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Banned
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Originally Posted by The_Jazz
Host, the fact that you're willing to sacrifice millions of lives in this scheme makes it a joke from the outset. Anyone in a position of power who proposed this sort of "fix" should be immediately fired or impeached (depending on the position) for it since such a thing absolutely abhorent.
If we're going to continue this, I want to know that you are moving into harms way. If you're willing to sacrifice MY life for the sake of the dollar, you should be willing to give up yours too. Oh, move your family along with you, too.
The fact that you actually seem to be taking this seriously makes me question your sanity. And before you start accusing me of being a liberal, please name a single nationally known leader who advocates this kind of position. I'd love to know who it is.
By the way, I do conceed that we're in a deep hole financially and that we may even be past the point of no return. But for you to be blase' about deaths of millions is offensive.
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Let's agree not to personalize this. I'm trying to respond with everything that you have asked for. This is not about me. I am examining a problem.....the crisis that our country is in. We seemed to be trapped now. What have we invested in that might help us to escape from the "trap"?
My personal believe is that a "first strike" should be an unthinkable solution. What I'm going to present shows that it has been thought about, and planned for. The head of DOD during my childhood, Robert McNamara. is quoted below, telling us that he is concerned at the direction and attitude related to the first strike pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons that the Bush administration is steering toward. McNamara says at the end of his 2005 article that it is time for the people of the US to stop avoiding discussion of this issue.
<b>McNamara highlights the belief that I believe is pervasive among the military and civilian leadership that it is immoral to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear capable adversary.</b> I find no issue of morality mentioned when it comes to launching a first strike against a nuclear capable adversary. I suspect that this is because, when another nation decides to aim such weapons or build delivery systems to send such weapons in our direction, they have committed to holding a gun to our heads, and from then on, all bets are off. The attitude seems to be that if we have an opportunity to "get the drop on them", it is appropriate to send a first strike at them to eliminate the nuclear threat that they have set up against us, no matter who they are.
My own question....does anyone think that France or Britain has nuclear missles targeted at any US assets, or plans to quickly implement such targeting or delivery of nuclear weapons on us? That seems an appropriate test, as to who it is or is not....immoral to pre-emptively strike first at.
cyrel, your wrote <b>"If we were to cross the threshhold and decide our mostly self-inflicted situation is justification to plan for and unleash first strikes then the winning side is not where I want to be."</b>
I am in this discussion because I think that it is going to get bad enough around here, economically speaking, before most think that it will, including the leadership of the US. Since it seems inevitable that they will initiate a first strike scenario......but only after the odds of succeeding are much degraded from where they are in the near future, I would rather see them embark early, and at the height of our strategic and what is left or our dollar purchasing strength, to issue a worldwide disarmament ultimatum, followed by, or simultaneously, after their most thorough consideration, a nuclear first strike sufficient to wipe out as much potential retaliation response capability as we are capable of.
Since our defense policy is not to rule out a first strike, I have to assume that they will do one, at some point, if the dollar implodes dramatically enough. I just want them to do it at the right time, and that would be preceded by informed discussion, like I want this to be, followed by telegraphing a broad grassroots consensus to our leaders:
Something like, either renounce your policy of pre-emptive first strike, or do it at the right and best fucking time !
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http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB56/
First Strike Options and the Berlin Crisis, September 1961
NEW DOCUMENTS FROM
THE KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 56
William Burr, Editor
September 25, 2001
Fred Kaplan first explored White House nuclear policy and the Berlin crisis in his path-breaking book on U.S. nuclear planning, The Wizards of Armageddon (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1983). In the course of his research he interviewed a number of Kennedy administration officials, including NSC staffer Carl Kaysen. Kaysen told him that, during the summer of 1961, when East-West tensions over Berlin threatened to turn dangerous, he had prepared a study on the possibility of a limited first strike against the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, that study was declassified (with excisions that are under appeal at the Defense Department). What motivated Kaysen was his concern that the U.S. nuclear war plan--the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)-- involved an unimaginably catastrophic attack involving thousands of nuclear weapons.(1) The SIOP included an option for preemption, a first strike in the event that Washington had strategic warning of an imminent Soviet attack, but that was not what Kaysen had in mind. In keeping with then-current interest in controlled nuclear response and presidential options, he wanted the president to have military alternatives that involved less loss of life in the Soviet Union and less danger to U.S. territory. Therefore, he proposed contingency planning for a limited nuclear first strike on the handful of Soviet ICBMs. Kaysen recognized that there were risks and uncertainties in such a plan, but he nevertheless believed that a limited approach would encourage the Soviets to avoid attacks on U.S. urban-industrial targets as well as "minimiz[e] the force of the irrational urge for revenge."
