“The Warfare of Genghis Khan” · Season 5
In this episode: Josiah Bartlet (4), Josh Lyman (3), Leo McGarry (2), Toby Ziegler (1), Nancy McNally (1)
My generation never got the future it was promised... Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel is exactly the same. We don't even have the Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.
The personal computer...
A more efficient delivery system for gossip and pornography? Where's my jet pack, my colonies on the Moon?
I thought when the Soviet Union fell, we could actually have disarmament. You go from trying to get rid of these weapons altogether to holding your breath that one doesn't go off on your watch. Strike another goal off the list.
What I know is politics, public perception. And the image of NASA is not good. Telescopes launched that can't focus, planetary probes that crashed because engineers mixed up meters and feet. The only time NASA makes the front page anymore is when something goes wrong. You need to get off the front page. This administration only has one space priority: that you guys stop screwing up.
Voyager, in case it's ever encountered by extraterrestrials, is carrying photos of life on earth, greetings in fifty-five languages, and a collection of music from Gregorian chant to Chuck Berry, including "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" by 1920s bluesman Blind Willie Johnson, whose stepmother blinded him at seven by throwing lye in his eyes after his father beat her for being with another man. He died penniless of pneumonia after sleeping bundled in wet newspapers in the ruins of his house that burned down, but his music just left the solar system.
Hans Bethe wrote, "If we fight a war and win it with H-Bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for, but the methods used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who brutally killed every last inhabitant of Persia.
Sir, given the volatility of the region, a secret test would be how Iran would certainly proceed.
All right, let's put our cards on the table. What helped keep the Cold War cold was a sense of moral restraint that these weapons were too terrible to use.
That restraint won't exist in jihadists who strap bombs to their chests and enter nightclubs.
There are moderate elements on the ascendancy in Iran.
"In the Koran, God commanded to kill the wicked and those who do not see the rights of the oppressed and to murder them. If we abide by the Koran, all of us should mobilize to kill." Televised address by President Alijani: Moderate.
Thank you for coming, Mr. Prime Minister. You've had a long flight and I've had a long last day and a half. Let's not waste any time with veiled questions and coy answers. Your government conducted an atmospheric nuclear test over the Indian Ocean 36 hours ago. This action poses enormous problems for the region, for the world.
And for the U.S.
Yes. It undercuts our counterproliferation policy and makes us look at best, biased, and at worst, like outright hypocrites.
You do not look hypocritical espousing nonproliferation while funding research on a new generation of tactical nuclear bombs? This is not my view. The U.S. is merely looking after its national interest. As Israel has the right to do.
Proliferation breeds proliferation. China's bomb produced India's. India's begat Pakistan's.
The United States' ideal number of nuclear weapon states is one. No matter if it's merited or arrogant, it is irrelevant. Our chief of Military Intelligence asserts that if Iran completes its enrichment program it will be able to produce nuclear weapons within one year.
No one disputes Israel lives under threat.
Threat? We are 6 million surrounded by 200 million who wish us obliterated. For Israel, deterrence is not an option, but an imperative.
There's a fine line between deterrence and provocation.
We model our approach on America's during the Cold War: Mutual Assured Destruction.
There's a reason its acronym was MAD.
It succeeded entirely in keeping the world safe. Iran will become a nuclear state. I mean, what difference if it takes one year or five or ten? What difference?
We can stop them. By force if it comes to that.
But should this fail, all that would stand in the way of an Iranian first strike is an assured second-strike capability. Submarines armed with nuclear missiles. Mr. President, this is essential for Israel's survival.
Your argument boils down to asking the world to trust you.
As does America's.
It's telling that the physicists involved in the creation of these weapons became the most fervid opponents of their use. Einstein, Oppenheimer, Szilárd. Hans Bethe wrote, "If we fight a war and win it with H-Bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for, but the methods used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who brutally killed every last inhabitant of Persia."
These quotes come from Wikiquote's The West Wing pages and are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
