Hillary: We must not act unilaterally in Pakistan — wait, Barack said what? Okay, then we should

So, if bin Laden, Iran, or the NorKs use a nuke on a US city, Obama would NOT RETALIATE in kind?

I think he’s announcing that he is unfit for the office of the President of the United States of America by effectively announcing that he would unilatterly stand down the strategic forces.

Enrique makes a point that many also have: “…but I defy anyone to present a hypothetical scenario in which we would have to use a nuke in lieu of conventional weapons.”

That scenario would be the use of a weapon of mass destruction against an American city causing many casualties. WMD include nuclear, biological, and/or chemical weapons. And the use of any such weapon would be part of the scenario.

Last May 10th, I made several posts in a Hot Air thread about what would happen if a US city were nuked by terrorists. Here’s an excerpt:

The unclassified portion of NSPD 17 (”National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction”, December 2002)_ explicitly states:

“The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force — including through resort to all of our options — to the use of WMD against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies.”

There. In black and white is all the warning that is needed for Islam [or anyone else] to take note as to what will happen if the USA is struck with a WMD, not just a nuclear weapon. This is the open, bald-faced PROMISE of overwhelming retaliation (and the phrase “all of our options” means nuclear weapons, don’t kid yourself otherwise). There should be no doubt that we will retaliate with nuclear weapons.

I suspect that should a nuclear weapon be detonated in an American city, that Muslim countries around the world will be falling all over themselves claiming and trying to prove their innocence, hoping to avoid our retaliatory hammer.

Allahpundit says: “First we’d need to figure out who did it.” The presupposes that the people of the United States are going to care which jihadist group and which sponsor of state terrorism was involved. I do not think the American public will care, nor do I think the the federal government will dilly-dally trying to prove guilt in a court of law, or to the UN Security Council who’s responsible.

Personally, I think the op-orders have already been issued, and distributed to Strategic Command, as contingencies. I think which specific option is invoked may depend upon which ‘bad guys’ is the *likely* (not absolutely) culprit. I think that any retaliation will be wide (as in national or regional) as opposed to narrow or a specific “camp” or target.

While I would like to think that the United States would provide relief assistance after our strike, it would not surprise me that we simply let them rot. And I guarantee that there will be NO occupation, NO “nation building.” Our experience in Iraq will have foreclosed that option. No, we’ll strike hard, destroy cities and large areas of real estate, and maybe send in a few “blankets” and medical supplies afterwards, but I doubt that we’d send in any massive humanitarian aid.

Tuna Talon, that should answer you question about whether or not Iran’s fingerprints were present.

Enrique, you need to understand something. America WOULD destroy cities and kill civilians in the event of a WMD strike against the USA. The public would demand it.

Wretchard at the Belmont Club dealt with this in October 2003 in an essay, titled “The Three Conjectures.”

The problem, as he saw it was identifying the jihadists “command and control” element. As he said, there is no “red phone” to call and no way to defuse the issue. Bad Candy is right. The American people will be calling for blood, major blood and won’t care WHOSE blood it is.

Wretchard’s conjecture number two (Conjecture 2: Attaining WMDs will destroy Islam) goes like this: Any jihidist use of a nuke on American soil will end up, eventually, in Isam ceasing to exist. Why? No red phone, no way to call off the war. No way for use to even surrender, if we wanted to.

Wretchard wrote:

However, suppose Pakistan or North Korea engineered a reliable plutonium weapon that could be built to one-point safety in any machine shop with a minimum of skill, giving Islamic terrorists the means to repeatedly attack America indefinitely. Under these circumstances, there would no incentive to retaliate proportionately. The WMD exchange would escalate uncontrollably until Islam was destroyed…. a United States choked with corpses could still not negotiate an end to hostilities or deter further attacks. There would be no one to call on the Red Telephone, even to surrender to. In fact, there exists no competent Islamic authority, no supreme imam who could stop a jihad on behalf of the whole Muslim world. Even if the terror chiefs could somehow be contacted in this apocalyptic scenario and persuaded to bury the hatchet, the lack of command and control imposed by the cell structure would prevent them from reining in their minions. Due to the fixity of intent, attacks would continue for as long as capability remained. Under these circumstances, any American government would eventually be compelled by public desperation to finish the exchange by entering -1 x 10^9 in the final right hand column: total retaliatory extermination.

One more point.

The existance of the National Missile Defense project and Theater defense project (ABM systems being deployed now) gives the United States the capability to hold our nuclear retaliation, if an incoming bird can be splashed before striking the United States or US forces and allies.

If ABM systems work (as they appear to), and if the attack is by land or sea launched missile or aircraft, then the likelihood of having to retaliate with nuclear weapons, to “check fire,” goes down if we can destroy the incoming weapon. If the ABM system fails or if the attack is not airborne, then I have no doubt that NSPD 17 will be invoked, at least by this President.

If Obama is unwilling to respond to a WMD attack against an American city with nuclear weapons, and makes this his public position, he will invite terrorists to use them against us because he will have taken the deterrance behind NSPD 17 off the table. Accordingly, he is unfit to be the Commander-in-Chief, just as Jimmy Carter was.

georgej on August 2, 2007 at 4:54 PM