You are the President of the US with two options before you... which do you choose

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thechrismyster

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You have two scenarios available to you. which would you choose.

This is the background…
there is a small rogue nation in asia that has just aquired nuclear weapons and this country borders two allies of yours.
This nation has just tested it’s nukes, they are operational.
you now have intelligence on your desk from a top operative in their country that their leader is 36 hours away from giving the go ahead to send a small nuke into a major population center to a neighboring country to the south. The death toll would be upwards of 700,000 people. you get three confirmations of this intel from your undercover ops folk in the field and you have satellite confirmation that the military threat is now imminent.

do you

a.) send in a team of special force commandos to assasinate the leader at an high profile, puiblic event 8 hours from now in his home country … this will lead to a coup attempt and military insiders assure you that the nuke will not be sent as the military is pro-west. (this scenario has been given a 95% chance of success by top advisors) since it will take 5 hours to prep and deploy, you must make this choice in the next 2.5 hours.

b.) wait and see what happens, putting, together with leaders in neighboring countries, diplomatic pressure on the rogue leader. knowing that negotiations for the past 14 years have been futile. Promising domestic aid and oil in exchange for assurances of no nuclear stikes. If negotiations fail, the chance of a nuclear event is near 100% in the next 36 hours (this scenario has been given a 5% chance of success by top advisors)

which would you choose?
 
I don’t remember the passage in the bible that says:

Thou shalt kill leaders whom you do not like.
 
thechrismyster:

I realize otherthrows and “for hire” tactics are accepted foreign policy methods of some governments, but I would leave that out. I would consider if that behaviour somehow contributed to the overall dislike of my nation today, therefore giving it some bases in justfication of concern.

As president, I would try to assess my own national behaviour in the past to see if like attitudes were not the norm at the time it was the only nuclear force. Perhaps my nation had the habit of sabre rattling and face saving gesticulation at that time as well. But since nothing developed, it can be assumed that there is always the possibility of common sense to to prevail. We can live with that. The rest of the world back then had no option, so the US has an advantage now.

The USSR was counted in as one of “those” in the category you listed.

Also, how much does tactical common sense play in this scenerio. Should the president be motivated to be the only nation in the world who can fend off “evils and disorders” of everyone else. (Catechism 2309 I think, I can look it up.) If not, does the US hold first claim on the dogma?

The Church implies that every nation have the capability to have weapons that can fend off nations to the equal of “evils and disorders” of the aggressor nation. Should such a nation take it in a promise from the United States that it will never send nuclear weapons in a war, especially in lite of the US’s past overthrows,insurrgent operations,illegal fly overs,etc, or should it bend to the US wishes as Poland did in trusting Germany and Russia prior to WW2?

Just wondering.

AndyF
 
Magicsilence said:
I don’t remember the passage in the bible that says:

Thou shalt kill leaders whom you do not like.
Click to expand...
Assuming the information I had was correct, I would take him out. Not because I “didn’t like him” but because he was basically holding a gun to 700, 000 people and threatening to pull the trigger.
 
a few posts are showing a little trepidation… there is no time for theoretical conjecture… you need to decide. you have 2 options. as stated in the original post, you have limited time. if you fail to act, you condemn almost a million people to death.
 
Magicsilence said:
I don’t remember the passage in the bible that says:

Thou shalt kill leaders whom you do not like.
Click to expand...
I also don’t remember the passage that says

Thou shalt stand by and allow 700,000 innocent people to die.

I’ll take Sola Scriptura for the loss, Wink.
 
thechrismyster said:
You have two scenarios available to you. which would you choose.

This is the background…
there is a small rogue nation in asia that has just aquired nuclear weapons and this country borders two allies of yours.
This nation has just tested it’s nukes, they are operational.
you now have intelligence on your desk from a top operative in their country that their leader is 36 hours away from giving the go ahead to send a small nuke into a major population center to a neighboring country to the south. The death toll would be upwards of 700,000 people. you get three confirmations of this intel from your undercover ops folk in the field and you have satellite confirmation that the military threat is now imminent.

do you

a.) send in a team of special force commandos to assasinate the leader at an high profile, puiblic event 8 hours from now in his home country … this will lead to a coup attempt and military insiders assure you that the nuke will not be sent as the military is pro-west. (this scenario has been given a 95% chance of success by top advisors) since it will take 5 hours to prep and deploy, you must make this choice in the next 2.5 hours.

