Thursday, January 17, 2008

Bush Think: A Nuclear War Can be Fought and Won!


God, how I despise people who think war is a game.
--Last Chance Democracy Cafe
The origin of Bush think may be found in a scenario dreamed up at the Rand Corporation at the height of the Cold War. Rand had designed mathematical models that dared think the unthinkable: a nuclear war can be won! Typically, the scenario relied heavily on game theory. It proposed to use nukes like poker chips, so-called 'rational incentives', to manipulate the other side.

Rand theorists 'gamed' how many megatons might be dropped on a city, which cities would be nuked, how many deaths it would take to bring the Russians to the bargaining table.

A clue to Bush's thinking may be found in Bush's remarks to Matt Lauer of NBC Sept. 2, 2004. The topic was the War on Terrorism that Bush committed the US to fight.
I don’t think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world — let's put it that way.
That would appear not to have been the case or the outcome. Terrorism is always been worse under GOP administrations. There is no reason to believe that 'terrorism' is in any way 'less acceptable' especially to those to whom Bush had addressed his remarks at the outset of his foreign adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps as a result of his failures, Bush has resorted to dragging out a scenario that had been 'gamed' by the Rand corporation at the height of the cold war. According to Mother Jones,  the robber barons of big oil, Bush's base, began planning for the war some thirty years ago. They had been inspired by the Arab Oil Embargo. It was certainly an act of war: spoiled Americans had been grievously inconvenienced!
Three decades ago, in the throes of the energy crisis, Washington's hawks conceived of a strategy for US control of the Persian Gulf's oil. Now, with the same strategists firmly in control of the White House, the Bush administration is playing out their script for global dominance.
The Orwellian nightmare, the state of perpetual war, has come true but cannot be sustained. Worse than "mutually assured destruction", this universal exploitation of nightmare spells an end to those dreams that make life worth living. The grim vision offered by the GOP is --or had been --an avoidable choice. It was forced upon us by incompetent and cowardly administration. [See: Terrorism is Always Worse under GOP Regimes.]

Dragging out Rand's Nuclear War Version 1.0 is not a good idea. Times have changed. Iran is not the Soviet Union. And, contrary to GOP tactics of exploitation of various threats and 'boogie men', terrorism is a tactic --not an ideology like communism. Terrorism is not a 'state' that can be identified. Terrorism is inspired among many nations and many peoples at many and various times. An act of terrorism is a crime --not an act of war. Bush think is wrong and Rand's old scenario Version 1.0 is made obsolete by Reality Version 6.0.

Bush claims about Iranian nuclear capabilities are without independent and/or credible verification. The world has not forgotten the lies told about how Saddam Hussein was making chemical weapons in a beat up trailer, how Saddam tried to buy 'yellow cake' in Niger. Realistically --can anything said by Bush be believed?

Desperate to wage war on Saddam, Bushco told the world that Saddam was supporting terrorists. It was a lie. As the failed war dragged on, millions came to understand that Saddam's regime had not supported bona fide 'terrorists' in any way. According to the Pew Research Center, American skepticism about the war in Iraq increased steadily from its inception. It is increasingly seen as harming the "war on terrorism".
A plurality (47%) believes that the war in Iraq has hurt the war on terrorism, up from 41% in February of this year. Further, a plurality (45%) now says that the war in Iraq has increased the chances of terrorist attacks at home, up from 36% in October 2004, while fewer say that the war in Iraq has lessened the chances of terrorist attacks in the US (22% now and 32% in October). Another three-in-ten believe that the war in Iraq has no effect on the chances of a terrorist attack in the US
- Pew Research Center, "Iraq Hurting War on Terror"
Having lied about Iraq, Bush will certainly lie about Iran in order to justify an attack. There is a danger of massive over-response to provocation, a 'scenario' perhaps just recently was narrowly avoided in the Straits of Horumuz. The question now is: will the world survive the remainder of his tenure? As long as Bush continues to occupy the Oval Office, Americans must ask the question: is there any rational basis for fearing Iran when every credible and independent source has said that Iran is years away from developing nukes --nukes that the US had previously made available to other nations?

