Outro dia tropecei numa das melhores declarações sobre conflito armado. Foi conciso, preciso, coerente, cru e realista mas, principalmente, humanitário. Trata-se de um diálogo, entre dois personagens de ficção, no qual o assunto é aprender esgrima. Um deles, o instrutor, comenta q esgrimir é guerra, ainda q em escala menor. Segue, em inglês, no original, grifos meus:

I: Make no mistake about it, sword-fighting is war. Writ small, but war all the same, and all warfare has one proper goal. What is that?

A: Victory.

I: Even so. But how is it to be achieved?

A: You tell me.

I: The only honorable purpose of warfare is to destroy your enemy's ability to MAKE war. Do less, and you deliver yourself into his hands. <pause> Do more, and you entertain depravity.

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Ainda me espanta, todos os dias, como sabedoria pode vir das fontes mais inesperadas.

Pros curiosos;

Willingham, Bill and Bolton, John. Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall. New York; Vertigo, 2006.

Fazendo uma comparação usando a história, é como os bombardeios nucleares que puseram fim a guerra no pacífico. Por um lado foi o uso deliberado de armas de destruição em Massa, numa zona industrial, civil por excelencia (mas, pra mim alvo legitimo). Por outro acabaram com uma guerra onde a tomada das ilhas do Japão, seria um morticidio enorme de militares e civis, que talvez criassem um cenário onde a reconciliação fosse impossivel. E o revanchismo a norma, na Europa o revanchismo só acabou quando o plano Marshall, deu dinheiro pra todo mundo se reconstruir e os Estados europeus se aproximaram.

Os massacres conduzidos pelo Cond'Eu na guerra do Paraguai, até hoje despertam revanchismo. Em tudo é preciso saber, perder e ganhar, inclusive na Guerra.

Eu só daria uma ressalva: Esse mito da tomada sangrenta das ilhas Japonesas foi posto para dormir faz tempo.

A carta de rendição estava escrita, e tentaram entregar três vezes, durante os dois últimos meses, pré Dias da Vergonha. Uma, foi negada pelo gabinete Americano. Precisavam demonstrar a força adquirida pros Russos. Segunda vez, falhou por ausência de coesão interna. A terceira, o gabinete Japonês, maníacos nacionalistas de sempre, capturaram emissários e a carta.

Interessante q esta SUMIU, mas NÃO foi destruída, pois tem o selo e assinatura da Divindade. Curioso factóide. Rumores tem q esta existe ainda, rolando em posse de famílias dos captores. Alegado, claro, mas dada psicologia (sempre generalizada) dos envolvidos, viz código de comportamento baseado em divindade inviolável do Imperador, e "honra" (seletiva, de resto).

Não tenho menor ilusão de que alguém naquela situação era "bonzinho", mas facilmente poderiam ter evitado a vergonha de usar a obscenidade nuclear contra seres humanos. Tal era a motivação espúria disso, até mesmo Oppenheimer (se alguém pode ser considerado pai daquilo, foi ele, a contragosto), quando manifestou-se contra isto, foi etiquetado comunista (!!). O desgosto e nojo disso é q foi perfeitamente ok usar esse horror abjurado contra gente diferente, amarelins de olhim puxado, mas não contra europeus brancos, dignos, "arianos". A capa da Time magazine da época dos bombardeios "estratégicos" (leia-se ANTI-CIVIL)é de esfriar sangue.

Pessoalmente, profissionalmente *E* academicamente, não consigo ou conseguiria justificar uso de bombardeio estratégico. Civis são civis. Não foi guerra. Foi massacre frio e calculado de monstros como General Groves. Nem os pilotos do Enola Gay sabiam o q carregavam, achavam q levavam uma bomba monstra para destruir o porto e foundries (português, me falha) no litoral de uma cidade. Houvessem usado munição convencional, morreriam civis, sim, mas nem um décimo do resultado de uso indiscriminado e desavisado de munições nucleares.

Como espécie, a meu ver, não temos maturidade suficiente para lidar com questões advindas de poder letal nessa escala. Evidente pelos close calls q tivemos: foram todos resolvidos na base de sorte pura. Material para se pensar.

Num closet cheio de crianças com granadas de mão, algumas com uma, outras com várias, quantas crianças morreriam, se qualquer uma granada for usada? Resposta: TODAS.

referências, caso curiosos:
McNamara, Fog of War e Rhodes, Richard Making of the Atomic Bomb. já citei ambos formalmente, creio.
addenda!
Smoke, Richard National Security and The Nuclear Dilemma, 1945-1991
Freedman, Lawrence The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy
Ambos VALEM ler. Mesmo. Caso tenha q escolher ler UM, recomendo Rhodes. De longe.

Banzai.

Ainda q a idéia seja a simplicidade, i.e., coletar o q foi digerido por cada um do q já leu/ram sobre conflito (fenômeno em si, não sua manifestação organizada, guerra), quem sabe valha apontar certas referências úteis, para enfatizar ou esclarecer o rumo do papo, ou sua intenção original. A maioria dos trabalhos já foi citado formalmente, segue a versão condensada da citação.

Axelrod, Robert. The Evolution of Cooperation.
Brown, Seyom. The Causes and Prevention of War.
van Creveld, Martin. The Transformation of War.
Glick, Edward. Peaceful Conflict - The Non Military Use of the Military. Harrisburg; Stackpole, 1967.
Kaysen, Carl. Is War Obsolete? A Review Essay, in in Brown, Michael (ed). Theories of War and Peace
Orme, John. The Utility of Force in a World of Scarcity, in Brown, Michael (ed). Theories of War and Peace
Posen, Barry. The Sources of Military Doctrine.
Smith, Rupert. The Utility of Force.
Sawyer, Ralph (trad). The Art of War
---. Sun Pin - The Military Metods of the Art of War.
---. The Tao of War.

