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November 21, 2010

Thinking Out Loud

It would be difficult to find much support for the idea that America’s (or the UN’s) drug wars are succeeding. About the best being claimed for either right now is an empty assertion: that the world’s drug problems would somehow be even worse if certain arbitrarily designated agents had not been declared illegal by act of Congress forty years ago. However, closer scrutiny of even that modest claim reveals it to be just as absurd as the notion that any market for products or services desired by enough humans- from commercial sex to nuclear weapons- can ever be “controlled” by declaring them illegal. In fact, the ongoing quests of 3 designated “Axis of Evil” nations for their own nuclear weapons are a telling rebuttal: both North Korea’s and Iran’s efforts can be seen as crude attempts at nuclear blackmail; as was Iraq's before unilateral Israeli aggression canceled it abruptly in 1981 (and set it back enough to obviate any need to overthrow Saddam as part of a rational response to 9/11).

Nor can it be claimed that the current emotionally charged dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir has been made safer by nuclear weapons. Ditto North & South Korea; in fact, just the opposite. Finally, who would Israel nuke in response to unequivocal evidence that an extremist Arab weapon exists?

Nor does the current global economic debacle auger well for the immediate future: pessimism and resentment are far more conducive to mindless aggression than is optimism about the economy and the future. That neither modern nations nor their vaunted international agencies, including the UN, are capable of controlling rogue nations like Somalia is just as evident now as it was in Jefferson’s day when the “shores of Tripoli” unwittingly expressed a still-futile American promise to impose its brand of order on unruly populations.

Finally, does anyone doubt there are Muslim Jihadis somewhere whose faith would allow them to deliver a bootleg nuclear device to an infidel target meeting their (personal) criteria of legitimacy?

All of which prompts an obvious question: How did the world’s only cognitive species get itself into such a mess?

Doctor Tom

Posted by tjeffo at November 21, 2010 06:25 PM

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