US Plans Tactical Nuclear Strikes and tries to make it seem like a rational idea
Well, it seems like a number of our presidential candidates have gone down to crazy town and are blithely open to the concept of tactical nuclear strikes against Iran. This Reuter’s article, Republicans: Iran must not have nuclear arms, highlights some of the madness:
Wolf Blitzer asked:
“If it came down to a preemptive US strike against Iran’s nuclear facility, if necessary would you authorize as president the use of tactical nuclear weapons?”
Here were some of the responses:
Rudolph Giuliani: “Part of the premise of talking to Iran has to be that they have to know very clearly that it is unacceptable to the United States that they have nuclear power. I think it could be done with conventional weapons, but you can’t rule out anything and you shouldn’t take any option off the table.”
Mitt Romney: “You don’t take options off the table.”
Duncan Hunter: “I would authorize the use of tactical nuclear weapons if there was no other way to preempt those particular centrifuges”
James Gilmore: “We’re also going to say that having a nuclear weapon is unacceptable. They need to understand it. And all options are on the table by the United States in that instance.”
Later on, Blitzer asked: Congressman Paul, what’s the most pressing moral issue in the United States right now?
Ron Paul: “I think it is the acceptance just recently that we now promote preemptive war. I do not believe that’s part of the American tradition… And now, tonight, we hear that we’re not even willing to remove from the table a preemptive nuclear strike against a country that has done no harm to us directly and is no threat to our national security!”
“We, in the past, have always declared war in defense of our liberties or go to aid somebody, but now we have accepted the principle of preemptive war.”
The problem with wars is that they are made. They are planned. They are huge, huge, logistically complicated affairs. They don’t just happen. A lot of people have to go mad or stop caring simultaneously for them to really come to a head, but they are planned, sometimes decades before they happen.
The US used to be very isolationist. It took surprise attacks like Pearl harbor to anger the American population into war. But recently techniques for goading our populace into a fighting stance have been developed to high precision.
All that has to happen is spill a can of talking points into the news channels and suddenly, everyone is “talking” about “what to do about Iran” or the Axis of evil or some other construct for public debate. There’s no vast conspiracy to it - it’s the same technique used to get people excited about the iPhone or whatever.
People worry. Give them a new threat, they’ll worry about that. Frame the outlets of their worry - “what would we do to avoid them getting nuclear weapons?”
I could go on but I’m sure some other website dissects this issue with more patience. For now I’ll leave you with the relevant pop culture references to help “frame the discussion” in a better way:
There’s Dr. Stranglove (1963), a cold-war era movie that is helpful for understanding the ramifications and motivations behind this sort of war.
Dr. Strangelove is also playing in restored high-resolution digital at Landmark Theatres.
The Terminator series (The Terminator, 1984) (Terminator 2: Judgement Day, 1991) (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, 2003) is also a cautionary tale about what we’re trying to avoid (nuclear apocolypse).
And the early 80’s epic: Wargames (1983)
Still feels too Hollywood for you? Fine, here’s a motorcycle tour of Chernobyl - our prime example of nuclear devestation, estimated to be habitable by humans within 300-600 years.
Here’s a clip from youtube to make the point we all need to get:
(credits: Strangelove Mushroom cloud picture sourced here
Wargames pix from the youtube post)
Technorati Tags: activism, apocolypse, culture, democrat, diplomacy, drstrangelove, entente, fear, globalthermonuclearwar, Iran, nuclearwar, peace, politics, preemptivewar, terminator, war, wargames, WW3, WWIII
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