A título de f..., McNamara foipo, hoje.

Creio q a relevância dele, o q fica pra trás, seriam a tentativa dele de streamline processos dentro do jogo confuso e rococó de segurança, e a surpreendente noção de q uma figura pública PODE admitir estar errada e trabalhar para corrigir erros. Ele foi, quem sabe, o primeiro dos wawa a reconhecer q algumas de suas decisões foram desastrosas e iniciou programas efetivos para remediar ou ameliorar a coisa.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara died on Monday aged 93. He will be most remembered most as leading architect of America's involvement in the Vietnam War.

"His age just caught up with him," his wife Diana told Reuters. "He was not ill. He died peacefully in his sleep."

McNamara also forged brilliant careers in industry and international finance, but his painful legacy remains Vietnam.

More than anyone else except possibly President Lyndon Johnson, McNamara became to anti-war critics the symbol of a failed policy that left more than 58,000 U.S. troops dead and the nation bogged down in a seemingly endless disaster in Southeast Asia.

Pundits came to call the conflict "McNamara's War."

With his slicked-back hair and rimless glasses, he became a familiar face to the nation as one of "the best and the brightest" assembled by President John Kennedy to form his policy-making brain trust.

But he left the Cabinet in 1968 under pressure from Johnson. By then disillusioned with the war, McNamara had criticized U.S. bombing of North Vietnam.

He spent the rest of his life trying to explain the U.S. role in Vietnam and apologizing for his mistakes, becoming the subject of an Academy Award winning documentary, "The Fog of War." In the film, he discussed the difficult decision-making process during the Vietnam conflict as well as his Pentagon role in the Cuban missile crisis.

He first came to prominence as one of the "Whiz Kids" who revitalized Ford Motor Co. after World War Two and ended his public career as president of the World Bank.

To those jobs, as well as defense secretary, the dynamic McNamara brought a driving ambition, a phenomenal memory for statistics and a quick, efficient grasp of facts.

McNamara was named defense secretary by Kennedy in 1961 and held the post longer than anyone before or since. He put his corporate organizational skills to use in trying to modernize the Pentagon during the Cold War.

Now, that is EXACTLY what we need, isn't it? A potential bigger problem to solve this current one. Morons!

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-442604
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0504/russia ... il-geyser/

As British Petroleum scrambles to affix a four story dome over the massive oil geyser venting toxic sludge into the Gulf of Mexico, people everywhere are wondering what else can be done to stem the deadly tide.

Komsomoloskaya Pravda, Russia's best-selling daily publication, has and idea: Why not just nuke it?

During the Soviet years, Russia's communists had to deal with numerous oil disasters and on five different occasions they employed controlled, underground nuclear blasts to quickly solve the problem.

[The] underground explosion moves the rock, presses on it, and, in essence, squeezes the well’s channel," Pravda reported.

"It’s so simple, in fact, that the Soviet Union, a major oil exporter, used this method five times to deal with petrocalamities," added Moscow reporter Julia Ioffe, writing for True/Slant "The first happened in Uzbekistan, on September 30, 1966 with a blast 1.5 times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb and at a depth of 1.5 kilometers. KP also notes that subterranean nuclear blasts were used as much as 169 times in the Soviet Union to accomplish fairly mundane tasks like creating underground storage spaces for gas or building canals."


And those 169 underground blasts do not count the Soviet military's tests of various atomic-yield weapons, the paper noted.

Russia's success in capping major oil leaks with nuclear demolitions has an almost perfect record of success: only one detonation failed to accomplish its purpose. The last such explosion took place in 1979, according to Ioffe.

During the same period, the United States also had a "peaceful nuclear explosions" program called Operation Plowshare. U.S. officials abandoned it due to environmental concerns.

Conspiracies rum amok

Meanwhile, a variety of conspiracy theories about the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig have emerged, with some suggesting that it may have been an Obama administration inside job, an attack by environmental terrorist, an indirect result of people liking meat, or even an act of God.

One theory in particular that's been circling conspiracy sites claims the disaster was caused by a North Korean torpedo as a way of presenting an "impossible dilemma" to President Obama ahead of the United Nations nuclear summit, with the goal being total chaos in the world's nuclear arms debate. The writer, going by the name "Sorcha Faal", sourced the claim as part of a "grim" report circulating the Kremlin, providing no additional details as to how the information was obtained. That was apparently good enough for "The European Union Times," which ran the claims in full.

--

Security geek speaks: Environment aside (Russia is one to speak of this!)... One of my biggest peeves with the notion which seems more common every passing day, to wit, treating nuclear devices as mere explosives, is that it takes away the mystique of said devices in the public opinion. Once someone gets away with using a SADM (Special Atomic Demolition Munition; essentially, a portable, low-yield nuke) to solve an engineering problem, then it's just a matter of adjusting nomenclature and yield to make the use of the really big, scary ones. Once the first shot rings, the firefight ensues. And MAD is a scary proposition.

Those who believe nukes make security are perhaps overlooking two rather sobering notions:

1) not every country "packing" is stable, or responsible enough!, to assure no use will happen. Incidentally, IMHO, mankind itself is not mature enough to wield such devices.

2) several kids inside a closet have different numbers of hand grenades. Some have one, some have two or three, wile others have many. Question: how many children die if any grenades are used? Answer: All.