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![]() Big Red wrote: Jordan wrote: Oh no The upper heirarchy among the Arab states has but one purpose- to survive. Nuclear war's have never been very popular- because a nuclear exchange will amount to complete destruction. No ruling class has ever knowingly destroyed itself- which is basically what an exchange of nukes amounts to. Your claim that "a nuclear exchange will amount to complete destruction" is simply an assertion. You are making the big assumption that each party to the "exchange" is able to score enough hits on the other party to "destroy" it (and what exactly do you mean by "destruction?" Reduction of status as a Power? Collapse of regime? Severe depopulation? Near-complete genocide? Each of those levels requires an increasing number of average hits per city to effect). Ah, but you're assuming that Arab Powers aren't prone to suicidal acts of aggression. Witness the fate of Saddam Hussein's Iraq as a counter-example. How many wars have the Arab powers fought with Israel after the Jewish state developed tactical nuclear weapons? Two major ones (1973 and 1982) and numerous minor ones, one of which is going on right now. The Israelis got their first few nuclear weapons by 1970. Egypt and Syria launched an unprovoked invasion of Israel in 1973. In 1982, Syrian-backed border attacks on Israel (which by then had dozens of atomic weapons) led to Operation Peace For Galilee, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Right now Israel has at least a hundred, possibly hundreds of atomic weapons, and Syria is backing a series of Palestinian raids on Israel which may quite possibly lead to another Syrian-Israeli war. NONE of the Arab states that attacked Israel, as far as I know, has ever had _any_ operational nuclear weapons. What has protected them from annihilation has essentially been Israel's humaneness -- a frail shield considering that the Arabs wish to annihilate Israel. This does not fill me with vast confidence regarding Arab strategic common sense. Even Saddam's invasion was tacitical. Kuwait is just a sheikdom that has some oil. He gambled that the Russians and the Chinese could stop the U.N., and America wouldn't rush into a war without allies. He fatally underestimated how powerful America was, especially what the U.S. could do with a smaller superior force, and command of the sky. However, Saddam's invasion didn't amount to sucide, as he retained power after the war. No, what amounted to suicide was his continued violation of the truce terms _after_ the end of Desert Storms, including an attempt to assassinate ex-President Bush. This led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the overthrow of Saddam, and his likely execution on charges of crimes against humanity. " I disagree with your general proposition" I would challenge you to devise a scenario for a nation that contains an aresenal of viable tacitical nuclear missles to be destroyed. Oh, that's easy. Some other nation which has enough nuclear missiles to hit all of the target nation's major conurbations does so. End of the target nation. You said _nothing_ about "be destroyed without taking the attacker down with it." You simply assumed a sane potential aggressor being deterred by the threat of retaliation. This is not a safe assumption, as not all potential aggressors are sane. Especially one that has can deploy these missles in subs or in secure silos. No viable system has ever been deployed to stop an inbound nuclear missle with 100% accuracy No viable system will ever be developed to stop an inbound ANYTHING with 100% accuracy. But who said that 100% accuracy was required? and no stratedgy could made could hope to take out all of an exisisting nuclear power's missles, silos, and submarine based weapons. Who said that taking out "all" of an existing nuclear power's missiles, silos and submarine based weapons was required? You want a scenario involving one nuclear power attacking another nuclear power and NOT being deterred or destroyed by the threat of retaliation? Ok, here's one. At some future date Iran has 10 nuclear missiles capable of hitting Israel. The Israelis have 200 missiles capable of hitting Iran, and an ABM deployment capable of engaging all 10 nuclear missiles if launched simultaneously with an expected success rate of around 95% (I'm simplifying tremendously here, but my assumption is a per shot expected kill around 50% and multiple shots taken per incoming missile). Iran goes to war with Israel, backing terrorist teams who use nerve gas to kill 1000 Israelis, but has not yet launched an atomic strike. Israel becomes convinced on the basis of intelligence reports that Iran is going to launch an atomic strike the moment Israel retaliates against this atrocity. Israel decides that it cannot permit the continuance of these attacks and launches a pre-emptive attack on Iran. The Israelis begin with a stealthy (*) attack against the Iranian missile silos. This employs tactical nuclear weapons. The attack succeds in destroying 50% of the missiles. Unfortunately the Iranians have adopted a Launch On Warning policy against just such a contingency, and 5 nuclear missiles scream towards Israel. The chance of the Israeli defense system hitting each missile is 0.95. Hence the chance of the Israeli defense system letting at least one missle through is 0.95 to the 5th power, or around 0.77. In 77% of the universes in which this war happens, Iran is disarmed with no hits on Israel. In around 23% of