+1 minute. They see small, but significant, steps being taken in the right direction. Even just undoing the international damage of the prior administration is a daunting task. When you take into account the dunderheaded fear of science and reason and the efforts to resurrect the toys of Reagan's cold war fantasy, it becomes clear just how much more work in necessary. C'mon,
missile shields?
And you can believe the panel took some heat for being optimistic to any degree. They were taken to task and, while soberly addressing the obvious (and unobvious) continuing threats, there was just enough progress to warrant some positive vibes. It amounts more to a simple act of encouragement than a deserved indictment of the shitty, shitty world that's burbling around us.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cuchulain  Isn't the concept of the clock outmoded now that the biggest threat of a nuclear exchange is no longer one between nuclear armed nation-states but between non-static terror networks and nation-states?
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Iran's an issue, no doubt, but it's India and Pakistan that continue to be a major concern. Even a limited war between those two would have catastrophic (CATASTROPHIC!) impact both locally and worldwide. Pakistan's military stability has only deteriorated over the last decade.
Never mind nations that have nukes and won't just declare them(the constantly posturing Israel leaps to mind). Dwindling resources, religious intolerance and your average garden variety human rights disasters will only increase localized tensions in a number of corners and as much lip-service folks like the US would like to pay toward helping in these areas, there's only so much that can be done in the short term. Americans, among other westerners have a very difficult time with long-term projects; projects that people may not live to see reach fruition.
Since the early 90s, the idea a catalytic situation has really been the biggest worry. Crazy religious weirdos(of which, the US has plenty of it's own!) can bring on some small scale (relatively speaking) issue. But the idea that any localized incident is incapable of snowballing out of control and fast is a pipedream. Also, despite the myth that they'd never be used, plenty of bioweapons exist in a number of arsenals belonging to nations (perhaps foolishly) considered too level-headed to use them.
Perhaps even the fact that folks in this country are so blessedly free of any kind of warfare (and have been for over a century) have helped lull way too many folks into the idea that war, when it happens, happens "over there"! We've been desensitized to the most direct impact, the bodies coming home, with a great assist from the last administration which tried to pretend there weren't any. How else could we still be anchored agressively in two nations in the very middle of the hottest flashpoint of the last 50 years. Dig up the videos and look at "rational" opinion of the average blockhead on the street in the weeks after the September 11th attacks. As the United States continues to evidence (and proudly, for some fucking reason!), there are plenty of hardliners left who believe God is on their side and supports their very provincial view of the world.
