“….The terrorists cannot win; they can only hope to terrorize us into forgetting who we are, so that we become the belligerent, blundering Goliath of their florid rhetoric. In this war , killing and capturing fanatics is necessary, but not sufficient; we cannot hope to kill or capture all of them. We secure our safety by demonstrating to 1 billion Moslems, and to the world, that it is Osama bin Laden and his acolytes, not the tolerant, optimistic West, that are on the wrong side of history.”*
Epicurus told us not to get involved in politics, but then the ancient Greeks had no nuclear weapons that could fry the world and us with it.   We can by all means ignore standard terrorism and hope for a diplomatic solution, but it is more difficult to attain peace of mind when there is every possibility of a nuclear holocaust. I suppose it is bound to happen one day, and one of the reasons it will is our stubborn mind-blowing ignorance and inability to see the other side of an argument, and talk to the other side.
*William Falk in The Week September 21st, 2007
There is no “war” on terrorism, only a policing action that can be as ruthless as you like. What is scary is the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but why pick on Iran when Pakistan is likely to leak like a sieve or is already leaking like one. We should be destroying all the nuclear capabilities of Pakistan lest they fall into the hands to terrorists, and do the same to Israel to reduce the justified fears of her neighbors. Then perhaps we can have a balance of power and retire to our gardens.
But is it a true ‘balance of power’ when all the nuclear weapons (except N.Korea) is in the hands of the ‘democratic’ West??? If we lay down our Weapons, as well as insisting that Iran, Israel and Pakistan does,then there would be balance, surely?. Oh and not forgetting N. Korea who tested an underground weapon just lately.
Well, yes, but all the nuclear weapons are not in the West, that’s the problem.
We are in a bind. In the Middle East you have Israel and Pakistan with these weapons, and it is a no-brainer that Iran, Syria and others want them as well.
The US could get rid of hundreds of nuclear weapons and not notice the difference, but the current regime hasn’t got the imagination to do so. In fact there is a new generation of nuclear weapons in the US arsenal. Quite why they are misusing our tax dollars in this way one is not encouraged to ask. Yes, it’s fine if the US increases its nuclear power, but let no one else do likewise. You are right, there is no balance of power, but at least in the unstable Middle East one could try to achieve one.