.....On 19 September, a few weeks after Smith prepared the summary of Kaysen's report, Taylor presented Kennedy with the same text.(3) Apparently Taylor discussed the summary of Kaysen's paper with the president because on the same day he presented JCS Chairman Lemnitzer with a series of questions that must have arisen in the course of discussion. However the questions were prepared, they clearly reflected the concerns of President Kennedy and Secretary of Defense McNamara, among others, about SIOP-62 (for FY 1962). For example, Kennedy wondered if it would be possible to fashion attacks that excluded urban areas or "governmental controls", China, or the East European satellite states. SIOP-62 entailed a massive attack on targets in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and North Korea. Thus, if China was not in the war, it would nevertheless be subject to attack. Undoubtedly influenced by Kaysen's report, Kennedy also asked questions about the feasibility of a limited first strike, the prospect of redundant destruction (overkill), and the danger of a false alarm, among others.....
.......Taylor transmitted Kennedy's questions for consideration by Commander-in-Chief Strategic Air Command (CINCSAC) Thomas Power who to meet with Kennedy, Lemnitzer, Taylor, and military aide General Chester Clifton. Only this brief record of the discussion is available and little of it directly bears on the president's questions. If there was any discussion of an "alternative first strike plan," it was not recorded. Part of the discussion centered on General Power's doubts about the latest intelligence estimates of Soviet strategic missile forces--that Moscow only had about 20 ICBM pads. Lemnitzer and Taylor disagreed with Power, who had the audacity to recommend the resumption of U-2 flights over the Soviet Union. In addition, Power believed that there was a risk of a Soviet surprise attack; if "general atomic war was inevitable" he recommended striking first once key Soviet nuclear targets were located. Kennedy did not comment on Power's advice but he was concerned enough to ask his military advisers to find out how long it took the Soviets to launch their missiles.(4),,,,,
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The following piece stinks with a tone of liberal bias, but my fact check satisfies me that it makes accurate key points that belong in an examination of first strike policy and the policy of preserving single super power status for the US and access to key raw materials.
Quote:
http://www.harpers.org/DickCheneysSongOfAmerica.html
Dick Cheney's Song of America
Drafting a plan for global dominance
Posted on Wednesday, October 26, 2005.
....In early 1992, as Powell and Cheney campaigned to win congressional support for their augmented Base Force plan, a new logic entered into their appeals. The United States, Powell told members of the House Armed Services Committee, required “sufficient power” to “deter any challenger from ever dreaming of challenging us on the world stage.” To emphasize the point, he cast the United States in the role of street thug. “I want to be the bully on the block,” he said, implanting in the mind of potential opponents that “there is no future in trying to challenge the armed forces of the United States.”
As Powell and Cheney were making this new argument in their congressional rounds, Wolfowitz was busy expanding the concept and working to have it incorporated into U.S. policy. During the early months of 1992, Wolfowitz supervised the preparation of an internal Pentagon policy statement used to guide military officials in the preparation of their forces, budgets, and strategies. The classified document, known as the Defense Planning Guidance, depicted a world dominated by the United States, which would maintain its superpower status through a combination of positive guidance and overwhelming military might. The image was one of a heavily armed City on a Hill.
The DPG stated that the “first objective” of U.S. defense strategy was “to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival.” Achieving this objective required that the United States “prevent any hostile power from dominating a region” of strategic significance. America's new mission would be to convince allies and enemies alike “that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests.”
Another new theme was the use of preemptive military force. The options, the DPG noted, ranged from taking preemptive military action to head off a nuclear, chemical, or biological attack to “punishing” or “threatening punishment of” aggressors “through a variety of means,” including strikes against weapons-manufacturing facilities.
The DPG also envisioned maintaining a substantial U.S. nuclear arsenal while discouraging the development of nuclear programs in other countries. It depicted a “U.S.-led system of collective security” that implicitly precluded the need for rearmament of any kind by countries such as Germany and Japan. And it called for the “early introduction” of a global missile-defense system that would presumably render all missile-launched weapons, including those of the United States, obsolete. (The United States would, of course, remain the world's dominant military power on the strength of its other weapons systems.)
