Very thoughtful comments and much appreciated Metooist.   Seems as I've aged I've gotten a bit more realistic.   I'm not at all sure that's a good thing, I was kind of comfortable in my idealism at one time.   One thing that hasn't changed during my life is the power of the MIC.  Ike was right.

The US can control our own behavior, but we have little chance of controlling the behavior of other nations being as the flow of knowledge world wide will lead to deadly assaults, how big is the only question.   If you want to sleep better, forget the use of the nuclear weapons and think about the more subtle release of deadly virus, or aerated poisen, water poisen........

It can make you nuts.    My father in law used to say, "When you number comes up its time to go".   Tough coal miner who died of cancer, but still left the world with amazing fortitude.      We are never in as much control as we'd like to believe.

Again, great comments.