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, old 'cold warriors' had been overtaken by events and reality. Their very jobs depended upon scaring the beejeebers out of Americans.
What if there really was no need for much - or even most - of the Cold War? What if, in fact, the Cold War had been kept alive for two decades based on phony WMD threats?
What if, similarly, the War On Terror was largely a scam, and the administration was hyping it to seem larger-than-life? What if our "enemy" represented a real but relatively small threat posed by rogue and criminal groups well outside the mainstream of Islam? What if that hype was done largely to enhance the power, electability, and stature of George W. Bush and Tony Blair?
And what if the world was to discover the most shocking dimensions of these twin deceits - that the same men promulgated them in the 1970s and today?
Thom Hartmann, Hyping Terror For Fun and Profit and Power  
Hartman's source was a BBC piece called "The Power of Nightmares".
In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.
The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.
In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organized terrorist network is an illusion.
--BBC: The Power of Nightmares
In the US, more have begun to question the Bush modus operandi of exploiting our nightmares, our fears of "radical Islam", a prospect at least as terrifying as "radical Christianity" and the equally ideological, rabid "Christianist" movement which overtly seeks to make of the US a theocracy. Should either side "win", people themselves will be enslaved to nonsense, claptrap and ideology, nothing less than a new dark age. Shakespeare said it best: "A plague o' both your houses!"

What is the date of America's descent into madness? It might have been Pearl Harbor. Certainly, the US helped meet the very real threat posed by Hitler's Third Reich, but, in retrospect, our leaders may have learned all the wrong lessons. Did they learn only that FDR grew in strength by promising to protect Americans from the spectres of world wide fascism and Nazism? Certainly, GOP regimes, having propped up Saddam, tried to make of him --Hitler! The GOP hated FDR but again learned from him all the wrong lessons. The GOP never forgave FDR for winning World War II but have been eager to exploit war and manufactured crises in times of peace. The GOP became the party of wars though there is nary a war that they GOP can claim to have won! Not one! Desparate for any success at all, the GOP has become the party of phony wars on drugs, porn, immigration and Murphy Brown.

Bush sought a chance to use nukes! Surely, a war on terrorism would give him the opportunity. But how? "Terrorism" is not a geographical location. It is, rather, a phantom menace that is whatever the right wing says it is. It is a phantom menace.

Game theory aside --there are NO winners. Game theorists should read Godel, to wit: NO formal system can generate every theorem from any given set of axioms and, likewise, no "game theory" of any sort can "game" every contingency. The use of nukes of any size or sort in the middle east will be catastrophic beyond our abilities to predict or plan for. It could very well usher in the end of mankind.
A related story:
If the U.S. were to face a new conventional threat, its military could not respond effectively without turning to air power, officials and analysts say.

"That is the ultimate upshot of the war in Iraq: a response elsewhere would consist largely of U.S. fighters and bombers -- even, perhaps, some degree of nuclear strike -- because so many ground troops are tied up in Operation Iraqi Freedom."

Even, perhaps, some degree of nuclear strike? They are insane.
--Iraq War Has Ground Forces Stretched Thin   
The "government" is not our "country". Bush is not the sovereign. We are the nation; we are the sovereign. Whatever "government" is in Washington, its only job is to protect and defend the country. The country is us! We can fire the government when it fails to do its job. New Orleans is merely the most graphic proof, the most dramatic illustration of how this government has failed the people of America and should be fired. Not just Bush --I envision a mass layoff! It is time the country changed its government. It is time to bring this government to its knees for having betrayed us --the nation.
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16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Isn't it obvious that Bush is absolutely beside himself with an itch to use nukes? I've seen it argued that he already has - at Tora Bora

Conventional theory is that being a lame duck makes a president less dangerous. The opposite may be true with Bush.

Unknown said...

My biggest fear is that this scenario is exactly what is being played out in the Middle East right now. I think King George's recent trip there was nothing more an attempt to garner support for this madness and to give fair warning to his oil buddies that it was coming.
It will either be directly from us after another Straight Of Hormuz "incident" or by proxy through Israel and I truly believe that it will occur within 60 days of our national elections.
The constant fear mongering that spews from television and radio on a daily basis has begun to make me physically ill and all of these bastards have become so arrogant in my eyes that it's appalling.
I tell anyone that will listen that as far as I'm concerned, we are only separated from from the radical factions of of the Mideast by a book and a few bombs
New Theocratic Dark Ages indeed. . . .

Unknown said...

Bush is itching to nuke. But he needs suppport and most of the writers in the middle east seem to agree that he's not getting any support outside Israel. Game theory aside --there are NO winners. Game theorists should read Godel, to wit: NO formal system can generate EVERY theorem from any given set of axioms and, likewise, no "game theory" of any sort can "game" every contingency. The use of nukes of any size or sort in the middle east will be catastrophic beyond our abilities to predict or plan for. It could very well usher in the end of mankind.

