From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri Jul 25 2003 - 01:54:01 MDT
Suppose that I suddenly found myself in the year 1936 about
fifty miles outside Berlin, and I had in my hand a remote
control switch that would detonate a Hiroshima-sized device
in the capital of Germany, and that I knew that this would
be my only chance to kill Hitler and his henchmen.
I would scarcely hesitate, even though it would mean the
immediate deaths of 100,000 people. I believe that my
knowledge of history makes it a good enough gamble, and
my conscience would allow no other choice. Perhaps the
lives of as many as 30 million people would be saved by
my intervention.
I think that quite a few readers of this list would concur.
So now let's suppose that it's the year 2065, and a historian
in what's left of the decimated world civilization sadly
narrates:
"What I will never understand is how the United States---the
sole, yes *sole* superpower of the early years of this century
---allowed the world-wide proliferation of nuclear weapons to
proceed. Weren't the consequences easily foreseeable?
"It was in 2003 or 2004 at the latest, that the last best
chance was missed. After North Korea obtained its nuclear
weapons, Japan and Taiwan had no choice but to join the
club. The regime change in Seoul in 2009 lit the fuse,
of course, and we all know what happened.
"Just think: imagine that somehow the U.S. had anticipated
that by 2050 there were going to be six (6) atomic wars, and
that hundreds of millions of people were going to perish,
and civilization very nearly along with it. Would anyone
have been brave enough to have condoned an unprovoked attack
on North Korea, making it perfectly clear that proliferation
was *not* going to be an option?
"Probably at the time, no one could have felt confident
enough of their logic, not even some of the most clear-
thinking Extropians in the world. And had anyone been
able to foretell what is so obvious to us today, imagine
the defamation that they would have had to endure.
"Such an attack would have been almost completely without
historical precedent, and so necessarily would have struck
most people at the time as supremely evil. But had they
only known!"
Indeed, as I have said, I personally would not recommend
that any nation execute an unprovoked nuclear attack on
any other at this time nor in the foreseeable future---
but I admit the possibility that I could be dead wrong.
Lee
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