Read The Doomsday Machine. The US Air Force is way less of a defensive or utilitarian actor than you are implying, e.g. for a significant period of time the only US nuclear war plan (which was hidden from Kennedy) involved bombing as many Chinese cities as possible even if it was Russia who had attacked the US. (In general I avoid giving the benefit of the doubt to dishonest violent criminals even if they call themselves “the government”, but here we have extra empirical data)
I am not arguing that. I know the government does bad things and I read other books on that era. I was really just noting the consequences of an alternate policy might not have been any better.
Read The Doomsday Machine. The US Air Force is way less of a defensive or utilitarian actor than you are implying, e.g. for a significant period of time the only US nuclear war plan (which was hidden from Kennedy) involved bombing as many Chinese cities as possible even if it was Russia who had attacked the US. (In general I avoid giving the benefit of the doubt to dishonest violent criminals even if they call themselves “the government”, but here we have extra empirical data)
I am not arguing that. I know the government does bad things and I read other books on that era. I was really just noting the consequences of an alternate policy might not have been any better.