Nuclear Weapons: A Force for Good?

[WICKLC1]

How do you think, what is the reason? Why they hate USA so much and don't hate say France or Canada?

How? They tell us, they go through with what they tell us they are going to do.

Reason: We are infidels, we live in a free society.

They hate the west as a whole, the USA is just the leader of the west, and the center of western culture.

 

[Xyan]

Imagine two men holding daggers at each other's throat. Just because blood has yet to be spilled doesn't mean that the net effect of the daggers is good.

Living in constant fear and distrust is mental torture. It is better to throw again the daggers and embrace as friends.

Nuclear Weapons are just like these daggers... just on a much better scale. They are evil to the core and hurt humanity greatly.

 

[WICKLC1]

Of course the world would be better off if nobody had nukes, but countries who would otherwise have used them are deterred by the threat of retaliation. The story is completely different if we are talking about a terrorist group though.

 

[punkbass2000]

Interesting. Care to explain?

Sure. What do you want to know?

 

[z_step18]

Of course not every Iranian hates the USA, but you have to realize that many children in the middle east, especially in Iran, are taught from a young age to hate the USA and Israel and to blame the USA and Israel for all of their problems. The sooner we acknowledge that they hate us, and realize why they hate us, the sooner we can solve the current problem in the middle east. I don't think either of us have been brainwashed, but I do think that you are rather naive for not acknowledging the fact that many Muslims in the middle east hate the USA and its way of life.

The younger population of Iran has pro-Western feelings for the most part. I don't know where you get that Iranians are taught to hate the United States. Iran is not like other Middle Eastern nations, and much its youth has some problems with its own government. The sooner we acknowledge the actual situation, the better. And by provoking Iran with military action, we're destroying whatever pro-Western feelings the younger generation of Iran have.

 

[Patroklos]

Do you know how many false positive alerts we had that almost led to nuclear war? We were *this* close to total annihilation.

Zero.

War Games wasn't a documentary.

 

[RedRalph]

Zero.

War Games wasn't a documentary.

BS. and you know it. there were a few listed here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_III#Historical_close_calls, not all to do with subject in hand, note Petrov and the 1979 incident as close calls

False "Soviet First Strike" Alarm: The US made emergency retaliation preparations after NORAD saw on-screen indications that a full-scale Soviet attack had been launched. [6] No attempt was made to use the "red telephone" hotline to clarify the situation with the USSR and it was not until early-warning radar systems confirmed no such launch had taken place that NORAD realized that a computer system test had caused the display errors. A Senator inside the NORAD facility at the time described an atmosphere of absolute panic. A GAO investigation led to the construction of an off-site test facility, to prevent similar mistakes in the future.

 

[philippe]

Zero.

War Games wasn't a documentary.

That's BS, RRW already pointed out to a Soviet commander who got a fake alarm and yet with his calmness decided not to launch the nukes.

EDIT: Crossposted with the man himself.

here is an article:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/21/world/main618901.shtml

Man Honored For Averting Nuke War
Ex-Russian Military Officer Rightly Detected False Alarm In 1983

MOSCOW, May 21, 2004
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(CBS/AP)



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(AP) A retired Russian military officer on Friday received an award from an association that promotes world peace for averting what could have become a nuclear war, according to a statement posted on the association's Web site.

Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was in charge of the Soviet Union's early warning system in September 1983, when the system wrongly signaled the launch of a U.S. Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile. Petrov had less than 20 minutes to decide whether the report was accurate and whether he should launch missiles in retaliation, according to an article published by the Vlast magazine in 1998.

Tensions were high between the United States and the Soviet Union at the time, after the Soviet military shot down a Korean plane that strayed over Soviet air space, killing all of the 269 people on board, including a U.S. congressman.

Under his authority, Petrov decided the alarm was false and did not begin a retaliatory attack.

On Friday, the San-Francisco-based Association of World Citizens, a worldwide organization that promotes peace on Earth, presented Petrov with the World Citizen Award and launched a campaign to raise $1,000 for the Russian, who receives only a meager pension.

"All the 20 years that passed since that moment I didn't believe I had done something extraordinary. I was simply doing my job and I did it well," Petrov was shown by Russia's NTV television as saying.

The Vlast article said that Petrov suffered severe stress after the incident and spent several months in hospitals before being discharged from the military.