the universes in which this war happens, Iran gets at least one hit on Israel. But in around 80% of those universes in which Iran hits Israel, Iran gets ONLY one hit on Israel. Assuming that the Iranians are using atomic bombs, one hit on Israel is not going to destroy Israel. It is not even going to destroy a large Israeli city; it will simply damage that city. Hence we can say, with some degree of confidence, that this atomic war ends with Iran's nuclear arsenal gone, Israel surviving, and Iran now at the mercy of an Israeli victor. If the Iranians are actually stupid and fanatical enough to declare that they will continue the war, building more atomic weapons and resuming the attack, Israel then probably launches a series of atomic strikes aimed at eliminating Iran as a Power with the resources to build more atomic weapons; millions of Iranians die, and the chances are that not one Israeli dies as a result of any Iranian atomic attack. If you think that this is unrealisticaly lopsided (in particular that I am unreasonably assuming that the Iranians will not work through the logic that I have just had and thus avoid the initial terrorist attacks in the first place) consider that at least one influential faction in the Iranian government has repeatedly, publically argued that it is the religious duty of any Islamic state to immediately attack Israel with atomic weapons as soon as it has _any_ atomic weapons with which to attack that country. It's also reasonable to assume that an atomic-armed Iran would at first have only a half-dozen to a dozen nuclear missiles, and most estimates of the Israeli arsenal put it at low hundreds. My estimate of the chances of the defense system are based on the performance of the Patriot II-III in battle, coupled with the assumption that in a situation where atomic attack was expected a battery, rather than individual missile, would engage each incoming threat. I could have made the defense stronger or weaker, and I deliberately simplified the math by stating that each _volley_ of missiles had a roughly 95% chance of succeeding with a per-shot in each volley success chance of 50%; the actual math of such engagements is _much_ more complicated than what I did. You might argue that I didn't give Iran "secure" siloes (what does that mean anyway?) or ballistic missile submarines. Well, as far as I know Iran doesn't have any siloes that are "secure" by any means other than the usual hardening, and Iran also has no SSBN's. (In fact, only America, Britain, China, France and Russia, to my knowledge, have any SSBN's at all -- it's a large and expensive type of submarine which is not very useful unless you have at least hundreds of total atomic devices and at least three such submarines so that one can be maintained on station at all times). I could, of course, have assumed that Iran modified one of their existing submarines to carry a _few_ nuclear missiles of some type (not a true SSBN, but perhaps an SSG with a couple of nuclear cruise missiles in its loadout, such as our _Los Angeles_ class). But then, cruise missiles are a lot easier to shoot down than are ballistic missiles. Finally - nuclear war, involving the destruction of an entire nation, is only a possibility in the minds of the most sociopathic members of the human species. Unfortunately, such persons sometimes rise to power as the heads of states. Witness Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, and I could extend the list considerably without even leaving the 20th century. Furthermore, you're assuming that nuclear war must necessarily involve the destruction of an entire nation. In the one that we have actually fought so far (World War II) no nation was in fact entirely destroyed. - Jordan (*) I'm talking about the use of electronic warfare and radar avoidance tactics in general, not the specific use of B-2 or F-117 aircraft, none of which are possessed afaik by the Israelis. The Israelis used such tactics in their strike on the Iraqi atomic reactor. |
#2
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Jordan wrote:
NONE of the Arab states that attacked Israel, as far as I know, has ever had _any_ operational nuclear weapons. What has protected them from annihilation has essentially been Israel's humaneness -- a frail shield considering that the Arabs wish to annihilate Israel. Humaneness is the Jewish Death Wish. Remember Amalek and blot his name out. Remember and do not forget. When Moshe Rabaynu (Moses our teacher) saw an Egyptian task master beat a Hebrew slave, Moses surpressed that primordial Jewish urge to be fair minded and consider the social forces that led to the task master's brutality. He surpressed that and killed the momser. Given a choice between having a tender heart and a tough mind, chose a tough mind. Bob Kolker |
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Robert Kolker wrote:
Jordan wrote: NONE of the Arab states that attacked Israel, as far as I know, has ever had _any_ operational nuclear weapons. What has protected them from annihilation has essentially been Israel's humaneness -- a frail shield considering that the Arabs wish to annihilate Israel. Humaneness is the Jewish Death Wish. Remember Amalek and blot his name out. Remember and do not forget. When Moshe Rabaynu (Moses our teacher) saw an Egyptian task master beat a Hebrew slave, Moses surpressed that primordial Jewish urge to be fair minded and consider the social forces that led to the task master's brutality. He surpressed that and killed the momser. Given a choice between having a tender heart and a tough mind, chose a tough mind. Given the choice between doing something rational and deciding actions based upon religious mythology the fundie believers will always choose the mythology. -- Extrajudicial killing is another term for cold blooded murder. -- The Iron Webmaster, 3666 nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml commentary http://www.giwersworld.org/opinion/running.phtml a5 |
