One morning, I got out of bed, turned on my computer, and my Netscape email client automatically downloaded that day’s news pane. On that particular day, the news was that two hijacked planes had been flown into the World Trade Center.
These were my first three thoughts, in order:
I guess I really am living in the Future.
Thank goodness it wasn’t nuclear.
and then
The overreaction to this will be ten times worse than the original event.
A mere factor of “ten times worse” turned out to be a vast understatement. Even I didn’t guess how badly things would go. That’s the challenge of pessimism; it’s really hard to aim low enough that you’re pleasantly surprised around as often and as much as you’re unpleasantly surprised.
Nonetheless, I did realize immediately that everyone everywhere would be saying how awful, how terrible this event was; and that no one would dare to be the voice of restraint, of proportionate response. Initially, on 9/11, it was thought that six thousand people had died. Any politician who had said, “6,000 deaths is 1/8 the annual US casualties from automobile accidents,” would have been asked to resign the same hour.
No, 9/11 wasn’t a good day. But if everyone gets brownie points for emphasizing how much it hurts, and no one dares urge restraint in how hard to hit back, then the reaction will be greater than the appropriate level, whatever the appropriate level may be.
This is the even darker mirror of the happy death spiral—the spiral of hate. Anyone who attacks the Enemy is a patriot; and whoever tries to dissect even a single negative claim about the Enemy is a traitor. But just as the vast majority of all complex statements are untrue, the vast majority of negative things you can say about anyone, even the worst person in the world, are untrue.
I think the best illustration was “the suicide hijackers were cowards.” Some common sense, please? It takes a little courage to voluntarily fly your plane into a building. Of all their sins, cowardice was not on the list. But I guess anything bad you say about a terrorist, no matter how silly, must be true. Would I get even more brownie points if I accused al-Qaeda of having assassinated John F. Kennedy? Maybe if I accused them of being Stalinists? Really, cowardice?
Yes, it matters that the 9/11 hijackers weren’t cowards. Not just for understanding the enemy’s realistic psychology. There is simply too much damage done by spirals of hate. It is just too dangerous for there to be any target in the world, whether it be the Jews or Adolf Hitler, about whom saying negative things trumps saying accurate things.
When the defense force contains thousands of aircraft and hundreds of thousands of heavily armed soldiers, one ought to consider that the immune system itself is capable of wreaking more damage than nineteen guys and four nonmilitary airplanes. The US spent billions of dollars and thousands of soldiers’ lives shooting off its own foot more effectively than any terrorist group could dream.
If the USA had completely ignored the 9/11 attack—just shrugged and rebuilt the building—it would have been better than the real course of history. But that wasn’t a political option. Even if anyone privately guessed that the immune response would be more damaging than the disease, American politicians had no career-preserving choice but to walk straight into al-Qaeda’s trap. Whoever argues for a greater response is a patriot. Whoever dissects a patriotic claim is a traitor.
Initially, there were smarter responses to 9/11 than I had guessed. I saw a Congressperson—I forget who—say in front of the cameras, “We have forgotten that the first purpose of government is not the economy, it is not health care, it is defending the country from attack.” That widened my eyes, that a politician could say something that wasn’t an applause light. The emotional shock must have been very great for a Congressperson to say something that . . . real.
But within two days, the genuine shock faded, and concern-for-image regained total control of the political discourse. Then the spiral of escalation took over completely. Once restraint becomes unspeakable, no matter where the discourse starts out, the level of fury and folly can only rise with time.
"I would have preferred, for example, that the U.S., Russia, China, UK, Israel and perhaps France announced that in one year they will declare war an any other nation that either has weapons of mass destruction or doesn't allow highly intrusive inspections to make sure they don't have weapons of mass destruction."
James D. Miller, I think your idea has possibilities. However, it would be very hard for it to succeed with israel on the list of nations that has nukes but denies them to others. Israel would have to be one of the nations that would be destroyed if it keeps nuclear weapons or refuses highly intrusive inspections.
What about india? Shouldn't they be on the list? We don't want war with india, they haven't threatened anybody except, well, pakistan.
And what about pakistan? If we let india keep nukes it would be hard to invade pakistan over their nukes. Should pakistan be one of the nations of the alliance that will destroy anybody else who has nukes?
Now it looks like a hard problem. No, your idea does not look workable. Allow russia to have nukes but not china? No. Allow china to have nukes but not india? Hardly. Allow india to have nukes but not pakistan? Tempting, but no. Allow pakistan to have nukes but not israel? It would be a good idea but it won't fly. Allow israel to have nukes but not syria? A pleasant thought but not practical. Allow israel and arab nations both to have nukes? Not practical either.
There's a logic here that hasn't played out yet. It goes:
Therefore:
The world as a whole hasn't recognised this logic yet because there haven't been any graphic examples. Probably after the second nuclear war, when the world sees what happens to the "winner", people will have a much clearer idea about it. But two nuclear wars will be hard on the world. Ideally these wars would involve small countries so they can be small nuclear wars.
So most of us will be better off if lebanon gets nukes. Then a nuclear war between lebanon and israel could be one of the smallest possible nuclear wars.
The next obvious choice is a war between libya and chad.
After 2 nuclear wars the world as a whole will be much more ready for disarmament then they are now, with nuclear war a threat that has not materialised for 62 years.
Ir'a much much easier to stop people from doing something they didn't want to do in the first place, than stop them from something they think can keep you from dominating them.
Freely after Ian M Banks