Being the Good Guy. Good Grief.
 

I can only imagine how this thread will go.

The US is trying like hell to let the loony in charge of North Korea know that he hasn't got a chance in hell of "winning" in any kind of military conflict.

But the loony in charge of North Korea is so insulated and comfy, that he really imagines he can wage war against the FREAKIN United States.

Anyone on the planet knows that the US is armed to the teeth and is extremely powerful.

I am NOT an alt-right fanboy, but am in fact, a classical liberal. Hence:

I would rather that my country spent more money on far more immediate problems like hunger, poverty, silliness in the schools and universities, rampant crime, the terrible imbalance of wealth - the fact that actors and athletes are making MILLIONS while common workers like ME are making next to nothing...

etc, etc.

BUT -

Will someone tell that loony in charge of North Korea that he cannot possibly win a war against the United States?

Thanks.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/07...mbing-run.html

On it.

Seriously, though, Fox wants this war every bit as badly is CNN wants to ramp up conflict with the Rooskies, and it shows in the shoddy reporting. Indeed, one needn't be an apologist for North Korea to note that there have been plenty of American provocations, AS THIS LINK, ALSO FROM FOX NEWS, MAKES CLEAR. Of the two countries in question, one has actually used nuclear weapons, and indeed, considered USING THEM IN THE KOREAN WAR, or at least wanted to give the impression that such a thing was possible.

Thanks, Quincy, checking links.

But, they won't hit their targets, because they'll be obliterated in the air.

And so it goes...

Time for some soothing Rammstein:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr8ljRgcJNM - ["this is NOT a love song"]

Reading the other link...

If an armed warhead is intercepted en route, what happens to any fallout? Does contamination of a non-combatant country count as collateral damage? And who, should this happen, would be deemed the aggressor?

This is about far more than a pair of power-hungry grotesques, is it not?

Yes! And that's an excellent question. I don't know the answer.

Yes, I would consider any damage done by an intercepted warhead as collateral damage and innocent lives lost: civilian casualties.

I have NO idea what happens to the material of a missile that has been destroyed. I imagine it is obliterated, as in blasted into very tiny, unharmful bits.

But I don't know.

Edited in: I think that this leader in North Korea just might be willing and able to actually do this. Edited in just now: Because he's a loony.

The aggressor would be whoever fired the first (hopefully obliterated) missile en route to a real, designated target, without provocation, I imagine.

After searching around, and being bombarded with crap from the Net, I think this link might be sorta kinda helpful?

https://www.quora.com/What-would-hap...yed-in-mid-air

Bits:

Thanks. I looked up stuff as well, but it doesn't console me.

I am still bothered by the ethics, too.

I, Annie, have declared myself neutral and am happily cultivating my garden. Two big boys, Bingo and Bozo, who live either side of me, are having an argument. They have been bird-flipping, bad-mouthing and mooning one another for years and now they have declared war. Bozo has sent a nuclear missile to hurt Bingo. He has sent it right over my garden but there is no danger of its exploding till it gets to Bingo.

Bingo, however, has seen it coming and is determined to whack it before it gets to him. He "obliterates" it. Right over my garden. Plutonium (at the very least) rains down on my lupins and I start feeling unwell.

I reckon Bingo is more to blame than Bozo, but both big boys have run away and all my lupins are dying.

Stay on the case, Quincy.
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I reckon Bozo is to blame because he shot the first missile. This is common sense, and not controversial in the least. ???

Should Bingo let the missile hit its target, killing who knows how many innocent people, or try to intercept the missile and destroy it, saving many lives, but possibly endangering others?

I was expecting the usual suspects to come in and suggest that the US would be the bad guys for actually intercepting a missile aimed at a US target. I'm rather surprised to read that you, Ann, are seemingly prepared to blame the US for destroying a missile headed for a city in the US. But that's what your Bozo and Bingo fable seems to indicate? Please tell me I've misunderstood you.


- Ann D, post #7

Do you think it would be more ethical to allow a missile fired by North Korea at a city in America to hit its target, so as to avoid possibly injuring or killing innocents with debris from the fallout?

I believe these missiles are usually destroyed over the ocean, to minimize any collateral damage. Although the oceans are full of ships, and gracious beasties who could get hurt.

