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September 17, 2004
Wings of Madness part 3
One of the things I liked most about Wings of Madness was the way Paul Hoffman tied in the scientific philosophies, attitudes, and predictions of the time in with his greater biographical story. On page 153 he provides this interesting quote From Leslies Weekly from 1896 that seems very relevant to modern warfare: 'so long, in short, as those who make both the wars and the trouble are perfectly safe from danger themselves, arbitration conventions and peace congresses may sit passing resolutions till doomsday. But the (aerodrome) threatens to change the face of the whole situation. Suppose it to be possible for a foreign battle-ship to sail within two or three hundred miles of our coast and set free an aerodrome loaded with a ton or so of nitroglycerin, and send it over Washington town. Would there be so many jingoes ready to plunge this country into a foolish and futile war with England?' This is an interesting prediction considering that the U.S. strategy in Iraq was to try and first kill Saddam with a tactical strike. This tactic freaked out several dictators like Qadaffi of Lybia who gave up his quest for WMD soon after he learned that the U.S. would target dictators themselves and Kim Jung Il of North Korea who apparently went into hiding after he heard of the U.S. attempt on Saddam when he realized that the U.S. might target him next. We can only hope this will continue to deter other dictators from being aggressive.
Hoffman then goes on to quote people like Gatling (page 156) who claimed his machine gun was a defensive weapon that would save lives in the long run by reducing aggression, but the only place that was true was when industrialists turned them against strikers. Nobel thought similarly that (page 157) 'on the day when two army camps may mutually annihilate the other in a second, all civilized nations will probably recoil with horror and disband their troops.' However, not all nations have ever had this power and so far nuclear armed nations still go to war, just not directly with each other. He quotes the Los Alamos physicist Luis Alverez on page 160 about how the bomb dropped on Hiroshimas 'destructive force is so many times thousands of times worse that it may realize Nobels dream.' It seems Alverez was sort of right here.
One other person he quotes in this section is Bertha von Suttner the first Nobel peace prize winner. She wrote in 1893 that (page 159) 'The twentieth century will not end without human societys having eliminated war as a legal institution.' This seems funny and wildly optimistic to us now and shows how although human technology and society may change, human nature does not. As much as I hope war will end, it seems likely that some parts of the world will always be run by aggressive dictators and by those willing to support and tolerate third party militant and terrorist groups within their borders. And as long as these conditions are true (along with some others I have not thought of yet probably) the world will have war.
Oh, and Dan Rather should be fired.
Posted by Pete at September 17, 2004 03:26 PM
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