The story, in short, was dominance by way of unilateral action and military superiority. While coalitions—such as the one formed during the Gulf War—held “considerable promise for promoting collective action,” the draft DPG stated, the United States should expect future alliances to be “ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted, and in many cases carrying only general agreement over the objectives to be accomplished.” It was essential to create “the sense that the world order is ultimately backed by the U.S.” and essential that America position itself “to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated” or in crisis situations requiring immediate action. “While the U.S. cannot become the world's ‘policeman,'” the document said, “we will retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing selectively those wrongs which threaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends.” Among the interests the draft indicated the United States would defend in this manner were “access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, [and] threats to U.S. citizens from terrorism.”
* * *
The DPG was leaked to the New York Times in March 1992. Critics on both the left and the right attacked it immediately. Then-presidential candidate Pat Buchanan portrayed it as giving a “blank check” to America's allies by suggesting the United States would “go to war to defend their interests.” Bill Clinton's deputy campaign manager, George Stephanopoulos, characterized it as an attempt by Pentagon officials to “find an excuse for big defense budgets instead of downsizing.” Delaware Senator Joseph Biden criticized the Plan's vision of a “Pax Americana, a global security system where threats to stability are suppressed or destroyed by U.S. military power.” Even those who found the document's stated goals commendable feared that its chauvinistic tone could alienate many allies. Cheney responded by attempting to distance himself from the Plan. The Pentagon's spokesman dismissed the leaked document as a “low-level draft” and claimed that Cheney had not seen it. Yet a fifteen-page section opened by proclaiming that it constituted “definitive guidance from the Secretary of Defense.”
Powell took a more forthright approach to dealing with the flap: he publicly embraced the DPG's core concept. In a TV interview, he said he believed it was “just fine” that the United States reign as the world's dominant military power. “I don't think we should apologize for that,” he said. Despite bad reviews in the foreign press, Powell insisted that America's European allies were “not afraid” of U.S. military might because it was “power that could be trusted” and “will not be misused.”
Mindful that the draft DPG's overt expression of U.S. dominance might not fly, Powell in the same interview also trotted out a new rationale for the original Base Force plan. He argued that in a post-Soviet world, filled with new dangers, the United States needed the ability to fight on more than one front at a time. “One of the most destabilizing things we could do,” he said, “is to cut our forces so much that if we're tied up in one area of the world . . . and we are not seen to have the ability to influence another area of the world, we might invite just the sort of crisis we're trying to deter.” This two-war strategy provided a possible answer to Nunn's “threat blank.” One unknown enemy wasn't enough to justify lavish defense budgets, but two unknown enemies might do the trick.
Within a few weeks the Pentagon had come up with a more comprehensive response to the DPG furor. A revised version was leaked to the press that was significantly less strident in tone, though only slightly less strident in fact. While calling for the United States to prevent “any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests,” the new draft stressed that America would act in concert with its allies—when possible. It also suggested the United Nations might take an expanded role in future political, economic, and security matters, a concept conspicuously absent from the original draft.
The controversy died down, and, with a presidential campaign under way, the Pentagon did nothing to stir it up again. Following Bush's defeat, however, the Plan reemerged. In January 1993, in his very last days in office, Cheney released a final version. The newly titled Defense Strategy for the 1990s retained the soft touch of the revised draft DPG as well as its darker themes. The goal remained to preclude “hostile competitors from challenging our critical interests” and preventing the rise of a new superpower. Although it expressed a “preference” for collective responses in meeting such challenges, it made clear that the United States would play the lead role in any alliance. Moreover, it noted that collective action would “not always be timely.” Therefore, the United States needed to retain the ability to “act independently, if necessary.” To do so would require that the United States maintain its massive military superiority. Others were not encouraged to follow suit. It was kinder, gentler dominance, but it was dominance all the same. And it was this thesis that Cheney and company nailed to the door on their way out.
* * *
The new administration tacitly rejected the heavy-handed, unilateral approach to U.S. primacy favored by Powell, Cheney, and Wolfowitz. Taking office in the relative calm of the early post-Cold War era, Clinton sought to maximize America's existing position of strength and promote its interests through economic diplomacy, multilateral institutions (dominated by the United States), greater international free trade, and the development of allied coalitions, including American-led collective military action. American policy, in short, shifted from global dominance to globalism.
Clinton also failed to prosecute military campaigns with sufficient vigor to satisfy the defense strategists of the previous administration. Wolfowitz found Clinton's Iraq policy especially infuriating. During the Gulf War, Wolfowitz harshly criticized the decision—endorsed by Powell and Cheney—to end the war once the U.N. mandate of driving Saddam's forces from Kuwait had been fulfilled, leaving the Iraqi dictator in office. He called on the Clinton Administration to finish the job by arming Iraqi opposition forces and sending U.S. ground troops to defend a base of operation for them in the southern region of the country. In a 1996 editorial, Wolfowitz raised the prospect of launching a preemptive attack against Iraq. “Should we sit idly by,” he wrote, “with our passive containment policy and our inept covert operations, and wait until a tyrant possessing large quantities of weapons of mass destruction and sophisticated delivery systems strikes out at us?” Wolfowitz suggested it was “necessary” to “go beyond the containment strategy.”