This reminds me of the logic behind people who are alarmed that Israel should defend herself from attacks. Israel is the baddie, for defending herself from relentless attacks, even though all she wants to do is live in peace on a tiny strip of desert. Hamas wishes to wipe Jews off the planet. Israel has no such desire to wipe anyone off the planet. But Israel is the baddie. That's lefty-loony logic for you.

Mind boggling.

No, Bill, you didn't misunderstand me. The Bingo and Bozo scenario was an attempt to reduce a serious situation to Kindergarten basics and perhaps I should have known better. Re-introducing facts and alternative facts messes it up again.

I was basing my intervention on the title you chose for the thread and hoped to examine the entrails of good-guyness from the point of view of an innocent bystander, a self-appointed haruspex.

We must agree to differ. I shall return to my garden, on its tiny island between Lilliput and Blefuscu, and devote myself to the selective breeding of chickens that will eventually produce nothing but spherical eggs.

I chose the thread title to describe the actual situation between North Korea and the US. The US, to my understanding, is trying to explain to North Korea, by a demonstration of force, that it doesn't stand a chance against her in a military conflict.

This show of force is NOT intended as a threat, or a provocation. It is quite literally done as a means of preventing North Korea from even thinking about initiating aggression.

Kim Jong-un lives in la-la land, and apparently does not realize what he is doing or what he is up against. As "supreme leader", he lives in a fantasy world. People think Trump lives in a fantasy world. Well, it ain't nothin' compared to Kim Jong-un's fantasy world.

Having to say that un is worse than trump is not where we want to be.

Beyond the Trump disaster, which I hope takes down as many conservative b.s. peddlers as possible, there has been a steady decline of a middle class. Just from my own experience. A firefighter's salary allowed me to go to a private school, my family to have two cars (one of them new) and a house-- and a family vacation every year. So what changed?

All this happened since Trump's been in office?

What exactly happened, Jim?

***

From my pitiful perspective, the AZ minimum wage went from 8.05 USD to 10.00 USD, so that is actually some improvement in my situation. Not that the Don is INTO such a thing as a minimum wage. I believe he is against such things.

Nonetheless, my financial situation has improved by a tiny margin.

I don't hang with the absurd social myth of "classes" of people, but I do see the rich getting ridiculously richer while the lower income people are finding things harder and harder...but what does this have to do with North Korea, or the ethical question raised in this thread:

Should the US intercept a nuclear missile aimed toward an American target, or NOT intercept it, for fear of possible harm or death to innocent lives, most likely over the ocean?

Ann has said that Bingo (USA) would be more guilty than Bozo (North Korea), should there be collateral damage and/or civilian casualties (or gracious, lovely beasties in the ocean), while I claim that Bozo, who fired the first missile, would be far more guilty.

No. Ann was trying to move the ethical question from specifics to hypothesis, in the hope that this might clarify the position, not of America or North Korea but of the rest of the terrified world.

She is happy to accept the "Loony Lefty" label but is as saddened by the gibe about the sea-creatures as she is horrified by all the underlying assumptions.

She remembers chastising one of her own children for an act of destruction and emphasising the fact that, although the actual damage was almost accidental, the wailed excuse of "Steven started it" compounded the offence.

With sad hindsight, she remembers that she had watched the two of them winding each other up and knew that it would end in tears, but had not intervened. Her bad.

And the word "obliterate" makes her think of Daleks.

Best leave the silly old sod out of the conversation. She wouldn't know a Good Guy if he tapped her on the shoulder and bit her on the arse.

In my efforts to be the good guy, I was charitable towards Quincy, and actually thought that he was "On it".

But, to address that first link, in ALL CAPS, that Quincy provided:

These are clearly NOT provocations, but a formal show of force. It is reminiscent of what the Truman administration did when the Japanese were showing zero regard for the Geneva Convention during WWII, when the US had developed a means of literally castrating Japan and robbing that extremely militaristic nation of its "fighting spirit". Japan was warned, explicitly, and informed that there was a weapon that could (would!) devastate entire cities. The Japanese authorities did not take heed, deeming their Emperor a god on earth, or some such. Nonetheless, Japan continued its aggression, and even ignored months (MONTHS) of warnings from the US:

Full article here, from which the above is taken:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic...asaki#Leaflets

***

Does ANYONE feel good about those fucking bombs? Nope. As a matter of fact, the very pilots that dropped them were on the ground rendering first aid in Japan, the very next day.

