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.
I still stand by my assertion that if there is credible evidence that we are about to nuked, we should go pro-active, as opposed to reactive.
I'm glad I read to the bottom of the thread, because you voiced my sentiments exactly.
We don't want nukes to become just another weapon of war -- and besides, we have the BLU-82, which is as powerful as a small nuke without all the political problems. We do not need to do something stupid, and permanent (until the world is finally blown to smithereens by routine nukes) to waste a bunch of ragheads with donkey-mounted artillery.
He was a maniac, too, or at least seriously disturbed. By the end of the war he was having his dead aircrews in for tea and explaining to them that he had not wasted their lives....
If ANYBODY, used ANY nuclear weapons on America, would that constitute your definition of massive?
I just want to be clear on that.
This author does not know what he is talking about. First, what he advocates is anything but surgical. I will leave other supposed experts here to deal with our stockpile capabilities.
His suggestion is also either mad or preposterous. Our policy is that our nuclear deterrent is there as a deterrent, and the trip wire is easily seen with plenty of warning signs around it. If tripped it HAS to go off, and we have spent Billions hiring the best minds in the country to think about whether we really want it to go off under those circumstances. If you lower the threshold for a nuclear response or hedge or fudge what you are talking about either (a) you will compromise your position and people won't take your deterrent seriously or (b) people will swindle you into using it when you shouldn't and suddenly make nuclear warfare respectable around the world.
This is insane.
The British passed on his advice.
Today there are well meaning people who sincerly believe that if we demonstrate a restraint, that our enemies clearly will not, everything will be alright.
The barbarians are obtaining nukes and WMD. They will not be holding them for any "balance of terror" strategy.
They mean to use them.
You have point, but the reason we did so well in the Gulf War, was due to Powell's strategy of overwhelming force.
The reason America(not our military, they did great) did not do so well in the Vietnam war was the policy of graduated escalation, which was a reactive as opposed to proactive route.
We should do our best to stay out of war, but once in it, use any means at our disposal to lessen American casaulties.
I flew out of Brize Norton with the 8th AF...a short distance from London which is still, today, an RAF base.
Have a nice day.:>)
Bulls-eye!!"
By the way, I really like your home page lead.."Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup"
Except for the USS Indianapolis.
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