“We may not live in fear of nuclear annihilation, but as long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.” Wait. Did those words come out of the mouth of the President of the United States? Surely the President who doesn’t take a you-know-what without the nuclear launch codes nearby is down with the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD). You annihilate me, I annihilate you; let’s forget the whole thing and get some lunch. MAD’s the only thing that’s been standing between us and World War III for 68 years. President Obama doesn’t really believe in de-nuking the world, does he? Then again, it makes perfect sense when you factor in his stance on gun control. Safety. Reform. Whatever. Think of it this way . . .
“We may not live in fear of a spree killer, but as long as assault weapons exist, we are not truly safe.” Or “We may not live in fear of armed criminals, but as long as illegal guns exist, we are not truly safe.”
Fixed it for ya—in the sense that you fix a dog that you want to breed.
None of this disarmament stuff is logical or rational. It’s impractical. Inadvisable. As the son of a Holocaust survivor it’s almost inconceivable. (But not quite.) Clearly, the President and the rest of the gun grabbers can make make that Evil Knieval-like leap of logic. Otherwise, why would they say it?
Of course, we all know that President Obama and the rest of the civilian disarmament industry don’t really want to eliminate guns. They want the cops and soldiers to have firearms. That way they can eliminate gun violence and create a police state—that they would call something else. Like . . . the United States of America. Or something.
Anyway, now I’m not so sure. The Prez’s no-nukes nonsense has got me thinking that the proto-fascist utopianism that motivates gun grabbers is worse than I imagined. They really do believe that we should work towards a world without guns (and nukes). It’s not just propaganda. It’s get-the-strait-jacket-level self-delusion.
Dangerous self-delusion. Whether on a national or person scale, unilateral disarmament means only one thing: surrender. You don’t have to disarm me to defeat me. I’ll do it for you. Like I said, nuts.
Nuts to that. You disarm. Never again isn’t just half of a James Bond movie title in my house. The President assertion that it’s in America’s interest to reduce our nuclear arsenal—slowly moving towards the point where his pal Putin might fancy his chances on the whole waging war thing—is as scary as his insistence that average Americans don’t need “weapons of war.”
Hell YES we do.
Just as much as our freedom-loving country needs nuclear subs, bombers and missile silos. Can you say deterrence? Do these people even know what the word means? Alternatively, the President does know what it means. He doesn’t want to de-nuke America. Nor does he want to disarm Americans. He was just politicking; sayin’ that stuff to appeal to his base.
President Obama knows that evil people are out there. That America is—Americans are—the guardians of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That we need to be strong, and be seen to be strong, both as a country and as individuals. He understands the importance of nukes and firearms.
It’s not like Barack Obama’s been brainwashed to hate America or Americans or anything. Oh wait . . .
Jeeze…it’s just “common sense”. /sarcasm off
I’m very pro-gun, but I’d like to see worldwide nuclear disarmament, which will be a step-by-step process that may take a hundred years or never happen at all. But it’s worth a try. A gun can be directed, a nuke kills everyone regardless of innocence within a mile or few. “Never again” is pretty ironic considering who’s used nukes in anger. Not to judge the right or wrongness of that decision but I’m just sayin’!
I’d love to see the nukes go away too. But that genie’s out of the bottle. If we all disassemble our nukes, and everyone else who has ’em disassembles them, how long until some unhinged tin-pot dictator goes ahead and builds one? And uses it? Or what if one or two countries only SAY they disarmed when they really just showed a shoddy bomb casing filled with used pinball machine parts? They wait for everyone else to comply, then go on worldwide TV and say “HA HA, we still got nukes, do what we say or kiss your major cities goodbye!”
shiny bomb casing…
A lofty goal, but it would be just as “easy” to eliminate ARs and AKs from this world. Ain’t gonna happen.
If there is genuine will to disarm nukes, there is a way to do it. Such fatalism is self-defeating and unbecoming.
You meant, “faced with our present and likely future “leadership…..”
China would become our God.
+1 Agreed, and if the US government didn’t act like the worlds bull in a china shop, then maybe we wouldn’t have to worry about people wanting to nuke us. Robert should read, “war, peace, and the state” by Murray Rothbard. He gives a pretty interesting perspective on nukes, and other similar weapons.
Evan, the world is a nasty place, whether the US is in it or not. Don’t be an America hating apologist. That’s the libtard (democrat) way (victimhood).
Just like firearms, the genie is out of the bottle, and there is simply no way to put it back in. In fact, I would argue that our species will not have evolved until every single human being has the ability to destroy all of humanity at the tip of his or her fingers, but consciously chooses not to do so. Don’t worry, I won’t be holding my breath.
