The Road Warrior
When I was a kid, I learned and grew up with the knowledge that the Russians had nuclear missiles aimed at the US and that we had an arsenal of these weapons aimed at them. We could at any time go to war, and that would mean the exchange of hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive material exploding across the globe, and that we could not reasonably expect to survive such an exchange, none of us. And yet I was never afraid. I never believed the Russians would fire first, and I knew we would not fire unless they did. Nuclear deterrence was a waste of time, and so was building more and more ICBMs. The Chinese weren’t a factor. Neither was France. When Israel got the bomb, I still didn’t believe they’d use it. When India and Pakistan joined the Atomic club, I was a bit more worried, but still I relied upon the idea that fundamentally nobody would ever be so stupid as to start shooting off nukes. Ronald Regan didn’t believe the arms race was a waste of time, and his belligerence seemed to go to good effect in putting an end to the Soviets and the need for maintaining these weapons. Perhaps he was cleverer than I have ever given him credit for. He didn’t, after all, ever fire the nukes, nor did he succeed in building SDI. Perhaps he never meant to. Perhaps it was all a bluff, magnificently played out on the world stage. We’ll never be sure, will we? But now we have George W. Bush. President Bush II clearly models himself on Regan as much as on his father, Bush I. The big difference is that despite surrounding himself with Regan’s and Bush I’s advisors, Bush II still doesn’t have the brains to run a bluff (let alone a country). And now Saddam Hussein has called him on it and the UN players have folded their hands and the US, along with Britain and Australia, is going to war. Yes, there’s 48 hours for Hussein to find a place to hide – France, maybe? – but I don’t believe he will. Hussein is going to stand and fight (to the degree that his soldiers do, at any rate, and that won’t be small; we can expect Scuds, and we’d better expect chemical rounds). And no matter what I read of the thinking behind acting against Iraq and the plans for the Middle East and peace in our time (to quote another who embroiled us in foreign wars to our detriment), they rely upon the idea that people act according to logic, to statistical probabilities. It’s just not true. We can’t accurately predict what will happen, what Syria and Iran and the Saudis will do. We are headed for trouble. I’ll be happy to be proved wrong, because right now, this war, I’m a little nervous. (Apropos of the movie referenced in the heading above, at least I’m in the right place, although I’ll have to get a motorcycle and some football pads. See, I'm not that scared.)