Jacob,
A Rational Party response to your Surrender Party comments:
Doing Without Killing:
Stopping the spread of nuclear weapons:
1. Respect every nation's sovereignty, so they don't have a need for nukes.
2. Don't sell them the materials and technology (duh, but nobody does this obvious method).
3. Don't arm their enemies. U.S. complicity in arming Israel with nukes and the means to deliver them, is a big reason why the surrounding States want nukes.
Agreed.
4. A strict No First Use policy by all nuclear powers.
We never did this before because the Soviets, Chinese and North Koreans set up environments that we could not defend without nuclear weapons:
1) Fulda Gap - the only way to prevent overpowering
Soviet armor was to make sure they knew any movement into West Germany would be met by tactical nukes.
2) Seoul - North Korea has sufficient artillery to accomplish the equivilent of a large scale nuke attack. The only defense is to launch a series of tactical nukes to take out the artillery.
3) Taiwan - The only effecteive response to a Chinese threat is a Nuclear umbrella - used even if the Chinese 'only' attack with conventional forces.
4) Other WMD - since we disavowed Chemical and Bio weapons, we now equate them with Nukes and respond to those attacks with our Nuclear deterrent.
5. Embargoes, sanctions, blockades, to punish proliferators.
Hasn't worked so well to date.
6. gradual disarmament by nuclear powers, turning control of their nukes over to the (reformed) UN, with universal intrusive inspections to verify compliance.
7. a global Marshall Plan, as a carrot for compliance. $150B/Y (what we're now spending to turn Iraq into "flypaper for terrorists"), to eradicate malnutrition, preventable disease, and illeracy in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Agreed.
Israeli-Arab peace:
1. Israel builds a Wall on the 1967 border. If defense from suicide bombers (rather than further colonization) is the reason for the Wall, this shorter and more defensible Wall is better.
2. Israel withdraws from all the tiny indefensible settlements, all the settlements built between and inside Arab populations, holding on to just the few large settlements (which contain most of the total settler population) adjacent to the 1967 borders. This conforms with the Taba and Geneva plans.
3. The Palestinians create whatever State they want, with whatever government they want, on the land that today has a majority Arab population. Neither Israel nor the U.S. get to dictate what form of government, or what leaders, the Palestinians have.
4. The Palestinians give up the Right of Return, and the 1.2M of them in Israel now, can move to the Palestinian State if they want to (or be moved, if they show disloyalty to Israel).
5. The Palestinian State can now negotiate as an equal with the Jewish State. The U.S. will be a truly fair and neutral referee, brokering a peace treaty, and many other issues, such as sharing scarce water resources.
Actually a very good plan.
6. Once peace treaties are signed with all neighbors, then Israel's security can be guaranteed, in the only permanent way possible, by becoming the 51st State in the U.S. This is the carrot Israel gets at the end of all the compromises and land-giving: permanent guarantee by the U.S. military, of the Jewish State. By themselves, 5 million Jews in Israel can never be secure. They need a Patron, they need to be part of a larger unit, to survive. But they'll never get that security, if they try to hold on to Ariel.
Now you start getting less rational, no we cannot decide who the Pals elect, but must intervene in Israel. Arafat is ok, but Sharon is not.
Why don't we invite the Pals to become the 51st state? Inviting the Israelis, but not the Arabs isn't smart.
7. To conform to the U.S. Constitution, the State of Israel would have to make some changes: separation of Church and State, guarantees of minority rights, no religious tests for government subsidies, ending control of family law by the Jewish Orthodox fundamentalists.
....
Minimum Standard" is things like: respect other nation's sovereignty; don't gas your minorities; don't overgraze or pollute the Commons. Just the basics.
How exactly do you reconcile respecting sovereignty with not killing minorities or political opponents? How do you deal with a North Korea thats willing to sit in the dark killing its own people rather than play nice?
John |