Like “Stranger in a Strange Land”
Great book; very thought provoking.
Heinlein was the man.
Jubal is my hero.
Please, the use of nukes was probably the nicest thing we did to Japan in that war. Do you forget that standard strategic doctrine at the time called for fire bombing of major urban targets? Dresden? Tokyo? Please son, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fireworks by comparison. Learn some history. Using nukes in anger was better than all other probable alternatives.
Heinlein? “The man”? (Wipes puke from mouth)
Heinlein was a militarist prick.
Hundreds of thousands of US soldiers would have died….and untold millions of Japanese. By the way, they did NOT surrender after the first blast….or second (three days later when the USSR declared war and attacked, the same day). In fact, ten days later they deadlocked on a vote to surrender, which ended when their supreme leader broke the tie. We only had the two bombs and would not have a third for several months following the war (they cost billions each in todays dollars). So, the question of whether or not we should have dropped the bomb is a worthless and stupid one, asked by ignorant morons and libtards (democrats).
If Nukes go away, China will one day destroy us.
That’s just paranoia talking. What would their profit motive be? What could they expect to accomplish by destroying or at least seriously pissing off their biggest cash market?
Nobody can see the future. I see a population that is five times the size of ours and has a lot of single dudes compared to the ladies (evil commie one child policy and whatnot). Its good to be strong. Nukes will only be replaced with something more nasty.
Learn to love the bomb…..and despise pie in the sky libtards (democrats) who will get us all killed.
Commie China and thuggish Russia freak me the F out, and they should you, as well. The Genie is uncorked, live with it.
You don’t trust statiss named Vlad, Xi, Mohamad ____, Barak to look out for the best interests of the US. Hater.
They never really want to de-nuke the world.
Just like they never really believe China will shift on human rights violations.
POTUS’s have these things they have to say and these speeches they have to make. They rarely if ever believe the words coming out of their mouths.
The Chinese will recognize human rights…
When the will of citizens is sufficient to FORCE them to.
Stop buying Chinese-made goods until they have no choice but to do so.
I started buying ammo in earnest in late 2007 when I found that our nation was dumb enough to elect this president the first time. Even if you don’t care about 17 trillion plus in debt, failure to balance the federal budget, blocking the keystone pipeline, NSA spying, Chicago politics, Obamacare, drones over US soil, a crooked AG, Benghazi, IRS scandals, etc. – this would still be a statist president due to his stance on gun control. I put nuclear disarmament amongst a vast sea of Obama’s stupid ideas.
These are dangerous times to be right when the government is wrong. I had a dream last night that the NSA shut down TTAG and similar sites because they deemed them as hate speech. An executive order was created that would punish anyone who “promotes the 2nd Amendement.” It was only a dream, but it wasn’t pleasant.
We live in interesting times. The dollar will be the last to fall because it is pegged to oil. That won’t happen until massive flight from some of the other major currencies like the Euro. When those currencies fall, there will be a major rush to the safety of the dollar. This will probably catch people by surprise because the fundamentals in the U.S. still won’t be strong. However, those seeking refuge in the dollar will figure out pretty quickly that it’s just as bad as what they fled, and that’s when the nightmare will begin.
I don’t think they will be able to pull moves off like the one in your dream until food becomes scarce. When we start getting problems in the supply chain of food, that’s when the mask will truly come off. Once folks become dependent on the leviathan for their sustenance, that’s when it will come for its pound of flesh. Until then, godspeed my brothers.
I cannot seem to get out of my mind lately the re-settlement and disarmament of Native Americans. You must live here and only here. But we cannot hunt or trap here, how will we eat? We will feed and clothe you and educate you. You must give us your weapons. But how will we hunt? We will feed you. You must obey. But we are a nation of men, or warriors – how will our young men become adults without providing for their families and people? You have no choice. You are now civilized. And as long as you stay here and do what we say, we will feed you and clothe you and educate you. You will no longer do the old things or live the old way. But we are men. Not any longer. (Yeah, I know it is a generalization…)
That, and scattered visions of the Borg and assimilation. I sort of bounce between both extremes.
The story of the native Americans bears repeating.
There’s more. Once you bend to unreasonable demands, by unreasonable people, it never ends. A current example is our savings accounts are now considered unsecured loans to the banks. Back to the American Indians there’s an excellent perspective of the repeated treaty violations once they were forced onto the reservations. An example of what to expect:
http://www.amazon.com/Selling-Your-Fathers-Bones-Americas/dp/B003A02QBI
We had a war with savage, stone age populations.
