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From: foy@aero.ARPA (Richard Foy)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.legal
Subject: Re: Making War
Message-ID: <344@aero.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 24-Mar-86 14:17:38 EST
Article-I.D.: aero.344
Posted: Mon Mar 24 14:17:38 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Mar-86 05:57:00 EST
References: <1753@decwrl.DEC.COM> <440@netexa.UUCP>
Reply-To: foy@aero.UUCP (Richard Foy)
Organization: The Aerospace Corporation, El Segundo, CA
Lines: 34
Xref: watmath net.politics:14226 net.legal:3177

In article <440@netexa.UUCP> elw@netexa.UUCP (E. L. Wiles) writes:

>
>	Personally, I've no idea whether it does or not.  However, there
>	are occasions when the delay needed to "declare war" would be
>	sufficient to give an 'enemy' an unavoidable win.  Yet, at the
>	same time, giving the president the power to 'move forces at will'
>	also gives him the power to 'cause' a war.  Regardless of the
>	desires of the congress.
>
It seems to me that this is mixing up delay with trust of majority rule.
It is possible for a system to be set up that would allow Congress to 
decide as fast as the President.

Simply provide all Congresspeople and Senators with a black box, an inhibit
switch, sum all of the Congress settings, if half are set on, and if half of
the Senates are set on, the President would be allowed to fire nukes or 
whatever. All of the Congress could have real time connections to whatever
decision making info the President has.

This puts all decisions in parallel not in series so the time required 
would be as fast as a single decision.

I haven't the slightest idea as to what this would actually do  to the war
making decision process. It would be an interesting experiment to try it
out. 



Richard Foy, Redondo Beach, CA
The opinions I have expressed are the result of many years in the school of
hard knocks. Thus they are my own.