X-Message-Number: 17552
From: "john grigg" <>
Subject: Nuking our enemies?
Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001 00:10:55 

George Smith wrote
>It may be that there will be a failure of nerve to exercise the >nuclear 
>option but that would only probably mean that those currently >in office 
>will later be voted out.

George, your belief that a nuclear strike is the way to go not only scares 
me, but also deeply offends me.  I am very glad you are not the U.S. 
president, or one of his key counselors.  I cannot get over your lack of 
judgement here.  I say this as a friend who sees a gulf between us on the 
matter.

I am enraged over the death of at least five-thousand American citizens, but 
I still do not feel it warrants a nuclear strike at this point.  Not when we 
have varied options with covert ops, conventional air and ground forces, and 
diplomatic and economic pressuring.

You may ask me just how many Americans must die before I say use a nuclear 
strike.  Well, I just don't know.  Maybe one million, but that is just an 
arbitrary number.  Unless nuked first, or with hundreds of thousands dying 
and dead from a biological weapon, I just don't see why the power of the 
atom should be unleashed.

Even after what happened, to use a nuclear strike at even a terrorist 
sponsoring nation would be a big mistake.  Simply because a nuke was not 
first used on us.  We would be giving terrorists the absolute excuse(in 
their own twisted minds) to nuke one or several of our largest cities.  And 
by boat, plane or truck they would.  And terrorist sponsoring nations like 
Libya and Iraq would see it as their duty to make the funding, equipment, 
and knowledge available to them.  Do you see the downward spiral here?

I do feel we need to deploy covert special ops teams on a scale never before 
seen.  But, even that must be done very wisely.  The success of Israeli 
teams may have been a contributing factor in the American attack.  Unlike 
Clinton, Bush did not pressure Israel to be restrained in this practice.  
So, the U.S. was made to look like a contributor to the violence, and so a 
target to be hit.

I realize there are on easy answers.  Even the partial solutions will be 
costly in money and American human lives.  I wish my national leaders luck 
in finding the right path.

sincerely,

John

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