From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Mon Jun 29 1998 - 09:09:46 MDT
den Otter [neosapient@geocities.com] wrote:
>You don't need any nukes to defend yourself from suckers
>like that, for example an old diesel sub with a couple of torpedoes
>would blow them out of the water in no-time. Or what about a remotely
>controlled plane with a couple of rockets and machine guns? Or a
>remotely controlled gunboat?
At which point, at the request of the Tongan government the US sends over
a few stealth fighters (aka small stealth bombers) with laser-guided bombs
and you don't wake the next morning. Surely you can't honestly believe
that any US president is going to sit by quietly while you set up a free
country anywhere on the planet? Either you stay within their definition of
"freedom" (e.g. no selling drugs, no gun-running, no bioweapons, no "child
porn", no giving haven to "terrorists") or you're going to become Global
Enemy #1. And you can't prevent those things in a free country.
>Unlike in any regular country, you can use
>virtually any means you want to defend yourself successfully, and *not*
>be arrested afterwards.
Oh yeah, you can use anthrax and nerve gas on passing warships and no-one
is going to take action against you. Get real.
>And *should* they cause
>trouble after all, they're as vulnerable as anyone to retaliatory
>attacks (with for example the plague, anthrax, nerve gas or something
>more subtle) by the surviving islanders/their comrades in other
>countries.
Exactly. But such tactics are only possible if you already have those
weapons ready to use. The only tactic which will keep the US government
out of your country is to call up the President and say "hey, we've got
nukes in various major cities which will detonate if we don't send them
a valid code every ten minutes. Attack us and they go off." Only immediate,
massive retaliation will stop them, not a vague threat of future attacks.
As Erwin Strauss says, don't even think about it without weapons of mass
destruction at your command, *and* the willingness to use them in defence.
Mark
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