197ff7765ed19ec4c619…

Thanks for the clarification, very true. We don’t clamor for the deaths of ‘civilians,’ such an assertion is patently ridiculous and an example of the completely hypocritical black and white thinking of the ’shades of gray nuance’ crowd.

Indeed. So long as there is no strategic benefit to killing civilians, doing so is a mistake.

Perhaps the ‘morally defensible-moral equivalence’ crowd could explain their concept of morality.

They have none. They are amoral. They reject an objective code to guide man’s life. All they know is the promoting of man’s suffering.

I don’t remember us clamoring for the deaths of Afghan civilians after 9/11.
Enrique on August 2, 2007 at 9:45 PM

I think that is because the Afghanis refused to allow the taliban to hide amongst the population.

When it’s our people or theirs, innocents don’t matter.

Lazarus on August 2, 2007 at 6:08 PM

Thanks for the clarification, very true. We don’t clamor for the deaths of ‘civilians,’ such an assertion is patently ridiculous and an example of the completely hypocritical black and white thinking of the ‘shades of gray nuance’ crowd.

Perhaps the ‘morally defensible-moral equivalence’ crowd could explain their concept of morality.

The nutroots must be going ballistic.

see-dubya on August 2, 2007 at 3:06 PM

Bad Candy on August 2, 2007 at 3:09 PM

Points taken. I can see how we might want to use a nuke if we could direct it specifically at a military target – but isn’t that why the likes of Hezb’allah always pose as civilians and hide weapons caches and other legitimate military targets in residential areas? You both make good arguments, but I really think the likelihood of us ever being in that kind of ultra-specific circumstance (where we’re reasonably sure we could use a nuke without massive civilian casualities) are slim. Of course, I could be wrong.

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.

I don’t remember us clamoring for the deaths of Afghan civilians after 9/11.

Anyway, good discussion, mates.

One quibble with an otherwise dead-on post. There are innocent civilians in an enemy country. There are people who know that their country is wrong, and who side with the good guys, and who may even act to undermine their own hostile regime. They are innocent. But they are not worth our suffering to avoid killing. They are not a barrier to our full, moral self-defense. They are, in a word, arbitrary, worthy neither of targeting nor restraint. When it’s our people or theirs, innocents don’t matter.

Bad Candy on August 2, 2007 at 2:09 PM

Really? Imagine that Iran somehow drops a nuke in Dallas. Our response would be to nuke Tehran and murder thousands of people that had nothing to do with it? That’s not a morally defensible position from where I sit.

lorien1973 on August 2, 2007 at 2:14 PM

Your point about tactical nukes is well-taken, but don’t we have conventional weapons that do the same kind of damage?

Enrique on August 2, 2007 at 2:43 PM

Right. No one gave a crap about ‘morally defensible’ when Dresden occurred. Funny how ‘morals’ come up when applied in mirror fashion. How, pray tell, is is ‘morally defensible’ not to use every weapon/tactic/trick in your arsenal to achieve the end you wish, which, in this case, is to prevent more of YOUR citizens’ deaths as quickly as possible? There’s no such thing as ‘innocent civilians.’ You smash an enemy quickly, decisively, brutally, and you do it so he’ll quit or die. Period.

see-dubya on August 2, 2007 at 3:06 PM

Put me down for “B” in both cases. I’d rather not wait, but we need to allow them the first move so we will have the moral high ground.

F the “modern rules of engagement”! Our hands are tied only by our concession to savages. This is life or death — our life or death. If civilians are in the way, too bad for them. Don’t wanna get caught in the crossfire? Don’t live with warring animals.

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.

Remember, the ultimate goal of the islamo-fascists is to turn the entire world into an Islamic paradise (in other words, a hell hole for sane people). The death of every last Muslim doesn’t fulfill the insane ramblings of Mo, that they think are prophecies. They will submit.

Enrique on August 2, 2007 at 2:43 PM

You just jumped the shark. The reason we nuke civilians is to put them into compliance and force them to turn on their countrymen who brought the wrath of the USA on their families.