b.) wait and see what happens, putting, together with leaders in neighboring countries, diplomatic pressure on the rogue leader. knowing that negotiations for the past 14 years have been futile. Promising domestic aid and oil in exchange for assurances of no nuclear stikes. If negotiations fail, the chance of a nuclear event is near 100% in the next 36 hours (this scenario has been given a 5% chance of success by top advisors)

which would you choose?
Click to expand...
Where did you get that intelligence ? was it from the same who said there were WMD’s in Iraq? I notice you dismissed many things why? How about this: you first pick up the phone and arrange a preemptive strike. Then you call the leader in question and inform him he can either surrender the nuke or accept the strike (from you on his country)?
 
Texas_Roofer said:
Where did you get that intelligence ? was it from the same who said there were WMD’s in Iraq? I notice you dismissed many things why? How about this: you first pick up the phone and arrange a preemptive strike. Then you call the leader in question and inform him he can either surrender the nuke or accept the strike (from you on his country)?
Click to expand...
the intelligence was from your countries intelligence service, and confirmed by russia and chinese intelligence as well, in this exercise.

a phone call would negate the pre-emptive attack (rule #1 for preemptive attacks… no phone calls to the enemy telling them your plan)
and premptive attack wasn’t a consideration in this exercise, due to the inability to mobilize a multinational force quickly enough. the special ops action (a) would have no fingerprint to identify the attacks originating country. your spec-ops guys…they would be ghosts, in and out in 45 minutes. no identifying patches or uniforms. using nato rounds… they would purposely not be identified as USA fighters to the public or external intelligence
 
To kill a leader would result in a new leader, much meaner than the last one, and that would result in a Veitnamesque costly war. PLLLLLLLL!!! on stupid war.
 
thechrismyster said:
the intelligence was from your countries intelligence service, and confirmed by russia and chinese intelligence as well, in this exercise.
Click to expand...
So these are the people who were wrong last time
a phone call would negate the pre-emptive attack (rule #1 for preemptive attacks… no phone calls to the enemy telling them your plan) and preemptive attack wasn’t a consideration in this exercise,
Click to expand...
So this is rule #2, and the phone call does what "blows your planes out of the sky?
due to the inability to mobilize a multinational force quickly enough. the special ops action
Click to expand...
So you do not need “multinationals” to assassinate but you need them to go to war interesting
(a) would have no fingerprint to identify the attacks originating country. Your spec-ops guys…they would be ghosts, in and out in 45 minutes. no identifying patches or uniforms. using nato rounds.
Click to expand...
so the rounds cause the false belief the UN performed the assassination
. they would purposely not be identified as USA fighters to the public or external intelligence
Click to expand...
So basically the conclusion is assassins are good republicans, and anybody who ever selects any dialog is a weak liberal? Have you noticed how few republican leaders were in the military? and how even fewer ever served in war. If you check there was considerable deployment when they were in correct age bracket.
 
thechrismyster said:
tic toc

tic toc

make a choice.
Click to expand...
from post #8)
– you first pick up the phone and arrange a preemptive strike. Then you call the leader in question and inform him he can either surrender the nuke or accept the strike (from you on his country)?–

Bombing the nuke is more affective than bombing the man
 
Those two choices are silly. Given the scenerio, there will be far more options than those two, and one of them would NOT be a special forces strike.
 
Texas_Roofer said:
Bombing the nuke is more affective than bombing the man
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Actually these sorts of strikes are not very effective yet. We do not have the capability to blast weapons out of the sky. Besides, if you bomb the nuke, you’ll still get a pretty nasty explosion.
 
I’d say A.

Would this really be considered an assisination as the CCC defines it, though?
 
Texas_Roofer said:
P.S. Bombing a nuke does not set it off
Click to expand...
Are we talking about the same thing? I simply meant that dropping a bomb is going to cause an explosion, not that it would set off the nuke. It’s still an act of aggression. Besides, I doubt they would keep their nuke out where we could get to it anyway.

When I said “these types of strikes do not work” I was referring to the idea that we could blast an armed missile or artillery fire already in transit to its destination. This is not a capability we have.

Now that I reread your post it seems I got something out of it that wasn’t there. For some reason I assumed the nuke had already been fired at us.
 
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