[Irontank]

Four of the 10 candidates appearing at a debate Tuesday night in Manchester, N.H., were asked whether they would use tactical nuclear weapons in a pre-emptive strike. All four – Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore – said they would.

Preemptive war using nuclear weapons?...cripes...these guys sound like Dr. Strangelove

[pacelvi]

Oh are you one of these “We can nuke every one of thier cities if they nuke us first” guys?

Excuse me... but since I live and work in downtown Chicago, I’ll be dead and dont give a rip about any response.. they must never be allowed to even touch a nuclear bomb and if that means nuking them in order to prevent it, so be it.

[untrained skeptic]

Iran has already attacked us in many ways.

If we decide that we need to strike Iran it will be preemptive in the same sense that any attack is meant to preempt the next attack by your foe.

The peace at any costs crowd will always consider any attack a preemptive attack.

[M203M4]

Meh, preemptive nuclear strikes do not bother me if invoked in the face of "mere" threats. If things get rough, I wouldn't rule out holding Mecca and Medina as "nuclear hostages", and flattening them outright if such action is earned. War isn't the worst of things, and neither is annihilation of external threats to our liberty. I understand Ron Paul has moral hang-ups with the notions of collateral damage and initiation of force - philosophically, he is on solid ground. However, in reality, we have imperfect information, and, IMO, it is immoral to not err on the side of self-preservation, even if the principle of non-initiation of force needs to be revoked in select circumstances. Collateral damage is morally trickier...

What bothers me is Fruity's pimping of nation building, and McInsane's pimping of BJ Clinton's war in Kosovo (not to convey any love of Slobodan Milosevic). Those two seem to be Wilsonians of the highest order, never met an interventionist foreign adventure they didn't like. Fruity previously went off describing some new federal monstrosity he would like to see, something which would be accurately described as the Department of Nation Building (in his words, a federal department that would look like a hybrid between the DoD, Department of Homeland Security, and the State Department). And then we had McInsane saying that America needs a 2nd UN, a "League of Democracies" to spread freedumb throughout the world, deal with climate change, etc.