The bombs forestalled a land invasion and infantry war that would have killed many more military fighters as well as civilians, than those atrocious, hellish bombs. Young children were being recruited in Japan to fight. Their selfish and self-aggrandized leaders, stuffed full of ancient militant codes of honor, would have been GLAD to sacrifice them.

As most people know, after the second bomb (which went off target, killing far less people than it may have [thank GOD], the Japanese finally surrendered, formally. A good many of the military higher ups offed themselves in high style, taking extremely sharp blades and gutting themselves with honor: but not before writing that all important haiku.

And this is how it goes in our silly world, because men like Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth, and Benedictus Spinoza, from the Netherlands, are very rare birds, and their words are not paid the attention they deserve.

Ann,

May I offer my formal, knees in the dirt, nose in the dirt, apology?

You are a lady, and, believe it or not, since you are a lady, I would lay down my life for you, were it necessary.

I know, I know, that sounds like Hollywood, don't it? It sounds unreal. BUT, there are men like this that say what they mean, and mean what they say, come hell or high water.

I'd rather die, than cause a gracious lady, and a poet no less, a single moment of harm.

Jayne knows this, as does our Julie Steiner.

I am sorry for not understanding what you were saying. I'm a numbnuts.

Onwards!

And where the hell is Quincy?

Your apology is accepted, William. Thank you.

Do you now, I never give this a thought. There are many things to worry about, death and taxes and whether Joe Root will score a century but North Korea... nah! Leave it to the Donald.

God. Not worth it.

Nothing is out of bounds. The article is important. As is this one, contesting whether the bomb freed anyone.

https://www.thenation.com/article/wh...bed-hiroshima/

Where am I, William? On the Sphere less frequently than you and regretting making a fairly obvious point. (One person's show of force meant to intimidate is very much another person's provocation, particularly when one of the countries has actually invaded the other one. Which one, you ask? I'll give you a hint--you live there.)

The quote comes from the comments section of the article Emitt linked to. I don't agree with the very last sentence. I think any and all innocent human lives matter.

That being said, I AM NOT the POTUS, as Truman was, then. He was consigned, at that extremely difficult time, with the protection and security of the country of which he was President. My 20/20-hindsight morality, and me being born two decades after the horrific event in question, withers away to irrelevance.

Nikki Haley's speech (It's a youtube link because the other vid links are jitterbugging for me, but the video can be seen all over):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIOinfm4sEY

IOW, no, Quincy, you are wrong. The USA does not want to start a war, but is trying to forestall it with a show of force, after the supreme leader in NK started playing with his new toys.

Liberal logic seems to be: crazy tyrant The supreme leader in the other nation is NOT the bad guy. OH NO, never! It's America that's the baddie. Kim can do whatever the hell he damn well pleases, and liberals in the West will not say a single negative thing about him, even though his own people are under oppression.

"To Americans, the death of one innocent person can be as powerful as the death of millions."

So that's all right, then. Silly me. No need to listen to the rest of it.

And nor will many of the people who came in at the beginning with the emphasis on the case of Otto Warmbier. A calculated reel-em-in newsbite.

Two decades, eh William? I was three when the bomb fell on Hiroshima. I was still reeling from the horror of the extraordinary happenings of May 8th, when people flung furniture out into the street and lit huge fires to celebrate there being no more huge fires... I recall cowering under a trestle table in South London, pondering on the irrationality of human behaviour, while little pieces of bright yellow cake, made with dried egg, dropped all around me. Fairy cakes, iced in red, white and blue were served, but even after all that austerity - which was to last a lot longer - some people couldn't bring themselves to eat the blue bits.

But I also remember the sights and sounds and smells of the before of it. I know what it's like to be bombed. I wish more people in positions of power were able to say the same thing.

So you see, I'm not only a lady, I'm a very old lady. A loony-lefty old bat. So don't you pay me no never-mind, young man. Nobody else will.

I am sorry for what you went through, Ann. I don't know if you believe me or not.

Should the US allow a nuclear missile fired upon an American city to hit its target? Perhaps out of a sense of guilt? Or something like that?

Or should the US try to intercept the missile?

Anyone may feel free to answer the question.

Not all bad, William. I met my first American soon after that. There was a big party at the anti-aircraft station on the common near my house. We children were given treats from the field kitchen (a lemon curd tart!)and rides on the revolving gun turrets. A big GI lifted me up and set me spinning slowly round. I remember his gentle strength and his smile. For a long time I believed that all Americans were black.

