Fascinating. Human beings are such polar creatures.

I do love the phrase “lefty grass knicker wearing peaceniks”. It’s such a dismissive mentality born from post-adolescent competition (on increasingly stupendous scales) that perpetuates the certainty of ‘dirty rotten people who are out to get us’. This attitude maintains the very need for such deterrents in the first place.

I don’t see how a heavy nuclear deterrent will help us win the current blockbuster, “War on Terror”. You can’t fight an idea with nuclear missles. You can certainly fire them into the middle of a heavily populated country where several of their followers may happen to live, but you can’t destroy an idea with physical weapons.

Especially not an idea you helped create, propagate and still continue to fuel.

Myopia will lead us all to a bad end. The only intelligent way you can surmount insurgents and terrorists is by organised unified opposition, not self-righteous unilateral vigilantism. Why does one country have the right to arm itself and another does not?

This ‘them and us’ mentality, especially as a justification, is juvenile. When I was little I wasn’t allowed to play with my toys if I didn’t know how to share them. They were taken away and I was allowed to have them back only when I learnt how to treat them, and indeed others, properly.