 

[Patroklos]

I was actually talking about in the US, we all know the evil Soviets were less meticulous

That's BS, RRW already pointed out to a Soviet commander who got a fake alarm and yet with his calmness decided not to launch the nukes.

That was hardly "one button away." I would hope even a ****** would understant that a SINGLE United States ICBM is not an attack. He did his job, EXACTLY like he was trained to do for that very reason.

Just to illustrate how stupid your exaggeration is, do you honestly think that Light Colonel (O-5) had the ability to just decide himself to end the world? His only job was to forward on the info, at which time dozens of other people would have had every opportunity to recognize the obvious before it got to "a brave missile commander."

Stop being so mellow dramatic.

 

[philippe]

I was actually talking about in the US, we all know the evil Soviets were less meticulous



That was hardly "one button away." I would hope even a ****** would understant that a SINGLE United States ICBM is not an attack. He did his job, EXACTLY like he was trained to do for that very reason.

Just to illustrate how stupid your exaggeration is, do you honestly think that Light Colonel (O-5) had the ability to just decide himself to end the world? His only job was to forward on the info, at which time dozens of other people would have had every opportunity to recognize the obvious before it got to "a brave missile commander."

Stop being so mellow dramatic.

ah, I see you moved the goalposts.

I'll forget then that for 13 days the entire fate of the world was on a thread due to a certain crisis.

or this:

November 9, 1979: False "Soviet First Strike" Alarm: The US made emergency retaliation preparations after NORAD saw on-screen indications that a full-scale Soviet attack had been launched. [6] No attempt was made to use the "red telephone" hotline to clarify the situation with the USSR and it was not until early-warning radar systems confirmed no such launch had taken place that NORAD realized that a computer system test had caused the display errors. A Senator inside the NORAD facility at the time described an atmosphere of absolute panic. A GAO investigation led to the construction of an off-site test facility, to prevent similar mistakes in the future

and further elaboration on this, which dismisses your arguement:

September 26, 1983: False "US First Strike" Alarm: Soviet early warning systems showed that a US ICBM attack had been launched. Colonel Stanislav Petrov, in command of the monitoring facility, correctly interpreted the warnings as a computer error and did not notify his superiors, even though this was against standing orders and ultimately resulted in serious career consequences for Petrov

November 1983: Exercise Able Archer: The USSR mistook a test of NATO's nuclear-release procedures as a fake cover for a NATO attack and subsequently raised its nuclear alert level. It was not until afterwards that the US realized how close it had come to nuclear war. At the time of the exercise the Soviet Politburo was without a healthy functioning head due to the failing health of then leader Yuri Andropov, which is thought to have been one of the contributing factors to the Soviet concern over the exercise.

 

[scy12]

"All the 20 years that passed since that moment I didn't believe I had done something extraordinary. I was simply doing my job and I did it well," Petrov was shown by Russia's NTV television as saying.

Which is the truth. But sometimes not extraordinary people doing just their jobs get into extraordinary category by doing their ordinary job in an extraordinary situation.

 

[RedRalph]

I was actually talking about in the US, we all know the evil Soviets were less meticulous



That was hardly "one button away." I would hope even a ****** would understant that a SINGLE United States ICBM is not an attack. He did his job, EXACTLY like he was trained to do for that very reason.

Just to illustrate how stupid your exaggeration is, do you honestly think that Light Colonel (O-5) had the ability to just decide himself to end the world? His only job was to forward on the info, at which time dozens of other people would have had every opportunity to recognize the obvious before it got to "a brave missile commander."

Stop being so mellow dramatic.

See my edit to address your first point, and as to the second, read about Petrov properly. at first, 1 missile was indicated, so he ignored it. then, another alert said 5 were on the way. then, ANOTHER alert said 20 missiles were on the way. Yeah he was only a commander. but given this was a few weeks after the Korean airliner, operation RYAN going ahead in the USSR and the KGB were beginning to learn about Able Archer 83, dont try and play this down. Had he reported the launches in all likelyhood a Soviet retaliation would have been launched.

 

[Patroklos]

correctly interpreted the warnings as a computer error and did not notify his superiorsor

Wow, so you mean the system put into place to do exactly this worked as intended? How is that *this* close again?

dont try and play this down.

I am not trying to play this down or up, I am recognizing it for what it was. The fact that the very person in question himself thought it was no big deal shoots all of you out of the water.