I like that story, especially about the black G.I.

I wonder why most of the active members on the Sphere ignored Ralph's Black History Month thread back in February, where all we really had to do was post great poems by great black poets, of which there are a great many, even after being alerted to the thread by me in a few of the political threads going on at the same time?

Why?

Because most of the active members were busy writing doggerel in the anti-Trump threads that had been going on at about the same time, busy patting one another on the back and feeling very comfy.

I was told by one senior member that, well, perhaps those members didn't have time to join in Ralph's thread? Which seemed odd since they apparently had plenty of time to write political doggerel and congratulate one another, over and over.

Then another senior member said that they did were not black and did not feel that it would be proper to try and imagine what it would be like to suffer bigotry and prejudice, so they did not feel comfortable joining in the thread.

Then another senior member told me in private that...

No, let's not go there.

Bill, I’m not an ethicist, just a fuzzy-headed occasional poet, but I think I would answer your question this way:

It is defensible for a nation to shoot down a missile that has been fired at its people. It should take care to minimize all loss of life from such an action, so over the open ocean may not be the worst option. It is not defensible for a nation ‘preemptively’ to bomb or attack another nation that it suspects may launch a missile at it in the future. (Isn’t that the infelicitous "Bush Doctrine"?) And it’s hypocritical for a nation to attack another ‘preemptively’ when the preemptive aggressor already possesses one of the world’s largest arsenals of the weapon in question.

It’s an interesting exercise to compare the list of countries that the US has bombed or invaded since 1945 with the list of countries that North Korea has bombed or invaded since 1945. Then, it’s interesting to see how many of the countries that the US bombed or invaded had nuclear capability at the time we attacked them. You can draw your own conclusions from the exercise.

Annie, haruspex is a marvelous word. And if you succeed with your hens, I want one.

Hi Bill,

You say that "This show of force is NOT intended as a threat, or a provocation. It is quite literally done as a means of preventing North Korea from even thinking about initiating aggression."

Quincy says "One person's show of force meant to intimidate is very much another person's provocation, particularly when one of the countries has actually invaded the other one. Which one, you ask? I'll give you a hint--you live there."

You say "Quincy, you are wrong. The USA does not want to start a war, but is trying to forestall it with a show of force, after the supreme leader in NK started playing with his new toys."

Now, I don't see Quincy saying that he thinks the US wants to start a war, do you? All I see him saying is that North Korea may view these actions more as escalation and threat of war than as a show of force with the peaceful goal of avoiding a war. Surely one can hold that Kim Jong Un is an unhinged and dangerous dictator and oppressor of his own people and still question the strategy used to respond to him? Now maybe Quincy holds the views you attribute to him, but if he does, he's certainly not expressed it here. I did find myself wondering, especially with the additional comments you've since deleted, if perhaps you were reading things into what Quincy said based on what you'd expected his view to be.

Because then I read this: "Liberal logic seems to be: crazy tyrant The supreme leader in the other nation is NOT the bad guy. OH NO, never! It's America that's the baddie. Kim can do whatever the hell he damn well pleases, and liberals in the West will not say a single negative thing about him, even though his own people are under oppression."

OK, well that's not a view I hold, and it's also not a view I've seen expressed (though I'm not reading much of the US press) and it certainly hasn't been expressed on this thread as far as I can see. I've only ever seen negative things said about Kim Jong Un in the media, including the liberal media. Of course, I'm not saying that you can't find examples of people out there expressing the view that you attribute to all liberals. Perhaps you can. But still, every liberal? Or even the majority of them?

If I've understood you correctly, you are someone who is opposed to the idea of classes of people and wants people seen as individuals. So how about starting with some individual examples of the above view so we can assess and address these on their merits, rather than a massively sweeping, unevidenced and clearly false (if only by virtue of its generality) statement about hundreds of millions of people who've you've grouped together based solely on a very broadly shared political/philosophical view.

We, the amorphous left-leaning masses of the West, may not be who you think we are. We may even be individuals with widely differing views on a variety of topics, and some of our views, if only a minority of them, may even be quite reasonable.

best,

Matt

Michael, Would you rather live in the US or North Korea?

Would you rather have the Don as President or would you rather have the Supreme Leader of North Korea as your President?

Two simple questions. You can answer them directly, and honestly, or you can dance around them.

The only thing in your post that I wish to respond to, for now, is:

No kidding?

