Valentine’s Day? Then It’s Time To Talk About Nuclear War Again

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I hate Valentine’ Day. Not the day so much, as all the false expectations imposed on us. After all, if you really love her, you will blow at least a couple pay checks on trinkets and baubles to impress her, as if the love of your life should be considered simply a more expensive call girl. That is what the jewelers and florists and restauranteurs demand, after all – only a cad would forego financial ruin when he can – momentarily at least – sate his companion’s material appetite and personal ego. But the expectations have been there so long, that young men as early as preschool are told what to do, and how. It’s beyond gauche you see, because now it’s tradition.

There are political equivalents, of course, and one of those shows up whenever nuclear war is considered. You see, one of the reasons we are so different in resolve from the generation willing to do whatever was needed to defeat the Fascists from Germany and Japan and Italy, was that the resolve extended all the way to using nuclear weapons. No regrets, pal. You didn’t want Hiroshima vaporized, maybe you should have reconsidered your treatment of prisoners during the Bataan Death March. Unhappy that Nagasaki became flatter than Nebraska in winter, maybe you shouldn’t have raped and/or murdered every civilian in a sizable portion of China. Uncle Sam might take a while, but he always delivers, brother, and so you might want to think about what you’re ordering in your package. We had only 2 bullets in that gun but we shot ‘em both, and made like we had plenty more. So the Emperor in Tokyo blinked, and more than a million people got to keep breathing because the damn war the Fascists started was ended by a bold use of a weapon of unparalleled devastation. Small wonder that just a couple years later, President Truman was able to bluff Josef Stalin out of Iran. Um, well, at least I think Truman was bluffing. He did have a stockpile of nukes by then, and a rather direct approach to addressing Soviet aggression.

Anyway, here we are in 2006, and we are still whining about nukes. The press and Hollywood are no help, not that anyone with a brain figured those low-lifes would be stand-up when the nation was at stake. George Clooney would sell the corpse of Patrick Henry if there was a movie deal in it for him, and everyone else out there in Havana West pretty much thinks the same way. I can only figure the few who have brains and love for their country, like Bruce Willis, only stay there on orders from Cheney, to report what America’s enemies are planning. Democrats have completely lost any sense of National Security in their leadership, and far too many “moderates” want to negotiate with the enemy, even when they admit that diplomacy will fail.

President Bush is doing the right things on the strategic level, and he’s listening to most of the right people and applying the right kinds of pressure, for the most part. But we cannot be shy about our big gun, especially since the enemy doesn’t have one yet. But even if the sheetheads out of Qum get themselves a nuke, that hardly means we can’t make clear that they are making things harder on themselves, not easier. A simple review of the basic facts explains the stone-cold reality:

· With the demise of the Soviet Union, the single most advanced nation in terms of the theoretical knowledge and practical application of nuclear warfare, is the United States. We are so advanced, second place does not exist in any realistic sense.
· The United States has more delivery systems and weapons scale selections than you can imagine. The US can choose to destroy part of a city, part of a country, or everything you know. If they get a nuke, Iran can destroy a city, maybe part of Israel if they build a stockpile and the missiles China sold them work as promised. Or maybe they can sneak in a bomb into a city like New York or Los Angeles, and hit the ‘Great Satan’ in a way which kills a lot of people, but does nothing to prevent America from a truly devastating response.
· Nuclear weapons are hardly immune to defenses or detection. The United States has been working for two generations and more to discover and defuse nuclear bombs, and no one knows as much as America about missile defense and nuclear detection.

If I called the shots, I would send an emissary to President Ahmadinejad, and speak “frankly”, as the diplo’s call it. Here would be my working text:

‘For more than half a century, the United States has respected the other members of the Nuclear Club, and since your country is intent on joining, let me say ‘welcome’. You now have, by virtue of the hostility and instability of your regime, the full respect, attention and operational focus of a nation which possesses upwards of twenty thousand nuclear weapons, and the practical knowledge of their use in scenario modeling and scaled retribution options.

You have expressed the desire, perhaps rhetorically, to remove the nations of Israel and/or the United States from existence. I tell you now, quite clearly, that we will not allow this potential to approach reality. If Iran pursues the eventual ability to hurt the United States, be advised that we hold the power to destroy Iran utterly, and to end Islam as you know it if this should be required.

The United States has never sought to utterly destroy any nation; even where we have occupied enemies in the past, we always restored them and brought them to economic health and stability. But we will never surrender to threats, and if our survival requires the end of another nation we will not hesitate to use that power, and restraint will not overrule self-defense.

If you attack America with a nuclear weapon, we will destroy you.

If you attack Israel with a nuclear weapon, we will destroy you.

If a terrorist nuclear weapon goes off in either Israel or America, we will presume from your statements that you directed the attack, and we will destroy you.

Congratulations, we respect you. Enough to have thousands of megatons aimed at everything you hold dear.

Oh, and happy Valentine’s Day.’