{"id":90,"date":"2001-11-03T00:46:20","date_gmt":"2001-11-03T00:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sunpig.com\/mt-entry-90.html"},"modified":"2006-09-23T19:30:11","modified_gmt":"2006-09-23T19:30:11","slug":"advanced-weapons-do-not-equate-to-good-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2001\/11\/03\/advanced-weapons-do-not-equate-to-good-foreign-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Advanced weapons do not equate to good foreign policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I haven&#8217;t been watching much news on TV lately.  The endless rallying cries of western imperialism depress me.  The relentless bait-and-switch propaganda makes me think that in times of crisis the media give up on critically questioning the government.  (And I consider myself naive for having believed that they ever did.)  And the continuous parade of utter stupidity just makes me downright angry.<\/p>\n<p>Consider a program that was on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.discoveryeurope.com\/\">Discovery Channel<\/a> yesterday evening.  It was a supposedly in-depth look at how Western (i.e. US) forces are tackling the war on Afghanistan.  (Yes, I meant to say &#8220;on&#8221; rather than &#8220;in&#8221;.)  It featured an interview with John Gresham, a military researcher.  I don&#8217;t have an exact quote, but what he said went something along these lines:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n&#8220;These new smart missiles can target any point in the world, and they&#8217;re accurate to a within thirteen meters.  Imagine what would happen if we could have placed a bomb right in the sleeping quarters of a Saddam Hussain, a Hitler, a Pol Pot (<i> names a series of other renowned figures<\/i>).  Don&#8217;t you think that would have an effect on their foreign policy?&#8221;\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bear in mind that I wasn&#8217;t paying huge amounts of attention to this show, and I&#8217;ve just taken his quote out of context.  But&#8211;<i>hello?<\/i><\/p>\n<p>First of all, it&#8217;s all very well and good to feed in a set of co-ordinates, and watch the missile go boom right on top of them.  But what happens if you&#8217;ve got the wrong coordinates by accident?  What if your intelligence is wrong?  The bomb may be smart, but <i>it<\/i> can&#8217;t tell the difference between a bunker and a school.<\/p>\n<p>And secondly, what if terrorists had the ability to detonate a bomb in the middle of any city, at any time.  Don&#8217;t you think that would affect our foreign policy?  Oh, wait&#8211;they <i>do<\/i> have that ability.  And it <i>has<\/i> affected our foreign policy.  It&#8217;s caused us to go to war.  So how can anyone think that holding foreign leaders to ransom for their good behaviour is a way of ensuring peace?<\/p>\n<p>What a muppet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I haven&#8217;t been watching much news on TV lately. The endless rallying cries of western imperialism depress me. The relentless bait-and-switch propaganda makes me think that in times of crisis the media give up on critically questioning the government. (And I consider myself naive for having believed that they ever did.) And the continuous parade &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/2001\/11\/03\/advanced-weapons-do-not-equate-to-good-foreign-policy\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Advanced weapons do not equate to good foreign policy&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics_and_economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sunpig.com\/martin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}