थौघ्ट्स उन्फिर तो त्रौब्ले

Addressing the last point only, for I found so much to say about it that I never got around to any (B):

(A) SECDEF McNamara said in 1962 "maintain powerful nuclear forces for the alliance as a whole." In 2005 Citizen MacNamara wrote "initiate the use of nuclear weapons—by the decision of one person, the president."

(A.1) The "alliance as a whole" seems to have evaporated somewhere in between, probably either on 25 December 1991 (when the Lenin-Gorbachev racket finally went out of business) or else on 11 September 2001.

(A.2) With no total alliance left, "by the decision of one person" becomes less obnoxious than it would have been earlier. For George XLIII to wield Uncle Sam's nukes single-handedly "of, by and for" Sam alone is constitutional, at least arguably, and that is dispositive as regards Dubya's right to wield. That JFK should have behaved like that when nobody outside one member state in The Alliance as a Whole ever got a chance to vote for the man would have been legally and ethically groundless altogether. Times have changed.

(Analysis of A)

What do George XLIII's crew really think about this matter? Is "global terrorism" a threat that might be nuked on all the world's behalf by One Single Trigger Finger? (For that matter, do they seriously consider that they are doing the whole planet a favour by so stoutly resisting (alleged) globoterror in the former Iraq as they have done -- and as they very obviously hope to keep right on doing, by crook if not by hook -- with merely conventional hyperpower?)

The Bushies certainly do not appear to be chanting "The cause of Petraeus is the cause of us all," if 'us' means the universal human race, yet shouldn't they be, really, on the basis of their own Party principles? No doubt Sec. Dr. Rice and Ms. Karen Hughes have warned their boss that most of the known human race from China to Peru, or at least their governments, are either indifferent or hostile to the prospect of a Petraean salvation from "GloboTerror in Mesopotamia," as it were, but so what? The Bushies can't possibly save America without most of us Democrats getting saved too as a sort of collateral benefit, and on those terms why shouldn't they save all the lesser breeds without as well? Hardly anybody at all, domestic or foreign, beyond the pale of the Grand Old Party itself will ever THANK them for such a deliverance, yet are they mere cheapjack applause-seekers to complain about "ingratitude"? Are they not rather stern Stoics ever solely concerned to do What Is Really Right in advance and then spurning all congratulations from the heedless afterwards for having done it, even as they spurned all dissent and dissuasion and even discussion about doing it beforehand?

To toss single-finger nukes into that heady brew of Big Management Party ale would only add the possibility that there might not be any "afterwards," although I daresay a few additional Hiroshimas and Nagasakis perpetrated in North Waziristan or the Islamic Republic of Iran would not bring on the Zero Future instantly, as JFK and his SECDEF might conceivably have done in 1962, there would have to be an interim of years or decades or even generations before the nuked-upon could nuke back successfully and victoriously zero out the human future altogether. The nuked-upon would have the ultimate impetus to attempt such a Samson-worthy feat, however, and they would certainly entertain no soft and silly Japanese scruples about "Well, after all, we technically did strike first, if only military and physical-force strikings are to count." Whatever dotty and disproportionate notions may be entertained at Château Kennebunkport and Rancho Crawford, or amongst the nifty Huntin'tonian Clashists of Harvard Square or over at the Harvard Victory School across the river, the potential neo-nukees to a man are convinced that they are "only defending themselves." M. Bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí may have defended themselves and "everybody's" Islám somewhat excessively, but that was only perhaps misguided zeal in a very familiar old-fashioned path.

To "nuke 'em for 9/11" as if BL&Z were Hirohitos and Tojos, or Khrushchevs and Brezhnevs, and the casual Big Management Party nuke-tossers of 2007 only so many Barry Goldwaters proposin' to "lob one into the men's room of the Kremlin" is not just a bad analogy but an ominous portent.

Theirs is a way in which the world really might end. One takes refuge with God from the prospect thereof!