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Comment by jivatmanx | Hacker News Reader

The USSR had dozens of nuclear ICBM's pointed at every major European city, and, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, U.S. city. They also had massive armies.

If war had occurred, The U.S. could have been completely annihilated, utterly destroyed, ceased to exist. That's simply not the situation we face with today with Islamic terrorists.

It's reasonable to ask the question if we might be willing to accept a handful of causalities in exchange to remaining a free country. Than, take the money we're spending on the MIC and use it for safer pools and bathtubs, saving an order of magnitude more lives.

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It's a reasonable question, but is it practical? 9/11 only killed a fraction of the number who probably died in the last few days in the recent typhoon, but the effect was to bring the entire country and economy to a halt.

The US would need statesmanship beyond that of Churchill to galvanize and harden society against those eventualities.

Moreover, in an era of dirty bombs, chemical weapons and even full nuclear devices, the consequences might not always be merely a "handful of casualties," and the grotesque effects of certain weapons, particularly on children, would be images that would be highly likely to incite increasingly aggressive responses.

The US historically is not a society that is accustomed to the idea of being under any kind of siege, nor of allowing its families to remain under threat of any kind. That's not the underlying narrative, and it's just not in its DNA.

It's unfortunate that we feel the need to lash out at broad categories of people, rather than finding and arresting the actual perps.

Of course, this is conveniently exploited for corporate smash and grab operations, and thus encouraged.

I really don't think asking too much of our presidents to try an instill in the public the value of Liberty and Democracy; nor is this some Herculean task. It costs nothing, nor does it require a PHD from Harvard to explain, but it's an investment that will continue to pay off for generations without end.

As for Nuclear Weapons, Al Qaeda obviously does not have the technology to make them, so their safety is almost entirely a factor of international cooperation in regarding their security in countries that do. Such cooperation regarding their most sensitive and strategically valuable weapons requires trust, something that will be in shorter supply if we continue unhindered economic and political espionage.

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