Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id XAA26235 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 2 Oct 2001 23:01:09 +0100 From: <AaronLynch@aol.com> Message-ID: <d5.cc72564.28eb91ef@aol.com> Date: Tue, 2 Oct 2001 17:55:59 EDT Subject: Re: state of memes To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows 95 sub 113 Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
In a message dated 10/2/2001 2:22:44 PM Central Daylight Time,
edace@earthlink.net writes:
>
> Aaron,
>
> Your "thought contagion" site is the best discussion of memes I've seen yet
> (if you don't mind me using Dawkins' slippery term.) Thanks.
>
> I can't say much in favor of your analysis of American policy in the Middle
> East. It's silly to think that Iraq, had it possessed the requisite
> technology, would have considered launching a nuclear attack against the
> United States. Armed with 24 missiles, each containing up to 17
> independently maneuverable warheads, a single Trident submarine (of which
we
> have 22) could have obliterated the country in minutes. Saddam wanted
nukes
> because boys like toys. At no point would such weapons have offered him
any
> leverage against the US.
>
> Ted
>
Thanks, Ted.
The unfortunate thing with nuclear weapons is that there are far too many
scenarios that you and I would regard as utterly silly causes for an attack
but which have been shown dangerously possible anyway. Despite the assuredly
mutual destruction, the USA and USSR, for instance, have repeatedly come to
the brink. Besides accidents and misinformation, there are also possibilities
of dangerous miscalculations. I fully agree that Iraq could be reduced to
smoldering, bubbly, radioactive glass. But there are still avenues to
miscalculation. For example, Saddam Hussein, if armed with a handful of
nuclear weapons placed secretly in US cities, might assume that the USA is
simply "too soft" to tolerate any mass casualties at all. They might conclude
that a "demonstration" blast would be useful in convincing the USA to simply
let Iraq do whatever it wants to do militarily in the Middle East. They might
miscalculate that they could then count on the USA to not only not retaliate,
but also to give Iraq free reign to invade its neighbors with conventional
and/or nuclear weapons. Using a demonstration blast to extort large and
advanced thermonuclear weapons from the USA or Russia is also a danger worth
considering. Just having additional countries running the kinds of risks that
the USA and the USSR took creates a major danger. It is hard to go through
all the possibilities, but it strikes me that there are some situations where
nuclear proliferation is so dangerous that the nuclear threat alone warrants
a conventional military war by a country such as the USA. In my opinion, Bush
senior's administration could have sent different signals that would have
prevented the invasion of Kuwait. Whether non-proliferation was one of their
major motives is an open question, though. It is entirely possible that the
desire to have and win a war was a bigger motive to the administration. If
so, then we might consider it a "lucky" coincidence that it also happened to
set back the Iraqi nuclear program. As high as the death toll was in Iraq,
death toll if they had used nuclear weapons against their neighbors or much
larger countries such as the USA or Russia would have been far higher.
--Aaron Lynch
http://www.thoughtcontagion.com
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Oct 02 2001 - 23:06:23 BST