Has the US bombed or "attacked" North Korea? Or has the US simply demonstrated that she has far more military power than NK and that it would be unwise for NK to launch a first strike upon the US? Did you listen to the UN speech?

Please stay on target. Pun intended.

Thank you, yes, I am doing a group-judging thing, which is dead wrong. I'm sometimes not as careful as I'd like to be. I'd like to extend a special thanks to you for remembering that I am a nominalist, that I do not believe that universals exist as actual, real entities, and that I believe, very emphatically, that people can only be judged as individuals, NOT as groups.

YAY! Somebody remembered!

I apologize for being the thing that I hate, and being led emotionally to treat groups a real beings. [Edited in: AND for using 'being' three times in the same sentence!]

That being (ha!) said, I have yet to argue with a person on the Sphere who says they are left in their thought, and consider themselves liberals, who is saying anything substantively different from what I have been seeing in this thread, and other threads on the site.

In private, mind you, it's a bit different. Not to name names, but there are at least three senior members with whom I correspond via email who consider themselves left-ward in their thinking, but who also hold some views that would be called conservative. None of them have participated so far in this thread. They write encouraging things to me and thank me for being the odd-man-out, so to speak, while at the same time not exactly agreeing with my views, and in a few areas having views quite the opposite of mine politically.

Well of course. Howzabout ye amorphous left-leaning masses (at least those of you on the Sphere), begin to express some of those widely differing views, right here in this thread, on this particularly touchy topic?

The one thing we can agree on, as poets, is that NONE of us have warm fuzzy feelings about the idea of bombing ANYONE, ANYWHERE. Do we agree on that?

However, if I state that the US is morally compelled, in no uncertain terms, to intercept a nuclear missile aimed toward a densely populated US city, I expect rational people to agree with me.

IF there is some reason the US should NOT intercept a nuclear missile aimed toward a densely populated US city, then I would like to hear that reason.

Since you ask whether the US has attacked or bombed North Korea...

"The brutality of the Korean War* has largely been overlooked by U.S. history, but the conflict has long shaped Washington's troubled political relationship, or lack thereof, with North Korea. As President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threaten to ignite a new battle in the region, the scars of the past seem to resonate more powerfully in the Korean Peninsula than in the West.

During the course of the three-year war, which both sides accuse one another of provoking, the U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of explosives on North Korea, including 32,557 tons of napalm, an incendiary liquid that can clear forested areas and cause devastating burns to human skin. (In constrast, the U.S. used 503,000 tons of bombs during the entire Pacific Theater of World War Two, according to a 2009 study by the Asia-Pacific Journal.) In a 1984 interview, Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean War, claimed U.S. bombs "killed off 20 percent of the population" and "targeted everything that moved in North Korea." These acts, largely ignored by the U.S.' collective memory, have deeply contributed to Pyongyang's contempt for the U.S. and especially its ongoing military presence on the Korean Peninsula.

Most Americans are completely unaware that we destroyed more cities in the North then we did in Japan or Germany during World War II... Every North Korean knows about this, it's drilled into their minds. We never hear about it."

(Historian and author Bruce Cumings. in Newsweek.)

My point being that a little humility, a recognition of the past, a reaching-out, a bridge and not a wall, might lessen the likelihood of that missile's being fired in the first place. We are coming back to the basics of the Good Guy again.

*And yes, I remember this war, too. As a pre-teen I used to play in the back garden with the same-aged son of our lodgers. He was fascinated by military action and determined to join the army when he "grew up". He guzzled every media reference to this conflict and had access to many alarming "comics". He always wanted to play "K'rean War". This involved hurting me and having me cry for mercy. Nothing sexual, just a bit of throttling and tight ligatures. He used to put on a fake American accent.

I don't live in North Korea, but I can imagine what it would be like, how the US might be spoken of with suspicion and loathing, just as "The Russians" were regarded at mass media level in the US throughout another long, cold war that I have also not forgotten.

That's in the past. NONE of us in this conversation had anything whatsoever to do with what happened THEN!

My questions remain unanswered.

Who will have the courage to answer them correctly?

However, if I state that the US is morally compelled, in no uncertain terms, to intercept a nuclear missile aimed toward a densely populated US city, I expect rational people to agree with me.

IF there is some reason the US should NOT intercept a nuclear missile aimed toward a densely populated US city, then I would like to hear that reason.

I've edited out the rest of this post; PM coming your way, Bill.

