Posted on 09/12/2001 6:15:00 AM PDT by ppaul
About 5:50 am Pacific, ABC's Ted Koppel was being interviewed. He was in London. It was mentioned that before Koppel became famous for Nightline, he served as a correspondent covering the U.S. State Department. Koppel said he had been watching the ABC coverage this morning for a "couple of hours" and that he was "stunned" when he saw the interview early this morning of former Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, and Cohen mentioned the use of nuclear weapons among the list of possible responses to yesterday's terrorist attack. Koppel said it was the first time he ever recalls any high level person mentioning nuclear weapons as even a possibility.
Indeed.This is an option that must be very carefully considered. While it is emotionally satisfying to think about seeing the area where Bin Laden (if he is, in fact, responsible), a smoking, radioactive ruin, the unintended consequences that would follow such an action would be hard to fathom.
We've been spared for the last half-century from the real possible horrors that could have been visited on this planet largely by the restraint the leaders of he world have shown regarding use of these weapons of mass destruction.
We do not want to give any of the countries of the world the idea that going nuclear is even an option. Even given the provocation, we shouldn't let that tiger loose.
In the past, i've discussed this with many people and I just can't see any way that it could be beneficial to us as a country or the human species as a race to break the taboo that has existed since Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the use of nuclear weapons.
By all means, if we are at war we should hit them with everything (conventional) that we've got, but escalation beyond that would not be a good thing imo.
Was Dwight Eisenhower a "sick person"? He was once asked, in connection with some crisis, whether he would rule out using nuclear weapons. He replied, "No" - and won praise from the editors of National Review.
The Soviet union at the peak of its power got it's a$$ whipped in Afghanistan. The country is nothing but mountains. Ground troops are killed by the defenders who hold all the high ground. All they need is rifles. Armor is next to useless. The regular bombs just fall down the side of the mountain. They don't destory the people in the stone caves on the mountain side. Precision bombing requries that you see through dozens of feet of solid rock. They do not work.
The Russians had zero success with everything their military had. They did not try nukes, but all else failed. The Russian army in the 70's was not a ragtag bunch of misfits it is today. Afghanistan was at least as tough as Vietnam. The mountains are a lot harder to take than the jungle. If you can take them you might hold them But supply is next to impossible.
It may very well take nukes to win with less than hundreds of thousands of Amercian deaths. Look at the terrain and the military problem. The posters here sound like the people after Pearl Harbor. Most Americans then thought those "dirty little Japs" could be beat in a few weeks. We underestimated the Japanese. We are underestimating Afghanistan as well.
Those that think that a conventional war against Afganistan will be as easy a win as Kuwait, just don't understand the situation.
Stuff your arrogance and condescension.
If folks want to vent, let 'em vent.
Besides, every Muslim nation in the world is wondering, right now, if the United States might, in fact, retaliate with nukes.
Let them know the fear they've inflcted on us.
But I guess you want to start another "peace process"- good luck.
We don't even know 'who' is responsible for the crimes except for the suicide bombers and now perhaps a number of other clues.
Foreign impression of US power amongst the common man is greatly based upon a fear that some US leader will authorize the deployment of military force or WMD on a massive scale to swat a fly anywhere other than the US, while ignoring collatoral damage. This basic fear isn't allayed by comments such as Cohen's. Instead his comments creates a political base on foreign shores which fear and further resent US power.
What does Cohen's comments accomplish? A little bit of bravado and armchair quarterbacking? Those who unrighteously slaughter innocent life should be held accountable. (No Sh!@, Einstein) The only persons who will agree with Cohen are Americans or perhaps Allies with cooler prevalant heads, but Americans aren't the ones who need to have their attitudes changed or their power influenced.
The persons who are responsible are dead or unknown. Those who are responsible and inknown are the ones we need to target and deal with accordingly. Deployment of 'nukes' isn't a consideration until much further down that strategic planning pipeline as simply one of many different plays.
There will probably remain between 10,000 to 100,000 Americans who are directly impacted by those acts to a degree that no sense of reason will ever dissuade a hatred towards any party associated with the terrorist acts' cause. (i.e. orphans for the next 70 yrs, widows and widowers, siblings of the maimed, killed, wounded) There is no need to take a foreign population which might have cooler prevailing heads than the terrorists and corner them as enemies by flippantly attacking several thousand or million people when only 10-1000 might even be remotely directly associated with the terror.
On the other hand, If we have intel of some terrorists who have committed capital crimes in the past, have riden the fence for a long time, and might have doubt on their credibility, then its probably prudent to take them out as a signal of quick resolve and a preemptive strike from ascalating terrorism.
Not necessarily, modern tactical nukes have a much more limited scope. Which is too bad, we'll need to use more of them. Nuke 'em until they glow.
I agree with you. However, I believe that the P.C. movement in this country is SO TOTALLY ingrained now, that not even the horror of yesterday can overcome it. Nothing will change. Remember, this is the country that cries and wrings it's collective hands in anguish over the treatment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during WWII. Middle Easterns are safe and secure in America, they know it and laugh at our stupidity and simplistic liberal philosophy of dealing with violence. By simplistic liberal philosophy, I mean the "just be nice to them and they will stop doing it" attitude.
Wrong, there is nothing of value. Make it a parking lot.
Please! We do not need 'proof' that states which have supported anti-American terrorism for years were actually involved in this single incident.
Afganistan, Iraq, Libya, Iran and Sudan are at war with us. We are fools not to return the compliment.
This is a time for warriors, not lawyers.
If we had Nuked those bastards In Iran, back to the stone age in '79, and wrote off the hostages, this event surely would not have taken place today...
Diplomacy is dead.
You mean like the peasants dancing in the streets of multiple Islamic countries, in celebration of the strike against the "Great Satan"?
You mean like the peasants that tolerate those leaders running their country?
You mean like the peasants from whose ranks the suicide bombers are drawn?
Those peasants?
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