Think it was a mistake, Mr. Hunter?
Sir?
Using the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Well, if I thought that, sir, I wouldn't be here.
Interesting way you put that.
How'd I put it, sir?
Very carefully. [Chuckles]
[Men laughing]
You do qualify your remarks. If someone asked me if we should bomb Japan, a simple "Yes. By all means sir, drop that ****er, twice!"
[Men laughing]
I don't mean to suggest that you're indecisive, Mr. Hunter. Not at all. Just, uh... complicated. 'Course, that's the way the Navy wants you. Me, they wanted simple.
Well, you certainly fooled them, sir.
[chuckles]
Be careful there, Mr. Hunter. It's all I've got to rely on, being a simple-minded son of a bitch. Rickover gave me my command, a checklist, a target and a button to push. All I gotta know is how to push it, they tell me when. They seem to want you to know why.
I would hope they'd want us all to know why, sir.
At the Naval War College it was metallurgy and nuclear reactors, not 19th-century philosophy. "War is a continuation of politics by other means." Von Clausewitz.
I think, sir, that what he was actually trying to say was a little more -
Complicated?
[Men laughing]
Yes, the purpose of war is to serve a political end, but the true nature of war is to serve itself.
[Laughing]
I'm very impressed. In other words, the sailor most likely to win the war is the one most willing to part company with the politicians and ignore everything except the destruction of the enemy. You'd agree with that.
I'd agree that, um, that's what Clausewitz was trying to say.
But you wouldn't agree with it?
No, sir, I do not. No, I just think that in the nuclear world, the true enemy can't be destroyed.
[Men look to one another as Ramsey fall silent] [Chuckling, tapping glass]
Attention on deck. Von Clausewitz will now tell us exactly who the real enemy is. [Gestures to Hunter] Von?
