送交者: skipper3 于 2006-4-03, 17:29:04:
land and casualty.
The risk of unpleasant outcome of a war is always tehre. In the past people just take their chances. But now being a loser becomes increasingly costly, big countries can not play by chance any more. For big nations, this leads to a transformation from fighting physically to managing risks. Each confronting nation will try hard to reduce uncertainty at home while increase risk for its enemy, examplified by the cold war. Although this strategy doesn't make people explicitly killed it does cost a lot of money. Eventually those who can't afford a contingency plan become the loser.
So I say you LiKe people should not worry about mutually destructive nuclear war. It will not happen. The only purpose of building a lot of these bombs is to create uncertainty to the enemy.
In the case of Iraq war, American made a serious mistake: they did not even plan for contingency. On the otehr hand Iraqis knew fully well what was to happen after invasion so they dispersed the military. So from SuanZhang point of view, the US is fighting an ancient war while Iraq is fighting a modern war. This puts US in a serious disadvantage. As far as I can see, US has only 2 options to salvage the war. Either reduce uncertainty at home by a timely and orderly withdraw, or increase uncertainty on the enemy Iraqi side. The second option must involve some form of mass unrest or civil war.