[swarthyguy]

Well, responses welcome. OK, not welcome but will be interesting to read, i'm sure.

[Ingtar]

Perhaps they are calculating in the probability that it will go nuclear? Some schools of thought hold that we would never have devestated the world over Cuba.

[Billthedrill]

Well, our friend is doing a bit of condescending himself here, IMHO. But here's the bottom line - for all the noise the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. did NOT end up lobbing nukes at each other. I'm hoping a similar restraint occurs between India and Pakistan. It better, because anyone who speaks so blandly of "only" 12 million dead, few of whom are "bystanders" sends chills up my spine. (Curious usage, BTW - surely he can't mean that there will be 12 million principals and no civilians killed...)

[Cicero]

I'm sure the scholarly expert would be horrified at the suggestion that he is a racist. No, more likely the problem is short memory and an inclination to exaggerate his own field of specialization, like most scholars.

On the other hand, the Soviet Union was a tightly controlled government. Pakistan swarms with Afghan immigrants and Muslim extremists. Its intelligence service and army are susceptible to extremist influence too. The problem isn't racial, it's religious. I'd rather trust Stalin with nuclear weapons than Bin Ladin. No, Stalin was not a nice guy. He murdered up to a hundred million people, but at least he kept his nuclear weapons and his military under tight control.

[rudypoot]

"They have shown greater restraint and greater humanity to civilians than your country has in times of peril."

Yep, that is why you guys keep fighting each other and continue to suffer. You claim moral superiority and yet people are still dying because of it. Isreal is using the same tactic with the "palastinians", and look where they are at. The US was also restrained from toppling Saddam, and look where that got us. We nuked Japan, and look what happened there. We helped to administer a "regime change" in Nazi Germany and won only after we went at there manufacturing sites in populated areas.

Crap or get off the pot. I don't not see a war, but after decades of this going on, the question has to be asked: Is strategy really worth all this death and destruction?

[joebuck]

This author is obvoiusly unfamiler wtih the "Doomsday" machine. ;-)