or do you simply want to argue without debating?
Neither. Just stating my opinion.
Living in the DC metro area, I have thought long and hard about what it would mean for our government and our way of life if someone set off a nuclear device right next to the White House or the Capitol Building or the Pentagon, and the truth is that, in a way, 9/11 was a blessing, because we've decentralized the command structure since then.
A long time ago, during the Cold War, when MAD was thinkable, we set up a chain of command in case Washington was hit, not with one, but multiple nuclear warheads, not 10 or 15 kilotons but thousands of kilotons.
I like to put it this way, our government is self-healing and self-replicating. The US government doesn't really operate from top down, it's just as much from the bottom up and side-to-side. We may have been lulled into a false sense of security after the fall of the Berlin wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union but that's no longer the case.
I dunno about the NY financial district. Did they learn from 9/11 and set up redundant systems out far away from the center? That's what they said they were doing, I assume they were telling the truth.
Just out of curiosity, if Beijing was targeted with a nuclear weapon, say 10-15 kt carried in on a truck, wouldn't the Chinese economy and government and people recover and go on pretty much as always? Do you really need Beijing that badly? |
