Our dear president has been pushing a general strategy of preemption. That was the justification for invading Iraq, that there was a perceived threat, a possibility that Iraq was a danger, and hence they were a worthy target. But we know what happened there, it has become a total boondoggle, the perceived danger was nothing but lies spun by Iraqi dissidents who hadn't set foot in the country in decades, the U.N. Secretary General has declared this an illegal war, and the President deserves impeachment.
In the movie Minority Report we saw a demonstration of the fallacy of preemptive enforcement based on a prediction of aggression. In the movie they had psychics predicting when murders would happen, and sure enough the murder rate went to zero. But the movie presented us with a conundrum, if you can't accurately predict the future then how can you enforce the law based on a fallable prediction? Do you lock someone up just because they're thinking about murder? Or do you wait for the murder to happen?
But this is just what the Bush Administration has been pursuing. The doctrine of preemptive war based on the prediction on whether some country or another will become an agressor. Uh, excuse me but by crossing that line then haven't we become the agressor? So by that logic shouldn't we then attack ourselves in order to stop our agression?
In any case let's get to the current story.
Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan; Strategy Includes Preemptive Use Against Banned Weapons (By Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer,Sunday, September 11, 2005)
Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations
Draft US Defense Paper Outlines Preventive Nuclear Strikes
New U.S. doctrine proposes nuclear strikes
What's happened is that the DoD has been studying its navel and redesigning the nuclear strategy. "A previous version, completed in 1995 during the Clinton administration, contains no mention of using nuclear weapons preemptively or specifically against threats from weapons of mass destruction." (washington post)
The new strategy outlines several instances under which commanders can request the use of nuclear weapons. The instances include preemtive strikes against countries or organizations that are possible threats.
The code phrase "all options" is used, and we've seen how "all options" really means they're planning to do it.
The plan is being distributed in draft form and published on a Defense Department website (see here for links). I've attached a copy of the plan to this page.
Early in the document the strategy is described as having four key goals. These are "steadfastness of purpose", "dissuading adversaries", "deterring agression and coercion" and "decisively defeating enemies". Essentially the strategy is the best defense is a good offense. The deterrence part is simply to deter agression by threatening everybody with a big stick, namely the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
And, of course, for the U.S. nuclear arsenal to have value, the number of nuclear armed nations must be kept to a minimum. Hence the current threats being made against Iran and North Korea. But it's puzzling why Pakistan isn't also being threatened, because Pakistan was actively proliferating nuclear technology. But then we know that Pakistan is a critical player in bring Central Asian oil to the world market.
Read it and weep my friends.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| jp3_12fc2.pdf | 1.76 MB |
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