re: #335 Gus 802

There’s a serious lack of balance and perspective here. Yes, what happened on 9/11 was evil and unveiled a serious gap in security within these United States. Yes, there is an inherent danger in Jihadism, Al Qaeda, and other terrorist groups. However, those dangers have been heavily distorted and inflated almost to the point of exceeding our Cold War fear of the Russians — who had a power and might that could have, along with the USA — destroyed the Earth in on nuclear exchange. Even the dangers of Iran, when compared with what we faced during the Cold War — pale in comparison. Yet, we are led to believe that Iran, along with North Korea, will lead to the destruction of mankind. This is simply not the case. We’ve cornered ourselves into an atmosphere of fear and paranoia that do not match or equate our previous historical challenges.

I’d disagree with the italicized section, if only because Iran and North Korea aren’t acting as typical rational actors, and with their access and development of nuclear weapons (and in Iran’s case, striving to achieve same), their inflamed rhetoric and leadership may actually utilize such weapons against the US or our interests in the affected regions or within range of their missiles.

In Russia we had a rational actor that held to MAD. The same can’t necessarily be said of the Iranians, who throw in a religious component that necessitates such a calamity to bring about end-time prophesies (the hidden 12th Mahdi). North Korea may be utilizing nukes as a bargaining chip to extract concessions (nuclear blackmail), but their intentions to engage in proliferation means that the North Koreans may send weapons to those who have no restraint in their use.

Moreover, the Islamic terror groups have directly attacked the US on a number of occasions, while the Russians (Soviets) utilized proxies to hit at US forces. So, in that respect, the threat feels much more imminent even though the comparative military capabilities of the Islamic terror groups like AQ are absolutely dwarfed by the Russian (Soviet) military. That the likes of AQ is more than willing to go after purely civilian targets than just military targets adds to the fear factor, even though during the Cold War - both the US and USSR targeted each others cities multiple times over as part of the MAD doctrine.