the gloves come off and all appropriate means to stop the threat and eliminate its source are implemented.
The story of Abraham and God is a good one, because it brings the gloves-off and collateral damage issues to light. The bottom line is that we were given free will, and with it tremendous responsibilities for its application.
Downloaded and read both your pamplets last night – The downloaded superfast over my home wi-fi. These are both excellent works and I for one would by more at the 2 – 5 dollar price point. I think you could do monthly or quarterly summaries of the best of your work here and make a fair bit of dough.
The Pamplet format is great – very thought provoking while easy to get thru while the wife and kids are watching the idiot box.
Thanks again
Storming the Castle and the 3 conjectures downloaded instantly to my Andriod smartphone over my home wifi.
I had never used kindle before so thanks very much for introducing it to me.
I hope you make a lot of money and I for one would gladly buy quarterly or monthly updates / summaries of the “best of Belmont Club” this way at the 2 – 5 dollar price point (I think $1.99 was to cheap – it was an excellent Pamplet)
After reading the comments about the advantages of Kindle – even for those who prefer real books – I’m about ready to break down and get one. And if Richard does decide to do a periodic best-of compilation, well then, I must have one.
Any plans to release it for the Nook?
“There appears to be a significant increasing trend in total body counts for _climatic_ battles.”
Are referring to the _Cold_ War?
Oog, preview is my friend.
Richard, the US no longer has the nuclear capability you assume. We’ve dismantled all our old megaton-range nukes, and we just don’t have the numbers of ready-to-use kiloton-range nukes to achieve even a fraction of the immediate effects you assume. This applies to short-term radioactive fallout too.
Genocidal use of America’s available nuclear stockpile to achieve the effects you want would take the form of shattering the governmental, electric power generation and food import infrastructure of the targeted countries so the traditional killers of starvation, disease and chaotic violence would kill off most of the population. That would take at least six months, and a lot of the survivors would move to anyplace not targeted.
India doesn’t have the capability of stopping scores of millions of refugees from Pakistan. Turkey couldn’t stop a hundred million plus Arabs from fleeing to Turkey. Etc.
Re. Abraham negotiating with God: the bargaining does not mention or factor in the children who would die in the destruction of the cities. This is not a bug: the text has God debating with Himself whether to let Abraham in on the secret, and decides He will because Abraham will command his children and family after him. The problem the cities of the Plain had was that THEY would command THEIR children after THEMSELVES as well, so the problem was not going to go away.
A couple of side notes found elsewhere in the Biblical text: The five cities targeted for destruction had been invaded years earlier, lost the war, and were being carried away captive. This is God’s preferred way of dealing with human wickedness, and was the method He used when Israel and Judah forsook Him and worshipped other Idols. One problem: Abraham did not get the memo, so when the victorious army took Abraham’s nephew, Lot, captive, Abraham mounted a rescue with some minor towns as allies, destroyed the victors, and brought everyone back safely, including the people of the Cities of the Plains, many of whom probably lived long enough afterwards to die in the fire fall. (The modern custom of tithing actually comes from Abraham giving Melchizidek ten percent of the spoils of war from this incident.)
With that battle, God did not have any gentile armies he could call upon to execute his will: Pharaoh had had a run-in with Abram and had lost face, so the only other real player able to take out the five cities of the plain wasn’t about to set foot in the same region as Abram. It was either do nothing or intervene. One may whine about God taking matters into His own hands, but if a government refuses to protect its citizens, it should not complain if they take matters into their own hands.
Although there were five cities targeted, only four were destroyed: Lot interceded for the fifth one, Zoar, based on his argument that it was so small, that it’s wickedness would not be as dangerous as those of the four larger ones. That request was granted. The last reference to Zoar that I can locate has it surviving into Roman times.
Despite the promise, Lot suffered from deep paranoia that God would return and finish the job by destroying Zoar, so he literally headed for the hills with his two daughters. Since this is a family blog, I won’t go into detail as to what happened next…