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Posted by D Sherman [72.47.153.24] on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 23:47:31 :
In Reply to: Re: ( 4 leg pws) posted by Tim Holloway [69.54.28.229] on Wednesday, May 16, 2012 at 20:41:39 :
We're in WW3 now and the weapons are money -- little blips on computer disks marking trillions of dollars. A trader can bankrupt a bank or a country at the click of a mouse. Even when actual people are really killed, the goal is to make your enemy spend himself to death. That's how the US beat the USSR. The 9/11 attacks are estimated to have cost the terrorists $500,000. In response we spent over $500 billion in Iraq alone, which represents a million-to-one return on investment for the attackers, probably closer to 10-million-to-one with everything else added in. We're richer than them, but not THAT much richer. Now the US and China have each other by the short-n-curlies and we're in about the same relationship with the Saudis and other Arabs. It's mutual assured economic destruction if we don't pay our debts or they don't lend us money. Thankfully the heat of the battle is now in Europe so we can imagine we won't get sucked into it for now. When was the last European war that the US didn't get sucked into? Of course it's different now that it's only money. A trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon you're talking real money.
It's like that star trek episode where they fight wars by computer, with no actual weapons involved.