Do you have any idea how many times the system told me there were figher planes coming out of Iran? Guess what, just like I was trained I took a look at the alert, looked at the specifics of the contact and judged it not an actual threat. And I COULD have shot on it myself without any other people involved if I had thought something else. Were we *this* close to war with Iran fourty times in August 2006?

Radars are just machines interpreting data we put into them, which obviously has its limitations. People like Petrov exist in every such system, do you think just because it was a strategic one it has magic powers that make it different?

Usually whe someone wants to use the mellow dramatic *this* close it should have some level of extrordinary attached to it. As Petrov said, this was nothing special. Case closed.

 

[brennan]

Ia SINGLE United States ICBM is not an attack.

A 1.2 Megaton missile strike could not be considered an attack? *shoots you with 1 bullet*

do you honestly think that Light Colonel (O-5) had the ability to just decide himself to end the world?

You decide:

Petrov had less than 20 minutes to decide whether the report was accurate and whether he should launch missiles in retaliation

 

[Theige]

How can people say the world would be better off without nuclear weapons, when the only reason World War 3 was avoided was because of nuclear weapons.

The fact that neither side launched when there were so many opportunities to do so, in such contentious situations, is a testament to the fact that neither side was ever going to launch first.

Wars between major powers will never happen as long as both sides have nukes.

 

[sonorakitch]

I fail to see how people can look at how close we were to a nuclear holocaust and think that MAD was a great idea that is responsible for world peace.

Do you really think the Soviet Union would not have retaliated conventionally to the Berlin Airlift without the nuclear retaliatory threat? How about US intervention in Korea? Any major "cold" conflict between the USSR and NATO could have very easily sparked had it not been for MAD.

Fact is, nuclear weapons added the element of annhilation to modern warfare. Without them, the second half of the 20th century would have been a lot bloodier...at least for our 1st world countries.

~Chris

 

[sonorakitch]

Imagine two men holding daggers at each other's throat. Just because blood has yet to be spilled doesn't mean that the net effect of the daggers is good.

Living in constant fear and distrust is mental torture. It is better to throw again the daggers and embrace as friends.

Nuclear Weapons are just like these daggers... just on a much better scale. They are evil to the core and hurt humanity greatly.

And instead of these daggers, the men would be using fists. Think about it...

~Chris

 

[Alpine Trooper]

And instead of these daggers, the men would be using fists. Think about it...

~Chris

My brain exploded like a nuclear weapon thinking about it.

 

[WICKLC1]

The younger population of Iran has pro-Western feelings for the most part. I don't know where you get that Iranians are taught to hate the United States. Iran is not like other Middle Eastern nations, and much its youth has some problems with its own government. The sooner we acknowledge the actual situation, the better. And by provoking Iran with military action, we're destroying whatever pro-Western feelings the younger generation of Iran have.

Iran is ruled by sharia law and everything the people see has to be approved by the government. Young people who can connect to the internet can see other things though. The people who cannot connect to the internet only see what the government lets them see.

Children throughout the middle east are tought to blame the US and Israel for all of their problems. Even in relatively open societies like Iran. They are taught to be anti US and Israel by the government, schools, and likely their friends and relatives. They are anti US simply because they don't know anything else. The only exception is students who can access the internet.

We are not provoking Iran, they are provoking us.

 

[scy12]

Iran is ruled by sharia law and everything the people see has to be approved by the government. Young people who can connect to the internet can see other things though. The people who cannot connect to the internet only see what the government lets them see.

Children throughout the middle east are tought to blame the US and Israel for all of their problems. Even in relatively open societies like Iran. They are taught to be anti US and Israel by the government, schools, and likely their friends and relatives. They are anti US simply because they don't know anything else. The only exception is students who can access the internet.

We are not provoking Iran, they are provoking us.

How in the world does a culture by being Anti -US provokes you ? In several countries in Europe , social and not social organisations use anti-US rhetoric for numerous reasons related and that can all be summurized to one , they don't like your governments actions.

Though they don't support violence against you and are not antiIsrael. And they are also not Anti-civilians of US but against your goverment. If you believe you are being provoked by the sheer fact a country is anti-US when your goverment and politicians openly provoke numerous governments , what can i say ? Do a world war three tomorrow.

The only way you can be provoked is by the threat of military action against you. Which does not mean you may have not caused it first but regardless of that fact it is a serious provocation. Accusing others of Anti-Us rhetoric being a provocation if it does not constitute such military threat is , well unfounded and ridiculous.