This is an interesting article I came across while browsing for old Rand nuclear war scenarios. I've never heard of the web site (The Existentialist Corral) and I've never seen the article itself referenced, so I don't know what it's "reality rating" is here on the DU. I pass it on to you only for what I perceive it to be, and hope you get something from it.
http://existentialist-corral.blogspot.com/2008/01/bush-think-nuclear-war-can-be-fought.htmlSaturday, January 19, 2008
Bush Think: A Nuclear War Can be Fought and Won!God, how I despise people who think war is a game.--Last Chance Democracy Cafe
The origin of 'Bush think' may be found in a scenario dreamed up at the Rand Corporation at the height of the Cold War. Rand had designed mathematical models that dared think the unthinkable: a nuclear war can be won! Typically, the scenario relied heavily on 'game theory'. It proposed to use 'nukes' like poker chips, so-called 'rational incentives', to manipulate the other side. Rand theorists 'gamed' how many megatons might be dropped on a city, which cities would be nuked, how many deaths it would take to bring the Russians to the bargaining table.
A clue to Bush's thinking may be found in Bush's remarks to Matt Lauer of NBC Sept. 2, 2004. The topic was the War on Terrorism that Bush committed the US to fight.
I don’t think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world — let's put it that way.
That would appear not to have been the case or the outcome. Terrorism is always been worse under GOP administrations. There is no reason to believe that 'terrorism' is in any way 'less acceptable' especially to those to whom Bush had addressed his remarks at the outset of his foreign adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps as a result of his failures, Bush has resorted to dragging out a scenario that had been 'gamed' by the Rand corporation at the height of the cold war.
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More at link.