Ed Encho said...

My biggest concern isn't so much the Bushreich and the neocons going out in a Gen. Jack D. Ripper blaze of apocalyptic glory with a first strike but rather then their goading those fanatics over in Israel into attacking and then joining the war that WILL end all wars as their tag team partner for the steel cage Rapture death match.

Those paranoid freaks are over there testing missiles and further inflaming a bad situation - Bush and Cheney need to be removed from office immediately and whoever may follow needs to cut Israel loose once and for all in favor of a more sane foreign policy. Let's hope that we live to see it.

Nice job in posting the stuff on The Trap and Power of Nightmares, I am a big Adam Curtis fan. His Century Of The Self is also a brilliant work and looks at the use of propaganda and public relations in creating the mindless lemming consumers whose mass ignorance has us all on the fucking doorstep of Armageddon.

Just my two cents

EE

Christopher said...

The many "game theory" scenarios carried out by think tanks, which try to predict how many millions will die from a nuclear attack, and assert that a nuclear war is winnable, are dry academic exercises conducted by well-to-do white men in an atmosphere of utter surreality.

I'm reminded of a scene from "Dr Strangelove" where George C Scott as General "Buck" Turgidson, in trying to convince the president that the consequences to the US from nuking the Russians wouldn't be all that bad, said: "Mr President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed........well, maybe thirty million, tops.......".

I have a hunch that, should a full-scale nuclear war involving the US ever happen, and the bombs start falling, the academic worldviews of the white men conducting their "game theories" in think tanks, might might undergo a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree change.

But the US does have a huge military establishment costing over $650 billion each year (approximately $6,500 per year for each American taxpayer), and these expenditures must be justified, and how better than always having enemies lurking out there?

They used to be the commies, now they are the terrorists, to whom the Iranians have now been added.

Has anything really changed?

As to George Bush, he seems largely to have disappeared from the radar screen, now that everyone's attention is focussed on the primaries.

Unknown said...

EE, that is prominent among several scenarios. Israel may be restrained somewhat by its ally but what if the US is itself out of control? US problems are not only with Israel. Saddam, it must be recalled, was, likewise, a US puppet in the middle east. And so was Noreiga in Central America. Your fears are well founded. Is Israel decided to go it alone, there is very little the US could do to get the cat back in the bag.

Unknown said...

Christopher said...

I'm reminded of a scene from "Dr Strangelove" where George C Scott as General "Buck" Turgidson, in trying to convince the president that the consequences to the US from nuking the Russians wouldn't be all that bad, said: "Mr President, I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed........well, maybe thirty million, tops.......".

I may have posted that clip...if so, it's here: How George W. Bush and his Neocon Gang Screwed the World

Dr. Strangelove helped define angst of that generation; he refined our sense of the absurd. "Eyes Wide Shut", however, is not among my list of Kubrick masterpieces. No matter! If he had made only 2001 and Strangelove, his legacy would have been secure.

BTW --the movie was almost stolen by Slim Pickens as "Kong" who waved his cowboy hat screaming "Yaaaaaay-hoooooo" enroute to oblivion atop a nuke. I had the pleasure of meeting Pickens ibe, Ge credited Kubrick's movie for having launched his acting career.

how better than always having enemies lurking out there?

That's the trouble with "Game" theory. While the math and logic geeks can "game" any scenario, Pentagon types take it all seriously and politicians have ulteriour motives. Geeks, perversely, do it for fun as I used to play WarCraft. Pentagon types are tying to find an edge and an excuse to make it all real. People like Gen. Tom Hayden will just try to cover their stupid asses.

SadButTrue said...

Can they not find a strait jacket that fits George Bush, or what's the problem? He should have been given a 'section eight' long ago, Commander Guy or not. Has he not heard?:

"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." -- Jeanette Rankin

Unknown said...

Blogger SadButTrue said...


"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." -- Jeanette Rankin


One day --when I am especially inspired, I might venture a description of "victory" in a nuclear war. For the life of me, I cannot imagine what it might look like or why it might be called "victory". I am reminded of William Faulner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

'Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up? ... It is easy enough to say that man is immortal because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. '

It's hard to imgine "defeat" being worse.

Anonymous said...

Their job is to protect & defend the Constitution. They swore to it. Instead, they raped it!

Anonymous said...

