What you're saying is that there can be no counterforce method that's effective against biological weapons, stashed and distributed secretly in the targeted country. (In fact, it's difficult even to target production factories and laboratories, since they can be mobile and, in general, much smaller, less expensive, and easier to hide than comparable nuclear facilities.) Once again, the only defense is the certainty of retaliation, however difficult that may be.
But your discussion of smallpox is flawed, because, contrary to your suggestion, there is no known method of limiting the target to Arabs, or to Americans, or to any other group of people. Whoever uses such a weapon must realize that it will devastate much of the world, including countries completely uninvolved; the world will unify against anyone who uses such a weapon. (The only way around this that I can see if the perpetrator of the action can be kept secret, or if one could get one's enemy blamed for the attack. Such a strategy would be very likely to fail, however.)
One can imagine anthrax, instead of smallpox, used in the capacity that you suggest; since anthrax is not contagious, it will not spread to areas other than the intended target. But then there is no need to vaccinate one's own civilian population, invalidating your original argument.
It is probably best to quote President Bush's recent West Point speech:
"...But new threats also require new thinking. Deterrence -- the promise of massive retaliation against nations -- means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies.
... If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020601-3.html
Across the spectrum from the Washington Post
www.kison.org/ekn/ washingtonpost_com Bush Developing Military Policy Of Striking First.htm to the National Review
http:// www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry060402.asp, people have recognized that this administration, at least, is no longer pinning its hopes soley on deterrence. The new doctrine is most widely described as
preemption, but it is really our old friend, counterforce, in new garb.
I never argued that
"there can be no counterforce method that's effective against biological weapons, stashed and distributed secretly in the targeted country." Quite the contrary, my previous post asserts that against an enemy armed with dispersed biological weapons of mass destruction, the one sure method of counterforce is countervalue taken to its limit: literal extermination.
Just today, Vice-President Cheney said:
"If the United States could have preempted 9/11, we would have; no question. Should we be able to prevent another, much more devastating attack, we will; no question. This nation will not live at the mercy of terrorists or terror regimes."
I am simply saying that Homeland Defense and the US nuclear and biological capabilities have to be understood within this context of
preemption. If a biological strike against America impends, then preemption means ... What? You tell me?
It is not true that "there is no known method of limiting the (smallpox) target to Arabs ... or to any other group of people". That method is called vaccination. And if our stock of vaccines is not effective against our pathogens in the first instance, what hope does it have against one of unknown composition? It will be effective against our own, if nothing else.
A fair number of Freepers (in particular one Mohammed El-Shahawi) are entirely convinced that the shadow a biological exchange is behind the apparent slowness in the campaign against Iraq. But things are now moving to a head. I don't relish finding out what is one the other side of the hill. Yet tomorrow will come, whatever I do, and it will bring what it may.