From: Kevin Freels (megaquark@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Jul 25 2003 - 13:13:00 MDT
Would taking Hitler out at an early age actually have been better? Even with
all the lives saved, it could very well have caused an even larger problem.
German society was ready for a Hitler when he came to power. Someone else
would have probably filled his shoes and that person may not have made the
mistake of going into Russia.
I have to question the validity of preemptive strikes. To do such a thing
suggests that the person conducting the strike has prior knowledge that the
event will take place. Even if a person had made the decision to attack
another country, they could always change their mind right up to the last
moment before the first shot is fired. Their reasoning may or may not be
reasonable, but it could occur just the same.
The only way to "know" for sure that the attack was going to actually occur
would be through some kind of psychic ability. Even then, there would be
some kind of possibility of incorrect interpretation.
When carrying out a preemptive strike, we are only weighing possibilities,
not realities.
Kevin Freels
"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something
completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools" -
Douglas Adams
----- Original Message -----
From: "John K Clark" <jonkc@att.net>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2003 11:12 AM
Subject: Re: Radical Suggestions
> "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin@tsoft.com>
>
> > 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.
>
> In 1936 you would know that Hitler was a very bad person but the trouble
is
> you would not know that very soon he would cause the death of 30 million
> people; nor in 1936 would you know if incinerating the German capital
would
> lead to something even worse than Hitler by demonstrating to the world
> 9 years early that nuclear weapons are possible and practical. Even today
I
> don't know.
>
> As for the North Korea nuclear weapons situation, yes it is very serious,
> but I just don't see a military solution. For one thing it's too late,
they
> already have the bomb, but even with just conventional weapons a new
Korean
> war would be the biggest bloodbath since World War 2. It is estimated that
> North Korea has the ability to fire 10,000 heavy artillery shells into
> Seoul, a city of 10 million people, every 20 seconds.
>
> John K Clark jonkc@att.net
>
>
>
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