Is it just me, or all the presidential candidates so small? They just aren’t bigger than life people anymore. Is it me getting older or the candidates?
lorien1973 on August 2, 2007 at 1:44 PM

Just take a look at their feet. Last debate I took the time to look, several of the dem candidates were standing on platforms. Notable Hillary and Kucinich.

Do you risk using a single MIRV against the launch site only to find out the NK missle is conventional when it hits US soil?

No, definitely not.

Four or five at a minimum.

Response to any terrorist attacks with nuclear weapons is even hazier. Likely it would involve more of the same conventional tactics we are already employing.

Nuclear weapons are not smartbombs…there is nothing ‘surgical’ about them. Modern rules of engagement do not allow you to target civs. It sounds like our hands are tied anyway.

I’m sure the next question to him should be about disarmament, if you are unwilling to ever use them, what’s the point of having all the shiny things that make big boom?

fixed.

I’m sure the next question to him should be able disarmament, if you are unwilling to ever use them, what’s the point of having all the shiny things that make big boom?

“… but at least she’s not walking into doorknobs.”

AP, are you suggesting Obama is a mental midget?

If you parse them very, very finely, as Hillary shills doubtless will, you can make the case that she’s saying it’s okay to target Osama unilaterally but not Al Qaeda training camps, which require a joint effort. But why on earth would she make that distinction?

Because Hillary does what every modern politician does, only to a degree that defines her very existence: she wipes out independent, objective observation and replaces it with a popularity detector. She detects (she doesn’t know, she detects) that Osama is hated by the public and is indefensible. Pretty much any death for him would be justified in the public’s eyes. So she’s okay with that.
But al Qaeda terrorists are floating abstractions to the public; they are not concrete, identifiable entities like Osama. “Who is al Qaeda? I know it’s a gang of terrorists, and I know they did 9/11, but who are they? I don’t have a name or a face to fix them in my head. I don’t want to support killing people I’ve never seen. I don’t even know if they’ve ever done anything wrong. They just belong to some group whom I’ve never seen and don’t know anything about, except for their connection to 9/11. Besides, innocents might get accidentally killed, and I’m definitely against that. So we have to get terrorists humanely. We have to capture them and put them on trial. The alternative — ruthless, overhwleming force — is intolerable. If another country joins in, then that helps, because it shows that we’re not imperialist bullies.”

This is the unfocused, unintegrated, concrete-bound hash that passes for thought today. This is what, and how, people think, and this is what Hillary picks up on. She lives to accumulate power in order to put her political philosophy into action. Thus, she must gauge where her philosophy intersects public opinion. She’s willing to compromise on position, but only insofar as it doesn’t diminish her range of power.

Al Qaeda means nothing to people. It’s just an alien name. To the pitiful extent to which they care to assign meaning to it, they equate it with “terrorism” itself. “Beat al Qaeda and you beat terrorism.” Not even our President is immune to such anti-conceptual sloth. Hillary is unelectable because of her personality, but she knows very well what words America wants to hear.

As for your question about Iran dropping a nuke on Dallas, Bad Candy is right, you would very likely be in the minority in thinking a nuke heading to Tehran would be morally wrong.

Rick on August 2, 2007 at 3:23 PM

Yes, it would be morally wrong in that situation. The moral thing to do in that situation is to send ten nukes headed toward Tehran and any surrounding strategic sites.

You can’t play a stupid tit-for-tat game with nukes if it’s a second-rate country you’re dealing with. Once someone goes far enough over the edge to bring nukes into play against us, they must be pounded flat…they already have decided that they have nothing to lose.

Additionally, what ‘the American people’ will allow won’t enter into it. Nuclear warfare doesn’t hinge on opinion polls.

Ooh I love to dance a little sidestep, now they see me now they don’t-
I’ve come and gone and, ooh I love to sweep around the wide step,
cut a little swathe and lead the people on.

Now my good friends, it behooves me to be solemn and declare,
I’m for goodness and for profit and for living clean and saying daily prayer.
And now, my good friends, you can sleep nights, I’ll continue to stand tall.
You can trust me, for I promise, I shall keep a watchful eye upon ya’ll…

Ooh I love to dance a little sidestep, now they see me now they don’t-
I’ve come and gone and, ooh I love to sweep around the wide step,
cut a little swathe and lead the people on.

/sarc.