[CLUE-Talk] Slashdot Gun Control

[Sean LeBlanc]

On 12-16 17:00, Timothy C. Klein wrote:
> * Sean LeBlanc (seanleblanc at americanisp.net) wrote:
> > On 12-16 15:11, David Willson wrote:
> 
> [snip]
> 
> > I've seen people say, "well, the U.S. has nuclear weapons, Israel has
> > nuclear weapons, why can't Saddam?" I'd like to pose a question to those
> > people. Let's say that both Saddam and the American government had the
> > option to kill each other (and this is the important part) WITHOUT anyone
> > else finding out who did it: a hypothetical superweapon that could wipe out
> > the entire country of the enemy, civilians and all. Which one(s) do you
> > think would do it? 
> > 
> 
> Heh, with the conditions given, I would tend to believe that *both*
> governments would do it.  It seems obvious that Saddam would.  But
> the US Gov't has proved itself to be no saint at times, either.
> 
> The CIA had no qualms overthrowing Democratic (but left-leaning, perhaps
> even Socialist/Communist-Leaning) governments in Nicaragua and Iran.  In
> their place, we helped institute very nasty non-representative
> governments.  Why?  Our economic interests were threatened, to one
> degree or another.  The CIA did this quite secretly, and seemed to
> assume that it would always remain a secret.  It took decades to come to
> light.
> 
> While Saddam is a bastard, we have to be careful about our
> government, too.  It has acted less than nobly on occasion too.


Good points. Our record is not spotless.

Believe me, I have a healthy suspicion of the government, and all citizens
should always question the motives and actions of their governments,
ESPECIALLY one as powerful as ours. But in my hypothetical situation, I'm
talking about genocide, not coup d'etats. These actions were also conducted
when it wasn't necessarily clear that Communism was not going to overrun the
world. That doesn't excuse the atrocities, but it puts it into context.

Let's say the situation was reversed - right now, we have such power that we
could, literally, do anything to any country in the world (barring the
remnants of the Soviet Union) with little fear of an immediate
counter-attack of equal proportions. We show amazing restraint when you
think about it. What do you think Saddam would do with such power? 

-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at americanisp.net  
http://users.americanisp.net/~seanleblanc/
Get MLAC at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mlac/
If I were younger, I'd know more. 
-James Barrie