We won (and so did they, because life sucked in the stone age….it was not like they portrayed in ‘Little Big Man’ and ‘Dances With Hippies…er…Wolves).
War, slavery, murder, were rife long before the Europeans landed on the continent.
One day, man will travel to other star systems, a feat that would never have taken place without the Western world (Europe).
” The dollar will be the last to fall because it is pegged to oil.”
This statement is subject to revision; all that needs to be done is for the oil-selling nations to change the currency they will accept in payment for oil (the “bourse”).
Some of them are already proposing doing so. Once that happens, your theory goes in the circular file.
Accurateone, what you had wasn’t a bad dream,it well qualifies as a night terror with portions being portents of what might come to be.Lock and load.Be safe.
I doubt that was a symbolic sort of dream.
“… as long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.” said the leader of the only government in the world that has ever nuked another country.
“… as long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.” said the leader of the government with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world.
“… as long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.” said the leader of the government that routinely violates both the spirit and letter of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Yeah… it’s the rest of the world that is a threat to our safety.
Ignore the point in your list that has no obvious evidence to support it, put the rest together, and the idea becomes clear.
This president is ashamed that we attacked another country using nuclear weapons, reason be damned.
This president would eliminate our arsenal.
This president wants the rest of the world to be a threat to our safety.
I know of no evidence that the US “routinely violates both the spirit and letter of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”
Imposing sanctions on other nations that are developing peaceful nuclear power technologies is a violation of the treaty.
Yes, because we should take the word of Iran and North Korea that they are not going to use that technology to build nukes. Oh wait… One of them already did.
Thank you, Henry.
If only they were peaceful nations. Islamism (not to be confused with Islam) is a death cult that people refuse to face.
I’m a Constitutional/ Libertarian, I don’t support our attempts at regime change to bring “freedom” to the world that has no idea of what that means; I mean, come on, the Koran commands every good Muslim to kill any other Muslim that converts to another religion. They have a long way to go before they understand what freedom of religion really means, as only one example.
In the mean time; the greatest danger to us is not some Muslim terrorist in another country that might get pissed that we are meddling and killing their fellow citizens; the greatest danger is the police state being built in our own country to combat the foe that we helped to create and people like us being designated as terrorists, because we object to the governments attempt create a police state to keep us all safe.
What! objecting to being arrested with no Habeus Corpus, held without trial with no right to face my accusers, and held for the duration of a “war” that President Bush said could last for a hundred years or just have a missile dropped on my head, what’s to object to?
President Bush did say they were attacking us because they hate our freedoms; I wonder if we become just as tyrannical and police statist as those countries we are fighting, will the Muslims finally embrace us as fellow tyrants and leave us alone?
“I don’t support our attempts at regime change to bring “freedom” to the world that has no idea of what that means”
Forget that; the UNITED STATES regime doesn’t know what that means! Forget “they hate our freedoms”; the GOVERNMENT HATES OUR FREEDOMS.
Evel Knievel not Evil Kneival
As long as Barack Obama is President, we are not truly safe. Can’t we just scrape this moron off the bottom of America’s shoe and move on?
As long as all level of government (to include the military) employs more than about 5% of the population we are not truly safe.
Decades ago, America and the West’s value system began changing from primarily a masculine patriarchal society to an increasingly more feminine matriarchal society. Now all that mostly remains are the physical sex err gender of some talking heads in the so-called leadership roles. When once there was more focus on society valuing logic, practicality, and common-sense social values and behaviors things have changed to feelings, impracticality, and wishes now increasingly dominating society.
Aharon, I’m starting to worry about you. You’re starting to sound more and more like William.
Not everything in the America is a conspiracy. Not every problem in America is caused by feminism.
While not “all” problems stem from these, it is hard to deny that most are. Look at all the great empires in history. Towards their fall, the leadership became more fem in their lives and policies. Vanity, jealousy, and unchecked emotional responses led them to destruction.
Thanks for your insightful comment.
It went beyond the leadership to include the men of a society becoming soft and weak, and the women becoming morally corrupt and out of control. It got so bad in ancient Rome that they created a bachelor tax.
One way or another the Barbarians are in their various forms always at the Gates ready to destroy a civilization. The original noble founders are followed by the dedicated builders who are followed by what we can now call metro-sexual princes and princesses.
Right, because men are never vain or jealous.
Ralph,
Trying to shame or intimidate me to changing behavior or seeing things your way by comparing me to William? Not going to work. Never said all the problems are from feminism. Never said it’s all a conspiracy in America.
