From: donb@tamri.com (Don Baldwin)
Subject: Twain was right!
Organization: TOSHIBA America MRI, San Francisco
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 92 16:49:14 GMT

In article <kube9aINNjgd@jethro.Corp.Sun.COM> geoffm@purplehaze.Corp.Sun.COM
(Geoff Miller) writes:
>>Question:  Do you REALLY feel that Reagan and Bush have been paragons of
>>restraint???  Look at the past 12 years.  Grenada was basically an
>>instance where Reagan decided to make an example of a miniscule South
>>American country.
>
>Sure I think they've been paragons of restraint -- as far as nuclear
>weapons are concerned, which is what we were talking about.  Now, if
>Raygun had *nuked* Tripoli or Grenada, then you'd have a point.

I think that the level of restraint for ANY armed intervention should
be a whole lot higher than it has been here, over the past 12 years.

>I'd much rather see nuclear weapons in the possession of countries like the
>US, the UK and the former USSR than in the possession of someone like Kad-
>dhafi or Assad or Kim Il Sung or Saddam Hussein or Khomeini.  (Yes, Al, I
>know Khomeini's dead.)  Wouldn't you?  

Hmmm, I honestly don't know.  I go back and forth between thinking that
anybody who can acquire nuclear weapons should be able to and thinking
that there should be some kind of Nuclear Club that you have to earn
membership in.  IMO, the argument for the "anyone-can" approach is the
that nukes would make great equalizers; with them, smaller nations
would be less likely to be bullied by larger nations.  Of course, I'd
also arm the UN with nukes and give them the authority to turn any
country abusing its weapons into a glass bowl.

>------

>IMO, if people learned to think critically, rather than automatically
>oppose the position and actions of the government, we'd be a whole lot
>better off as a nation.

However, you have to realize that any two intelligent people can look at
the same problem and come up with radically different opinions about it.

Personally, I also hold the view that the government needs to be
subservient to the people and not vice versa...that people should have
some voice in the decision about whether a situation warrants the use
of military force.  Another friend of mine, who still carries around
Russion shrapnel from the time she left Hungary, agrees with me.  She's
had FIRST HAND experience with war, sees it as a bloody waste and not
some sort of chess game.

>------
>
>>IMO, the world will have become a sane place when international applies
>>EQUALLY all around:  when the extradition of CIA terrorists to Nicaragua
>>is as certain as the extradition of Libyan terrorists to the US.
>
>You've been reading too much science fiction, Don.  What this rather 
>simplistic view fails to take into account is that nations will always 
>attempt to act in their own best interests.  And why shouldn't they?  From
>what I've seen, the only thing the United Nations is good for is providing
>a decorous backdrop for calculated diplomatic maneuvering and theatrical, 
>self-serving righteous indignation. 

I don't have any problem with the realistic notion of governments acting
in their own interests; who could expect anything else?  I start having
a problem when we are too willing to blast away and justify our actions
with reasoning that we'd reject, if another country were to use it