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Quote:
Apocalypse Soon
By Robert S. McNamara
Page 1 of 5
May/June 2005
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/c...id=2829&page=1
The United States and our NATO allies faced a strong Soviet and Warsaw Pact conventional threat. Many of the allies (and some in Washington as well) felt strongly that preserving the U.S. option of launching a first strike was necessary for the sake of keeping the Soviets at bay. What is shocking is that today, more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, the basic U.S. nuclear policy is unchanged. It has not adapted to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Plans and procedures have not been revised to make the United States or other countries less likely to push the button........
No Way To Win http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/c...id=2829&page=2
I have worked on issues relating to U.S. and NATO nuclear strategy and war plans for more than 40 years. During that time, I have never seen a piece of paper that outlined a plan for the United States or NATO to initiate the use of nuclear weapons with any benefit for the United States or NATO. I have made this statement in front of audiences, including NATO defense ministers and senior military leaders, many times. No one has ever refuted it. To launch weapons against a nuclear-equipped opponent would be suicidal. To do so against a nonnuclear enemy would be militarily unnecessary, morally repugnant, and politically indefensible.....
A Dangerous Obsession
On Nov. 13, 2001, President George W. Bush announced that he had told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the United States would reduce “operationally deployed nuclear warheads” from approximately 5,300 to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade. This scaling back would approach the 1,500 to 2,200 range that Putin had proposed for Russia. However, the Bush administration’s Nuclear Posture Review, mandated by the U.S. Congress and issued in January 2002, presents quite a different story. It assumes that strategic offensive nuclear weapons in much larger numbers than 1,700 to 2,200 will be part of U.S. military forces for the next several decades. Although the number of deployed warheads will be reduced to 3,800 in 2007 and to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012, the warheads and many of the launch vehicles taken off deployment will be maintained in a “responsive” reserve from which they could be moved back to the operationally deployed force. The Nuclear Posture Review received little attention from the media. But its emphasis on strategic offensive nuclear weapons deserves vigorous public scrutiny. Although any proposed reduction is welcome, it is doubtful that survivors—if there were any—of an exchange of 3,200 warheads (the U.S. and Russian numbers projected for 2012), with a destructive power approximately 65,000 times that of the Hiroshima bomb, could detect a difference between the effects of such an exchange and one that would result from the launch of the current U.S. and Russian forces totaling about 12,000 warheads.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/c...id=2829&page=3
In addition to projecting the deployment of large numbers of strategic nuclear weapons far into the future, the Bush administration is planning an extensive and expensive series of programs to sustain and modernize the existing nuclear force and to begin studies for new launch vehicles, as well as new warheads for all of the launch platforms. Some members of the administration have called for new nuclear weapons that could be used as bunker busters against underground shelters (such as the shelters Saddam Hussein used in Baghdad). New production facilities for fissile materials would need to be built to support the expanded force. The plans provide for integrating a national ballistic missile defense into the new triad of offensive weapons to enhance the nation’s ability to use its “power projection forces” by improving our ability to counterattack an enemy. The Bush administration also announced that it has no intention to ask congress to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and, though no decision to test has been made, the administration has ordered the national laboratories to begin research on new nuclear weapons designs and to prepare the underground test sites in Nevada for nuclear tests if necessary in the future. Clearly, the Bush administration assumes that nuclear weapons will be part of U.S. military forces for at least the next several decades.
.....A Moment of Decision http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/c...id=2829&page=4
We are at a critical moment in human history—perhaps not as dramatic as that of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but a moment no less crucial. Neither the Bush administration, the congress, the American people, nor the people of other nations have debated the merits of alternative, long-range nuclear weapons policies for their countries or the world. They have not examined the military utility of the weapons; the risk of inadvertent or accidental use; the moral and legal considerations relating to the use or threat of use of the weapons; or the impact of current policies on proliferation. Such debates are long overdue. If they are held, I believe they will conclude, as have I and an increasing number of senior military leaders, politicians, and civilian security experts: We must move promptly toward the elimination—or near elimination—of all nuclear weapons. For many, there is a strong temptation to cling to the strategies of the past 40 years. But to do so would be a serious mistake leading to unacceptable risks for all nations.