The secondary influences leading to America going downhill (which can sometimes overlap or work in alliance with feminism) are political-correctness, excess diversity, globalism, technology, mass consumerism, and the modernizing of the world’s economies.
Neither of us said everything is a conspiracy; YOU said it. It’s in black and white, right above.
Aharon has some good points. Our country is steadily replacing courage, honor, and wisdom with cowardice, tolerance, and ignorance. Emotion moves more people into action than reason. Rugged individualism is being replaced by government subservience. We have a whole lot less GySgt. Hartman and a whole lot more Oprah.
While there is the continuing saber-rattling with the Russians, overall we get along more than not.
The idea is not eliminate nukes – we both need ’em in order to effectively posture against one another, true, but more importantly it’s required that the Iranians or North Koreans know that Qum or Pyong Yang will disappear should they misbehave with sufficient a$$hattery.
This is mostly a business move; eliminate the older, more expensive to maintain stuff while keeping plenty on hand to deter any threat to which a nuclear response is viable.
Republicans have done this too.
Agreed. Robert’s rant is unsupportable. Reducing nuclear weapons is not the same as eliminating them; and Obama specifically said that we’d reduce ours if Russia reduced theirs. More to the point, at one time Russia (which actually has a larger but less efficient nuclear arsenal than the US) and the United States had enough nuclear firepower to eliminate all human life on the face of the planet three times over. Over the years, through administrations both Republican and Dem0ocratic, the nuclear stockpiles have been reduced by half. But the US still has over five thousand warheads and the facilities to build more; and that still leaves us with enough power to wipe out the world.
Looking at the issue another way, there are really only three countries that face any existential threat where nuclear weapons have a strategic utility: China Russia and the U.S. Nukes are a global war weapon, not a weapon that can be deployed in the typical border conflicts that plague the landscape. Ultimately they are nothing but a status symbol for all of the small countries that have by hook or by crook managed to acquire them.
they are nothing but a status symbol for all of the small countries
Hardly. They assure those small countries of a seat at the global table.
Would anyone give a sh1t about North Korean or Iranian saber-rattling if there was no nuclear concerns? North Korea and Iran would be about as frightening as Monty Python’s Black Knight.
I think you just demonstrated my point. The weapons are a status symbol intended to et the little fish a seat at the table with the “big boys.” Just another dick swinging contest. North Korea has, other than its own paranoia, no conceivable need for nuclear weapons, any more than Iran does. (Not to say that Iran wouldn’t drop a few on Israel if it had the chance.) Can either India or Pakistan have any use for nuclear weapons in the ongoing snit about Kashmir? What are they going to do, blow up the prize?
@mark … Then it’s not merely a symbol of status, is it? It makes it a power item, which creates leverage and actually elevates status.
A status symbol would be something that shows status but doesn’t significantly change status.
While you are linguistically correct – which does matter – I think we can all agree that’s what he meant, and pretty much said.
In any event, had they a nuke or two Iran could bloody our nose, but only at the cost of its own existence. Very few governments make that move.
Also, what with war being an energy policy and our demonstrated willingness to launch unprovoked wars, I wouldn’t blame any small country with abundant resources for wanting a nuke or two – to deploy on their own soil against an overwhelming enemy.
@Mark N, I understand your point, but I’m not sure that you recognize the difference between “status” and “status symbol.”
The Bomb isn’t a symbol of power, it’s actual power.
As for the Indians and Pakis, I have a feeling that their nukes are aimed at their respective capitals and other juicy targets.
Would one of them really blow the other back to the stone age? Yes, if they thought they could get away with acceptable losses. They hate each other that passionately.
The problem with your “rotate out older stock” theory is that it leaves behind a gift that keeps on giving…. for a LONG, LONG time.
“Obama in Berlin speech calls for reducing US nuclear stockpile by a third.”
I saw this story yesterday and wrote the following in discussion with some of my coworkers:
Another pacifist occupant of the White House trying to conduct foreign policy using principles of appeasement while exposing our national security to greater risk. Can’t we all just get along…?
Anyone see a pattern here; it’s simply another form of gun control on a grander scale with huge risk at stake…just sayin’.
You’d have a point if reducing our nuclear arsenal by a third represented any kind of risk to us at all. The fact is, 2/3rds of our current stockpile is more than enough to destroy every major city on Earth, and pollute the rest of the planet irretrievably. Nobody’s calling for the elimination of our arsenal, just getting rid of the excess stock and reducing the maintenance costs of holding some of these decades-old weapons in readiness.
Really, how many nuclear warheads does it take to make an effective deterrent? Seems like the handful of low-yield firecrackers that North Korea has is working pretty well to keep the rest of the world at bay, no matter how provocatively they act.