This from Paparush:

Congress Dismisses NIE, declares Iran a nuclear threat (Thu, 01/17/2008)

Iran poses a nuclear weapons threat to the United States and its allies, according to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 H R 4986 passed 369-46 by the US House of Representative yesterday, even though the National Intelligence Estimate concluded that that Tehran abandoned its atomic weaponry ambitions in 2003.

Section 229 of the Act states that:

Congress finds that Iran maintains a nuclear program in continued defiance of the international community while developing ballistic missiles of increasing sophistication and range that:
(1) pose a threat to--
(A) the forward-deployed forces of the United States;
(B) North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies in Europe; and
(C) other allies and friendly foreign countries in the region; and
(2) eventually could pose a threat to the United States homeland.

HR 4986 mandates that it is the policy of the US to "develop, test, and deploy, as soon as technologically feasible, in conjunction with allies and friendly foreign countries whenever possible, an effective defense against the threat from Iran." Essentially, this calls for the establishment of the controversial missile defense shield, which is threatening to reignite the cold war and start a new arms race with Russia.

The findings of the Congress contradict the NIE released last month which concluded with "high confidence" that "in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program" and that "Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007" -- (link)

As Paparush says: Did our Congress just give Bush/Cheney YET ANOTHER GREENLIGHT TO YET ANOTHER WAR???

Mindless and illegal war, all enabled by the Dems.

Unknown said...

Dorson Orba said...

Their job is to protect & defend the Constitution. They swore to it. Instead, they raped it!

They did, indeed! Welcome to the Cowboy, Dorson.

damien said...

As Paparush says: Did our Congress just give Bush/Cheney YET ANOTHER GREENLIGHT TO YET ANOTHER WAR???

Mindless and illegal war, all enabled by the Dems.


Sure looks like it! Instead of gaming how such a mindless war would be won, the GOP inclined think tanks should be studying "cascading chaos". If the genie is loosed, there is no putting him back. Thank you, Mr. Truman, you idiot!

Think of it --everyone of my age and younger has lived his/her entire life with the possibility that all life on earth might vaporize over the course of a final hour or so.

The "gamers" write extensively about a "limited nuclear exchange" and a "full-scale nuclear war". Bush and Bushy are delusional if they think that any conflict can be successfully confined to a "limited exchange". Putin, for example, has already said that any attack on Iran will be considered an attack on Russia. China, has likewise, warned against the use of nukes in its own backyard. Just recently, a Chinese sub popped up undetected in the middle of the US fifth fleet.
China has the ability to place subs --undetected --around every US coast.

If Bush nukes Iran, Russia will nuke the US. China will follow suit.

I hope we all survive Bush long enough to hall his sorry ass before a tribunal charged with deciding his ultimate fate!

Anok said...

I would just like to add that the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 already overturned the Posse Comitatus Act. That part has already been taken care of.

As for banning Habeas Corpus indefinitely, congress and the president have a back up plan in case that fails - HR 1955/S 1959. If that bill passes, supposedly on the Senate floor this Tuesday, any American citizen could be labeled as a terrorist, thus losing the right to Habeas Corpus anyway.

As for the US threatening nuclear war....I have one question....

Who are we to talk of the dangers of nuclear armament of other countries, when we are more than armed, and apparently willing to use it?

Doesn't that make us the enemy of the world, in the "Axis of Evil"?

Of course the UN won't do anything about it whatsoever.

With regards to our economic failures, I wrote a bit about that on my blog called "Mediocrity Postured as Success is a Loss of Failure". In it I take a hard look at the numbers, the GDP and unemployment as well as earnings - and use the facts to bring truth to the bragging neo-cons about Bush's economic success.

Basically, we are poorer now than we were in the 1940's. Regardless of how much money we think we have. It's worth less now, so more of it doesn't actually mean a hill of beans. It certainly isn't a "success".

Unknown said...

Anok, you are right to ask 'who are we to talk of nuclear disamanent?'

The fact we have armed ourselves with enough nukes to destroy the world many time over has inspired ==NOT deterred --the rest of the world to arm. Bush himself is a guarantee that Iran will arm. If I were Iran, I would do whatever it would take to defend myself or retaliate against an aggessor like Bush.

In the meantime, the Bush administration continues to wage war on US citizens in various ways, among them: phony terror alerts, real terror, and the illegal abrogations of their Constitutional rights.

Anonymous said...

A word of thanks to Len for linking BBC The Trap video. I watched the whole thing and now have eyes and mind much opened.
It is indeed amazing how we got trapped.

Unknown said...

Thanks anonymous...that documentary is quite an eye opener.