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http://www.voanews.com/burmese/archi...03-16-voa5.cfm
US Security Strategy Upholds First-Strike Military Option
VOA News
Washington
16 March 2006
National Security Agency: Anti-terrorist tool
The White House has issued an updated version of the United States' national security strategy, reaffirming the Bush administration's willingness to consider staging pre-emptive military strikes against hostile nations or terrorist groups.
President Bush notes in today's report that the United States prefers to use diplomacy to halt the spread of dangerous weapons around the world. "However, under long-standing principles of self-defense," the document says, the United States does "not rule out the use of force before attacks occur."
The official statement says such pre-emptive action could take place even if there is "uncertainty" about the time or place of an enemy attack.
The lengthy 49 page document also notes the administration's concerns about the Chinese and Russian governments' current policies, and their effect on the United States' national and economic security.
The national security statement updates policies and strategies President Bush announced in the aftermath of al-Qaida's terror attacks on New York and Washington in 2001. .........
......On China, the White House statement criticizes "old ways of thinking and acting" by Beijing in its competition for energy resources.
China's leaders, the document says, are "expanding trade, but acting as if they can somehow 'lock up' energy supplies around the world or seek to direct markets rather than opening them up."
Reflecting rising tensions between Washington and Moscow, today's report says the Bush administration is worried that Russia is falling off the path to democracy.
"Recent trends regrettably point toward a diminishing commitment to democratic freedoms and institutions," the document says. Future U.S.-Russian relations, it adds, "will depend on the policies, foreign and domestic, that Russia adopts."
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Quote:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...nss-060316.htm
The National Security Strategy - March 2006
Released 16 March 2006.
Quote:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/09/11/news/nuke.php
Copyright New York Times Company Sep 11, 2005
The Pentagon is preparing new guidelines governing the use of nuclear weapons that foresee possible pre-emptive strikes against terrorist groups or nations planning to use unconventional weapons against the United States.
The draft document, the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, updates procedures for using nuclear weapons that were last changed in 1995. The plan is undergoing final review by the Pentagon's joint staff and by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, and it could be finished in the next several weeks, according to a Pentagon official. The document was first reported by The Washington Post.
Much of the document restates longstanding procedures for launching a nuclear strike, including declarations that such a decision requires explicit presidential approval.
<b>A Pentagon official confirmed that a copy of the document posted on the national security Web site GlobalSecurity.org was authentic.</b>
The Bush administration said in 2002 that a pre-emption strategy was necessary to deal with emerging threats from terrorist groups seeking unconventional weapons and from the proliferation of nuclear capability to numerous countries.
Although the unclassified document reasserts the longstanding American position that it will not make definitive statements about when nuclear weapons will be used, it describes several scenarios for using them, including circumstances under which pre-emptive use might be necessary.
The scenarios for a possible attack described in the draft include one in which an enemy is using ''or intending to use'' unconventional weapons against the United States, its allies or civilian populations. Another scenario for a possible pre-emptive strike is in the event of an ''imminent attack from adversary biological weapons that only effects from nuclear weapons can safely destroy.''
The draft document also envisions the use of atomic weapons for ''attacks on adversary installations,'' including ''deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons.''
A copy of the draft document dated March 15 was posted on a Pentagon Web site for several months but was removed over the summer, according to the Pentagon official, who said he could not explain why it was taken down.
The draft says that to deter a potential adversary from using unconventional weapons, the United States must make it ''believe the United States has both the ability and will to pre-empt or retaliate promptly with responses that are credible and effective.'' The draft also says American policymakers have ''repeatedly rejected calls for adoption of 'no first use' policy of nuclear weapons since this policy could undermine deterrence.''
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...1001053_2.html
Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan
Strategy Includes Preemptive Use Against Banned Weapons
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 11, 2005; Page A01
....The Joint Staff draft doctrine explains that despite the end of the Cold War, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction "raises the danger of nuclear weapons use." It says that there are "about thirty nations with WMD programs" along with "nonstate actors [terrorists] either independently or as sponsored by an adversarial state."
To deter the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States, the Pentagon paper says preparations must be made to use nuclear weapons and show determination to use them "if necessary to prevent or retaliate against WMD use."
The draft says that to deter a potential adversary from using such weapons, that adversary's leadership must "believe the United States has both the ability and will to pre-empt or retaliate promptly with responses that are credible and effective." The draft also notes that U.S. policy in the past has "repeatedly rejected calls for adoption of 'no first use' policy of nuclear weapons since this policy could undermine deterrence."....
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