Additionally, if we can leverage our reduction to get the Russians and others to reduce their stockpiles as well, that actually increases our security, taking some nuclear material off the table that might otherwise fall into hands that aren’t particularly swayed by the threat of MAD.
Points well taken as to the excessive nuclear capability and inventory; of course you are presuming that a major successful decisive first strike can be answered by the Boomer fleet; take THAT, evil empire. I won’t address whether such an event would be ultimately survivable due to the great number of variables.
The similarity of rationalle between gun grabbing and nuke grabbing can’t be overlooked. By BHO’s logic, we all need only one or two functional firearms, or better still, none; the government can protect us.
Hah!
Well, he does want the government to be armed – and it’s the government that has the nukes.
Therefor, the basic soundness of our nuclear arsenal is likely assured.
At least he can pronounce “nuclear…”
Now if only he couldn’t pronounce “common sense.” Ugh! Yuck! Bleah!
“…the government can protect us.”
We’ve seen innumerable examples of how well THAT works. The government might arrive to clean up the mess and make an arrest…and not necessarily the right arrest.
“PACIFIST”??? ARE YOU DRUNK AGAIN?
First, it’s not the existence of nuclear arms that makes us unsafe, it’s the existence of the knowledge of splitting the atom that makes us unsafe. Now if BO can figure out how to make everyone forget that e=mc2 he might have a point. As it is he just thinks that if we can sit down with Putin and the ayatolahs and sing Kum-by-ya everyone would see the light and after a big group hug we’d all be safe. I think the technical term for that is idiocy.
Right. It’s not the sledgehammer that’s dangerous. It’s the steel, the wood and angular momentum that’s dangerous.
I think you miss the point. What I’m saying is that you can’t un-invent the sledgehammer. As long as people know how to make sledgehammers they will continue to exist because there will always be people who think they need one to advance their nefarious goals. Agreeing to get rid of your sledgehammers if everyone else does is a fools bargain and our president is a fool.
Robert, you are unbelievably stupid. I am frankly surprised that someone as dimwitted as yourself is even capable of functioning, but let me try and explain something to you, sweetcheeks: MAD’s utility (if it had any) was only during the worst part of the cold war. Don’t know if anyone’s given you the news, but that’s been over for 25 years.
Also:
” That America is—Americans are—the guardians of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
lol that you’ve been brainwashed to believe that. I am sure the billions who toil under the yoke of american imperialism would have a lot to say if they could express their right to bear arms against tyranny. Hopefully to you and your conservatrash family.
Hey, guys, it’s rsimpleton! Back from shock treatment, simp? Please wipe the drool from your keyboard.
I’ll take this one, Ralph.
MAD worked beautifully, however much (being a child o’ the sixties) I hate to admit it.
Irrespective of the costs in life, liberty, materiel, money and nuclear-induced disease from manufacture and testing, the whole shebang was worth it.
Why? Because thanks to MAD two mutually antagonistic megapowers didn’t go at it tooth and nail on the conventional battlefield, a rare thing in this or any age.
The damage to property, life, economies and the planet would’ve likely been far worse without nukes.
Add to this all the wonderful technology directly attributable to MAD – Project SAGE and its descendants, the moon, GPS, my iPad, the Internet, really good solar cells, radiomedicine and better aircraft to name but a few – and it’s been an incalculable boon.
Yeah, RF went a little too far – not unfrequent where Obama lin Biden is concerned – but your response is off the charts.
Edit: Off my charts, anyway.
You might be [SHIVERS and HORRORS!] smack dab in the middle of your own spectrum of “proper” behaviors, responses, reactions, “reality” and beliefs.
GFY, you tripe-slurping nincompoop.
Tripe-slurping – that’s a bit harsh.
I wish I’d said it.
“We may not live in fear of nuclear annihilation, but as long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe.”
To make comment to the presumptuous sentence;
I do not, not because it doesn’t bother me to look at the reality of this world & those supposedly leading it, because I have a higher hope than this world. I live by the means of a given promise that if I am to attain, I am commanded by the one whom it is made possible through, to not have fear. Not of living or being bold in such, but not in fear of Death itself.
Therefore you command no control over me, for I act, not out of fear, yet guided by Faith.
Robert, I really think you’ve missed the mark with this one.
He could set a precedent and lead by example by reducing the current arsenal of 20,000 H-bombs to, say, a hundred. How many times over do we need to kill every living thing on the planet?
From paragraph five, Obama’s vision is for the USA to become the USSA (United Socialist States of America).
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