Nick,

I agree with everything you said (You must get tired of me always agreeing
with you). The menace of the Nazis and the Communists is what got this
process started. It is a good thing that these evil governments have
disappeared. However what worries me is the technology that made these
evil governments disappear still remains. The Manhatten and Trinity Projects to develop nuclear weapons was a response to the widely held belief that the Nazis were on the verge of developing nuclear weapons. The Nazis never succeeded and the atomic bomb was used on the Japanese instead. We still have the atomic bomb even though Hitler is long gone. ICBMs and thermonuclear weapons were developed as a response to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is now an unpleasant memory but we still have ICBMs and thermonuclear weapons. If we could contain this technology then the current situation might be acceptable. However we can not. Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, North Korea, etc. could never have developed ballistic missile and nuclear weapons technology from scratch. Their weapons programs were based upon the information that leaked out from ours. We've been praising ourselves because we brought World War II to a quick end with the atomic bomb. Likewise we won the Cold War through the threat of Mutual Assured Destruction. However one of these days, New York, London or Paris is going to be transformed into a radioactive crater because some screwball wanted to be closer to Allah. At that point, the bargain we made to end World Ward II and the Cold War will seem much less clever.

Gary