US has no option in a Pakistan nuclear “nightmare”

Agence France-Presse (AFP) ^ | 14 November 2007

[Allan]

Whatever happens in Pakistan
the generals will stay in charge.

[Citizen of the Savage Nation]

Do you seriously see any point in vaporising the whole of Pakistan,Afghanistan or anywhere else AFTER an American city has been finished.

Absolutely, to teach these SOBs that they're going to be responsible for their nukes.

[Jim Noble]

The US armed forces are virtually powerless to prevent Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal from falling into Islamist hands if the political crisis in Islamabad spins out of control, analysts warned.

We still have a few of these:

[Jim Noble]

What the US or anyone else does afterwards is meaningless.

It won't be meaningless to all those crispy critters in Karachi, Lahore, and Rawalpindi.

[Gengis Khan]

Who is going to hit China with nukes?

[Gengis Khan]

Pak doesnt have oil.

[Gengis Khan]

Jeez! Just look at all the vitriol spewed against you! You are guilty of educating the ignorant. You should be ashamed! /sarc

[MrEdd]

In the event of the posited war in which Pakistan is China's marionette and India gets nuked - India. Count on it. What planet are you on that you don't see that as a given? Pakistan is not going to stand against India. Once India moves into Pakistan china is easily in range. Don't act as if there is even a question here. it isn't even worth discussion.

You people sound as connected to reality as the middle eastern Muslims trying to push Israel into the sea without the thought that Israel's nuclear arsenal would be exhausted inevitably in such a process. You don't get to edit out the part of the world Nuclear equation that you don't like.

[Porterville]

Option? Let loose 1 billion Indian Hindus.

[spetznaz]

That was a pretty acerbic response to a VERY correct post by Sukhoi. Calling him a surrender monkey for saying that anything we did afterward would be meaningless was kind of jumping off the deep end, particularly because what he said was true. Think of it ....if a device went off and took out (say) an American city, and we traced it back to elements in Pakistan, once it has gone off it has gone off. Sure, we could have our Trident subs launch salvoes of SLBMs all over Pakistan, and basically extinguish the nation as a viable state ....but the damage has still been done. Anything that happens after the attack is meaningless (in much the same vein as it would be if a killer went and killed some person's 10yr old girl ...the dad may take his shotgun and blast the perp to bits, but his lil' one is still gone ....it may make him feel better to splatter the perp all over the room, and it would be justified, but at that point everything has already changed).

Sukhoi wasn't saying that if we are attacked we sit back and do nothing. What he was showing was that the important thing is to ensure it doesn't happen in the first place, because if it does anything else that happens after that (be it the humpty dance, free smoothies for all, or the most massive nuclear counter-attack against - say- Pakistan the world has ever, or will ever, hear of) is largely a space-filler.

Ensuring that the $h!t doesn't hit the fan is always much better than trying to clean up the splatter afterward. And if saying that makes someone a surrender monkey then that means that there are many people, past and present, who are surrender monkeys. For instance Reagan, with his proposed Star Wars defense program (that worked on the premise that it is better to have a way of destroying Soviet ICBMs when they were en route). He knew that once nukes start impacting on US cities, and we retaliate and take out Soviet cities, it will be a phyrric victory. We are all gone. Thus, if we can still have our capability of taking out Soviet cities, but have a way of ensuring that some to most of our cities survive, then the victory would be far more ...well ...tangible. When it comes to nukes the objective is not just to be able to devastate the enemy (no one comes close to the US in that capacity, not even the Russians) ....there is also the objective of not getting hit yourself. Which is why the Goverment went ahead and pushed for the anti-ICBM kill vehicles now going up and meant to stop single or small-multiple ICBMs from hitting us.

I hope there is enough cool aid for all those surrender monkeys out there who believe that the best, and in practical terms only, time to act is before we get hit by a nuke. Especially when it comes to Jihadis who do not give a rat's a$$ about MAD doctrine.

[Gengis Khan]

“Once India moves into Pakistan china is easily in range.”

How exactly?

[sukhoi-30mki]

India doesn’t need to move into Pakistan to get China into range.Indian bases in it’s North & North-east are far closer to China than anything in Pakistan.An India which loses one or 2 cities will finish off what remains of Pakistan knowing it can survive.Do you think it will go after China & thereby wipes itself out in the process-For common sense sake,China has over twice the number of nukes & far more territorial dept.India will hit China only if it faces a direct attack & for that there has to be a direct war or or one where a cohesive Pakistan exists.There is no point in a wounded India slamming China after a civil war & ensuring it’s own end.

[sukhoi-30mki]

Any US/Indian action will be pointless once a city or 2 in either or both of those countries gets vaporised.Their economic growth will be shattered,public confidence & pride will be dented just to name a few likely consequences.Do you seriously think that folks in an imploded ****hole would care how many nukes you would throw at them after that-they know they are anyway headed for deep ****-nuclear or otherwise.

[Gengis Khan]

I was hoping MrEdd would refer to a map and tell us how India can get within China’s range by going westwards. I am hoping his public school has a world map.