Geopolitical Darwin Awards

[Major Variola (ret)]

At 12:15 PM 9/19/04 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote:
>My running, personal theory is that Muslim fundamentalism (and in
general,
>most fundamentalisms) get going when the locals gain a persistent sense
that
>they're gettin' screwed over,

See "Crusades", which aint over til the tall buildings fall.

and that their current government ain't
>helping a whole lot.

The Saudi royalty is the best the US can buy!

It's kind of a devil's bargain to obtain a source of
>strength. By necessity it needs to reject a lot of the local culture,
>otherwise there isn't sufficient motivation to fight. In general, it's
>probably on many levels predictable and even reasonable.

Religion (of any form that posits an afterlife) is a terrorist weapon.

Faith in the man with the silly hat is a WMD.

>Of course, this can boil over into bizarre, "fanatical" behavior, but
then
>again as Mr Young so aptly put it, "fanatical" is what the screw-ers
>normally call mass behavior they don't like.

Winners write the history books.

>In the case of Nukes, I'd point
>out that the nuclear nations have a distinct advantage at the UN or any

>other bargaining table, so if I were Iranian I'd be working pretty hard
to
>get something quasi-viable together that could be called a "nuke". Of
>course, the few truly "fanatical" members of the local nuke-wannabees
might
>get a hold of the block box and, well, that sucks.

1. The UN doesn't let Rogues (tm) into the Security Council and thus
a nuke is only *de facto*, not diplomatically useful in deterring
colonial
regime-changing.

2. Far more likely is that a decade's worth of work, a lot of money, and

a few scientists will be vaporized by an Israeli Hellfire, made in the
USofA
by those proud flag-flying folks at Raytheon Death, Inc.

The counter to 2 is to have two or more, one mounted on a missile on a
mobil platform,
how do you say MX in Farsi, and keep everything really really secret.
The first nuke is for demonstration purposes, which
might be a waste if its a U-gun type
(except in making abundantly clear how far along your R&D is :-).
(Remember the
Hiroshima bomb was *not* tested, so sure were the scientists.  Trinity
was
a Pu-implosion finesse job.)

The interesting thing is that Iran isn't buying a few from Pakistan.  Oh
that's right,
the U$ bought the Paki 'leadership'.  Also means that Al Q isn't willing
to share
their stash with Iran.  They probably think they have higher-priority
uses for them.