Originally posted by Hortlund
MAD is someting that is so sick to its core that it is hard to grasp now. But just because the phenomenon existed does not make it justifiable in any way.
Oh, indeed. I agree wholeheartedly.
However, like wearing garlic around your neck to ward off vampires....... MAD apparently worked. (Don't see any vampires around here, do you?
)
We're all still here despite recently going through 50 years of incredibly huge nuclear arsenals armed and ready to fire and the "high tension" political events of that same time period.
Was it MAD that kept the fingers off the triggers? Who will ever know for sure? But the fingers WERE kept off the triggers and MAD may well have been the doctrine responsible for that fact.
... and CLEARLY BOTH SIDES were targeting civilians and making no secret about it.
Or maybe it was just the dawning of the Age of Aquarius that saved us.
Idealize all you like. Civilians are always killed in war. Always have been, always will be.
There is a difference between explicitly targeting civilians and targeting valid military targets and the attacks resulting in civilian casualties.
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Yeah, the difference is that you
usually kill more if you explicitly target them. But you'll still kill some, even if non-targeted and using "smart" weapons.
As I said, specificity of targeting makes no difference to the dead; they're still dead.
So, is it OK to kill some civilians if you didn't mean too? But bad if you meant to?
How about this:
"Don't start nothing, won't BE nothing."
Sadly, Adolph, Benito and Hideki probably hadn't heard that one before they set out to conquer the world.
Man, just think how many civilians would have lived to old age if these three politicos had been able to control their egos. Hey, do you think these three figured some civilians were maybe going to die if they implemented their various schemes of conquest?
It's real easy to keep your civilians from being killed in a war. Don't start a war.
There ya go!