#4
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![]() Robert Kolker wrote: Humaneness is the Jewish Death Wish. Quite possibly. The thing that I find remarkable about the way in which the Arab-Israeli conflict is viewed internationally is the extreme restraint that Israel has shown towards nations that want to literally annihilate the Israeli people, and the way in which the international community nevertheless puts all the blame on Israel. If the Israelis had simply driven out the Arabs from conquered lands and never let them come back back in 1967, this would not be the case -- there would have been an outcry at the time, which would long since have been forgotten under the press of more recent news. - Jordan |
#5
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Jordan wrote:
Robert Kolker wrote: Humaneness is the Jewish Death Wish. Quite possibly. The thing that I find remarkable about the way in which the Arab-Israeli conflict is viewed internationally is the extreme restraint that Israel has shown towards nations that want to literally annihilate the Israeli people, and the way in which the international community nevertheless puts all the blame on Israel. If the Israelis had simply driven out the Arabs from conquered lands and never let them come back back in 1967, this would not be the case -- there would have been an outcry at the time, which would long since have been forgotten under the press of more recent news. - Jordan So the removal of some 2,000,000 arabs from Palestine in 1947/48 to set up the Jewish State has nothing to do with this? Ricardo -- "Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand Ignorance and prejudice, and fear, walk hand in hand ..." |
#6
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Ricardo wrote:
So the removal of some 2,000,000 arabs from Palestine in 1947/48 to set up the Jewish State has nothing to do with this? The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had as much to do with this "removal" as did the Jews who founded the State of Israel. Many Arab speaking Muslims and Christians removed themselves on the expectation and devout hope that the Jews would be shortly wiped out or driven from the region. It didn't work out that way. Sorry about that. Losing a war is such a bitch. Bob Kolker |
#7
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Robert Kolker wrote:
Ricardo wrote: So the removal of some 2,000,000 arabs from Palestine in 1947/48 to set up the Jewish State has nothing to do with this? The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had as much to do with this "removal" as did the Jews who founded the State of Israel. Many Arab speaking Muslims and Christians removed themselves on the expectation and devout hope that the Jews would be shortly wiped out or driven from the region. It didn't work out that way. Sorry about that. Losing a war is such a bitch. Bob Kolker I wasn't taking sides, merely making an historical observation. Think of it in terms of what you now call 'Native Americans' driving you off their tribal homelands from which they were forcibly removed and resettling them, and then bombing American cities when you tried to get it back. At least the Native Americans have more moral right to do that than the Israelis do with what they claim to be 'their' land. Ricardo -- "Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand Ignorance and prejudice, and fear, walk hand in hand ..." |
#8
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Robert Kolker wrote:
Ricardo wrote: So the removal of some 2,000,000 arabs from Palestine in 1947/48 to set up the Jewish State has nothing to do with this? The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had as much to do with this "removal" as did the Jews who founded the State of Israel. Many Arab speaking Muslims and Christians removed themselves on the expectation and devout hope that the Jews would be shortly wiped out or driven from the region. It didn't work out that way. Sorry about that. Losing a war is such a bitch. So what is the problem with kicking out a bunch of foreigners from Europe who came to Palestine with the openly expressed intention of murdering Palestinians? And as they started terrorist bombings Palestinians markets in the early 1930s there was no reason to keep the foreigners around. As "removing themselves" that zionist lie has been long exposed even by Israeli historians so please do not try to work it in sideways. As for losing a war, the ONLY people who have never been formally at war with the European foreigners is the Palestinians. Bobbie, grow up and learn to face reality and stop hiding like a child behind zionists lie to salve your atheist conscience. EVERYONE knows they are lies. When you repeat them people pity your wounded conscience. -- It is not antisemitic to criticize Israel. It is antisemitic to effectively criticize Israel. -- The Iron Webmaster, 3645 nizkor http://www.giwersworld.org/nizkook/nizkook.phtml Blame Israel http://www.ussliberty.org a10 |
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