Bill,

Your post above is strident, nasty, and resorts to name-calling. I'll engage with you no further.

M

Bill. Chill. Chill Bill.

You want simple non-nuanced answers? As a thought experiment, if country A (any country) launched a nuclear missile at a densely populated area of country B I would expect country B to make every effort to intercept said missile, whilst doing their utmost to limit casualties from said interception. Ann's garden analogy is lovely but flawed: there are lots of innocent people in gardens in country B who shouldn't be held responsible for the the actions of Bingo or Bozo anymore than the people whose gardens lie in the middle.

And I'd rather live in the US, lunatic Trump and all, than N Korea right now.

There. Happy? What have I won?

I sense your frustration (I'm intuitive like that) and have some sympathy. But I think maybe you frame discussions in such a way that people feel like you're setting a trap for them so you can say 'Aha! Not so lefty liberal now are ya?' Folks bristle at that...

Oh, Mark - thank you. Yes. How could I have overlooked them? All my younger self's marching and placard-waving "not in my name" should have shown them to me. I was representing the B's as individuals and not as countries, which was shortsighted and narrow-minded of me.

Bill, you say "NONE of us in this conversation had anything whatsoever to do with what happened THEN!" My point was that perhaps we should. All THEN was once NOW, All THEN creates NOW. (I was aghast to find that there seems to be no mention of the Korean war in the Wikipedia entry for Curtis LeMay, so I am still trying to get my head round that in the light of Professor Cumings's NOW and THEN.)

As to "intercepting", "destroying", "obliterating", the approaching weapon? - what criteria would you use to determine a safe place for such a detonation? A less-populated area? Possibly a rural area of the US itself if the thing had crossed the coastline? It is too big a question for a weak and cowardly self-congratulating poetaster. I claim all your adjectives as my excuses.

Peace, friend.
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I don't like intervening and ''coming the heavy" unless it's called for, but I've received some PMs about this thread, so I've stepped in this time. (See post #34)

I'm not locking the thread, as has been suggested, . . . so long as the discussion continues in a polite manner, as most of you are doing. Thank you all for your co-operation.

Jayne

I think the idea of a missile defense system seeing actual use against ICBMs in the air is horrifying to people on a couple levels. The great hope is that these horrific bombs will never be used again. Imagining anything other than that they rot in their silos is a nightmare. I have never heard anything but that air to air missile defense against ICBM's is tricky at best and a bit of a dice roll.

A conventional war with North Koreans would mean a war against a mass of enslaved soldiers, either brain washed, misdirected, or simply pressed into service to avoid executions of their families at home.

Anyone I know on the "Left" (in reality today a very multivocal hodge podge of old wine skins and new wines) finds that Regime to be among the worst abusers of its people on the planet. There just aren't any easy solutions. It isn't about courage of any kind to "stand" against Pyongyang.

You can't dismiss Ann's last post as you do an expect anyone to take you seriously.

If you imagine the political spectrum with the (maybe over-simplified) double axis of Left/Right and Bottom Up/Top Down it may help you to understand why many of the left don't recognize the cartoon you keep posting as their wanted picture. We find the Top Down forms of authority as far from our wishes as much of the so-called Right. The caste system that formed in North Korea was based on allegiance to the Top Downers and all others became part of the Hostile caste and were eliminated. All political certainties and Revolutions with a capital R are to be fought against but the fight should start with the ones in charge where you live here and now. Personally, I think your overlooking the dark tower of the home team by denying the utopian and totalizing characteristics of the capitalism(s) of the technological State which is a State you can actually engage, unlike Pyongyang.

Emitt, you say:

'I think the idea of a missile defense system seeing actual use against ICBMs in the air is horrifying to people on a couple levels. The great hope is that these horrific bombs will never be used again. Imagining anything other than that they rot in their silos is a nightmare.'

Come on. Nothing that Bill has posted has suggested otherwise. I'm beginning to understand his frustration. Nobody wants to imagine these things being used but Bill is asking you to imagine the unimaginable and then make a moral choice between the lesser of two horrible, horrible evils. Is the thought of not employing the missile defence system and allowing the ICBM to hit its target any less 'horrifying to people on a couple levels'? Your answer seems to be 'I prefer not to think about it, and that makes me a good person'. Why can't you at least answer his question and then you'll have earned the right in the rest of your post to lecture Bill about his apparent political naivety.