Posted on 11/11/2001 3:39:58 AM PST by bulldog905
President Harry Truman ended the Second World War almost overnight in 1945 by dropping two atomic bombs on Japan.
Those operations cost not a single American life.
The atomic bombings were not all that devastating when put into perspective. Just weeks earlier, saturation bombing -- with conventional explosives -- killed as many as 200,000 in Tokyo. In February, 1945, round-the-clock carpet bombing of the beautiful German city of Dresden killed as many as 250,000 men, women and children in a scenario that is awesome, even today. Go to Dresden, as I have and the lasting effects of the destruction are still there to see.
Sir Arthur (Bomber) Harris, legendary head of the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command in the Second World War, boasted his squadrons of aircraft had killed 600,000 people -- mainly civilians and children -- in their non-stop flights over Germany.
Most of the able-bodied men were fighting on the Russian front or elsewhere, but "Bomber" Harris' bombing helped demoralize the entire population. Again, Bomber Command used only conventional explosives.
We still look on atomic -- nuclear -- weapons as something loathsome because of their singular forces. You do not need hundreds of planes to drop bombs in a nuclear attack -- as at Tokyo or Dresden -- just one will do the job in quick fashion. A nuclear bomb drives the message home quickly that to fight on is fruitless, to surrender is the best option.
The U.S., Britain and France are nuclear powers. Coincidentally, no matter whether the government of the day in Britain or France is conservative or socialist, neither have ever considered for a second giving up their nuclear arms.
During the Cold War, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of which Canada is a member, had a nuclear first-strike policy -- if the Soviets invaded Western Europe and looked like they were advancing over large areas successfully, NATO would go nuclear and take out Moscow and other large Soviet cities.
Last month, British Prime Minister Tony Blair -- whose nation has both nuclear attack submarines and fighter-bombers equipped with nuclear weapons, raised the frightening spectacle that if Osama bin Laden's Islamic terrorists had weapons of mass destruction, rather than slaughter just 6,000 people in New York City they would have killed 60,000 or 600,000 with a grin on their faces.
This month, bin Laden has said it is the "sacred" duty of Islamic forces to get hold of weapons of mass destruction.
When he does -- or when some of his contemporaries do -- he and they will use them. President George W. Bush admits to this horrifying scenario.
Indeed, as George Will noted in his Nov. 4 column "Daring Israeli raid saved U.S. grief," if it hadn't been for the Israelis taking out an Iraqi nuclear processing plant in a daring raid in 1981, Saddam Hussein would have had nuclear weapons and many of us today would not be alive.
Saddam is still doing his best to get hold of nuclear or biological weapons and he is surely not going to get them just to fondly gaze at them. He will use them, initially against Israel -- recall the Scud attacks in the 1990s -- but then against the U.S.
Just 22 years ago, during the American hostage crisis in Iran, the Soviets went to Iranian authorities and warned them any moves against the Soviet Embassy and its staff in Tehran would provoke a nuclear response. Tehran would be gone. Not a single Soviet Embassy official was ever touched.
Looking at the current scenario, we can do one of two things: Wait until the Islamic terrorists get weapons of mass destruction in which case any number of our cities and their populations will be wiped out, or we can make some pre-emptive surgical nuclear strikes and end Islamic terrorism for the next 100 years.
If we took out, say, Kabul, Baghdad and Tehran with clean "neutron" bombs, which kill people but leave buildings standing, we would have won the war against these dictators and "rogue" nations without losing the life of a single allied soldier.
It would also be a lesson to the likes of Syria and North Korea that retribution for any of their transgressions will be met in similar fashion.
You do not win wars by pussyfooting around, playing the gentleman or dropping humanitarian supplies to civilian populations -- can you imagine the laughter if anyone has suggested dropping humanitarian supplies to Germans back in the 1940s? You win wars by taking your opponents to the edge of the precipice and letting them know you'll kick them over the edge unless they comply.
Fight fire with fire. All is fair in love and war.
Using tactical nuclear weapons against civilian populations is worse than terrorism: it's a war crime.
Says who?
The United States was on the moral high ground as long as it sought to find and destroy the masterminds of the Sept. 11 attack. Now, with our attacks on the Afghan government and the civilian population we look like vengeful Americans striking out not against terrorism, but merely to placate the public's desire for revenge.
You say that like it's a negative thing
Every American bomb that kills or dismembers an innocent mother, father or child creates more anti-American hatred in the Muslim world.
Too Bad! They should have thought of that before!
Anyone seriously suggesting the use of nuclear weapons in Afghanistan needs pyschiatric treatment.
Psychiatry is filled with leftist like you; hence the recommendation.
You need to check the history of Rolling Thunder in Vietnam. It was B-52s that brought Hanoi to the peace table. I've seen carpet bombing practiced on the live ranges out in Nevada. It's an awesome spectacle and it definitely affects the will to continue a war.
Nukes on the other hand are a political and psychological weapon. They are effective when used like the queen in chess. It's the threat of force they pose that gives them power.
GW
I got a chubby reading that.
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