Cedarford still does not get it:

Pakistan and Iran are not Russia or China. Tribes use attacks on outsiders to gain power against rivals. It’s akin to having Plains Indians with nukes. Same mentality, and decentralized power structure make traditional state-to-state deterrence irrelevant.

Deterrence CAN work, but not State-to-State — it must be People to People. Since the ones who will decide if NYC lives or dies, will be would be tribal leaders, or out of power tribal leaders, in Pakistan or factional leaders in Iran. Khomeni backed the hostage-taking even though Saddam threatened and eventually did attack. Because it got him his rivals executed and he did not fear US response.

Americans care about NYC because losing 6-7 million people, the economic/cultural center of America, will cause a huge economic catastrophe impoverishing Americans for generations, and GUARANTEEING follow-on attacks on Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Los Angeles, etc. NYC and DC are both important symbols ala the WTC, and huge wealth generators.

The minority-wealthy white yuppie coalition in NYC proper, votes against anything to stop this because they underestimate the danger and feel only the “blue collar” people will be killed. The “bridge and tunnel” crowd has voted for guys like Rudy consistently.

Cedarford looks at the current economic meltdown and thinks — “wow, this will be the only issue for generations” akin to Bush in early 2001 thinking that terrorism was a “declining threat” according to Larry Johnson.

Cedarford basically hopes that if we ignore Pakistani nukes and Iranian nukes + tribal instability they will simply go away. Not a good strategy.