The Warpfish Chronicles

"27 years on the planet, and I still haven't figured out what's going on."

Around the World, Warpfish Style II -- May 3rd, 2001

Stockwell Day

There's nothing quite as pathetic as watching somebody who's already been fatally compromised try to fight his way out, especially when he's the leader of a political party.

The crazy thing is that, if he succeeds in his attempt to remain in power, he's going to destroy the Alliance in the process. I'm not a big fan of the Alliance -- while some of their ideas do make some sort of sense, they're way too right for my tastes. (And, I see how dear the ideas that do make sense are to them -- I'm not a big fan of party discipline, and when push comes to shove, neither is Stockwell Day. In the end, it's business as usual. *sigh* )

Saskatchewan Judge

There's something wrong with somebody's common sense when a judge orders a mother to bring her two daughters to visit the husband who sexually assaulted the daughters.

Am I missing something here? Or is there somebody who is just not firing on all cylinders? Even if there's a legal precedent somewhere in there (though, for the love of God, I can't figure out what the hell it might be), a little common sense has to be applied here. The law isn't meant to stand on its own; you have to apply a little foresight, a little common sense, and a little compassion. Everytime that I've felt obligated to challenge a ruling, one of those three ideas had been violated.

Missile Defence

Nobody wants an arms race, and I think scaling back up to the Reagan era SDI system is kind of stupid (unless Bush has no intention of deploying a system -- he just wants the money to research things that would be useful in space in a military context, whether or not the US actually deploys anything), but, the concept of missile defence does make sense. In the horrific game of nuclear gamemanship, you avoid defence, because the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction keeps the peace -- nobody would win a nuclear war. If your defence is too good (or has the potential to be too good), the idea is one side will launch an attack before the defence will make their weapons impotent.

However, what about the case where it's only one or two warheads fired? Remember, to maintain the concept of deterrence, the US has to state that any nation firing weapons of mass destruction will meet equal retaliation. It also means that, if the unthinkable does happen, the US has to fire back.

Can anybody blame President Bush if he doesn't want to have to contemplate killing 20 million people in response to a nuclear attack on the United States? And how would we all feel if it turned out that the nuclear weapon launched had been launched by accident? As Tom Clancy pointed out, the damn things are just too easy to use. It's possible to defend against accidental firings or low numbers of warheads, without compromising deterrence.

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Last Modified: Monday, 11-Feb-2002 12:41:45 CST