Like something out of a Clancy novel

Worldview Item of the Day

Heavy fighting broke out today between Georgian (the country) and Russian forces over the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia.

For fans of the pc-based first-person-shooter Ghost Recon conceived by Tom Clancy, South Ossetia may sound familiar as the setting for significant parts of the game. The plot of the game is very close to the events currently unfolding in the region right now.

Clancy’s vision shows something very important about the predictive quality of human intelligence: it is possible to know something preemptively about what the future holds if one pays attention to the signs. Clancy saw the conditions in Georgia and Russia and predicted a future of war between those two nations. With variations, his vision is playing out.

It is sometimes interesting that we chose to forget these examples when things do not work out exactly the way we thought they would. In 2002, practically everyone who should know such things was convinced Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons that could find their way into the hands of terrorists. We know Iraq did have such stockpiles when Hussein kicked the weapons inspectors out in 1998. Granted, we did not find these stockpiles in 2003, but the question remains where they are.

So, was preemptive war based on intelligence right or wrong?

I do not claim to know Clancy’s mind, but I think his vision says it is possible to predict and to go to war based on predictions.

So where does that leave us with Iran?

Some people who should know predict that Iran could field an operational nuclear weapon in the next couple of years. If they do, there will be hell to pay for the rest of the world in the form of nuclear-armed, religious zealots.

We can see the future. The only question that remains is what we are going to do about it.

-=DLH=-

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