Obama, Nukes, and "American Hiroshima"

When Barack Obama is wrong, he is really wrong. When he is right, it is often unintentional. Obama’s risky and impulsive recent foray into tough-sounding foreign policy declarations illustrated that sometimes a candidate can be spectacularly wrong from a policy perspective but correct tactically even if it was likely unintentional. Such may have been the case with his comments about never using nuclear weapons against terrorists.

To frame the issue in context, the previous criticism heaped upon Obama for proclaiming that if elected president he would meet with leaders of rogue nations like Iran was justified. Keeping oppressive regimes isolated politically and economically from the United States is an effective way to create unrest and citizen dissatisfaction in such countries that might lead to internal reform or overthrow of the undesirable regime. Meeting with such leaders would merely remove a useful diplomatic tool and increase reliance on potential military conflict to achieve the same end. Hillary Clinton was right to call Obama’s position naïve and irresponsible.

Not content to look the fool on only one major foreign policy issue, Obama decided to announce that if elected president he would send troops into a sovereign Muslim nation armed with nuclear weapons, Pakistan, to eliminate al Qaeda regardless of whether Pakistan’s government authorized the invasion. I have argued strenuously against the U.S. taking any such action in previous posts, and will not restate those arguments here, but I found Obama’s hypocrisy in talking tough to Pakistan remarkable. In essence, Obama would remove troops from Iraq, where they are engaging al Qaeda daily, and redeploy them into a nuclear-armed Muslim nation without that nation’s permission so they can, drum roll please, engage al Qaeda daily. Removing our troops from Iraq will not result in al Qaeda leaving Iraq and redeploying along with us. Al Qaeda will remain in Iraq, destroy the fragile Iraqi democracy, and considerably expand al Qaeda’s territorial reach and resources. Critics of Obama’s desire to invade Pakistan were correct to call him ignorant and naïve on this issue.

Most sensible candidates would realize that after turning the other cheek and having that one slapped too there is no third cheek to turn to opponents, but Obama found one nonetheless. After talking tough of invasions of Pakistan and taking the fight to al Qaeda leadership, Obama clarified that he would never use nuclear weapons in the War on Terror. He began his comment about nuclear weapons use by stating that he would not use such weapons to fight terrorists in circumstances involving innocent civilians, but immediately retracted that position and declared he would not use them under any circumstance in fighting terrorism. Hillary Clinton and other critics in both parties seized on this comment as a further illustration of Obama’s foreign policy ignorance and evidence that he lacks the mettle to be commander-in-chief. They cited perhaps the most overused cliché in Washington, “never take anything off the table,” as the best position for a leader to take, but Obama, albeit inadvertently, raised an important tactical issue that comes part and parcel with a policy of threatening nomadic terrorists with nuclear annihilation: the terrorists are not officially tied to any foreign governments.

What Obama should ask his critics in both parties to explain, for this is a bipartisan issue, is under what specific scenarios they would authorize the use of nuclear weapons in the War on Terror. A logical follow-up question would be to ask what it would take for them to reach the point of unleashing a nuclear weapon, such as terrorists detonating nuclear devices in America, and how they would determine whom to strike in retaliation. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have truly examined this issue and its tactical implications, but some have, in their efforts to sound forceful, stated they would strike in knee-jerk reaction against nearly any available target. For example, presidential candidate Tom Tancredo, who fought admirably to defeat the recent illegal immigration amnesty bill, stated that America should threaten to detonate nuclear weapons at Muslim holy sites as a deterrent, apparently believing that terrorists will equivocate on their “American Hiroshima” plans if they are convinced we would destroy Mecca or a similar sacred place if provoked.

It is not clear who is more ignorant, Obama or Tancredo, when it comes to nuclear weapons use in the War on Terror, but there is no mistaking that both are fundamentally unqualified and naïve on how their positions would be interpreted by our Islamic terrorist enemies. Whereas Obama would never use nuclear weapons, Tancredo would, especially if provoked by a nuclear detonation on American soil, retaliate against Islam itself rather than any specific enemy. In his view, an attack motivated by religion demands a response that targets that religion. The logic behind such action is severely flawed. The terrorists worship martyrdom and would consider the destruction of holy sites as collateral loss in a permanently escalated war. If they are willing to martyr themselves and their children for the cause, they will merely shrug at the loss of buildings and other material representations of their faith. Additionally, the world’s moderate Muslims would not remain moderate after Tancredo wiped out the symbols of their faith.

Tancredo’s nuclear gunslinger mentality is symptomatic of the thinking of many in Washington. America’s reliance on Mutually Assured Destruction in the Cold War has created a false sense of security that the threat of our nuclear arsenal will protect us from traditional powers like Russia or China as well as Islamic terrorists. Internet forums are filled with comments about “turning the whole area into a sea of glass,” or “they won’t realize what they’ve unleashed if they set off a nuke in America,” and other similar boasts. Our military might blinds us to the reality that if terrorists detonate a nuclear device in America, Obama’s position on using our nuclear weapons might actually be the most correct because of one simple question: whom and where would we strike in retaliation?

Our American bravado and outrage after such an event would make us want to react decisively; to punish and avenge; to destroy everyone responsible for the heinous act. The pressure on an American president to retaliate against someone, anyone, would be unbearable. The initial impulse would be to consider any Muslim nation known to harbor terrorists as targets, and the ignorant among us would believe in those moments that all Muslims everywhere are the enemy and thus fair game for nuclear annihilation. Consider for a moment the dilemma a president would face after such a cataclysmic event in America. What if al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the nuclear detonation in America? Would we bomb all of Iraq in response? What if Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah claimed responsibility? Would we bomb all of Iran in retaliation? What of the millions of Iranians who are reportedly pro-western but are ruled by a radical regime? What if al Qaeda elements hiding in Pakistan gloated that they nuked America? Would we bomb Pakistan, a Muslim nation also armed with nuclear weapons?

Thus is the paradox of leaving nuclear weapons on the table as a response to terrorism. Terrorists know no borders; they blend into local civilian populations; they strike and move, rarely remaining in place long enough to be hit by initial retaliations; the terrorists usually do not represent the political or even religious views of the majority of their countrymen, thus retaliation against an entire nation merely punishes millions of innocent foreign citizens as recompense for the deaths of millions of American citizens. Such a response, while it may appeal to our baser instincts, would be tactically unsound and surely result in further nuclear destruction and literal fallout across the globe. How would we have responded to 9/11 had it been a nuclear detonation in New York perpetrated by the same group of nineteen al Qaeda operatives? They were natives of Pakistan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, among other nations. Would we have retaliated against each of those nations for the actions of their rogue citizens?

Unless a nuclear terrorist attack could be proven to have been the sovereign decision of a foreign government, a nuclear retaliation by America against an entire nation would be counterproductive. It is not an act of war by a nation if some of its radical residents, unaffiliated with that nation’s government, perpetrate an attack on another nation. Thus a measured response is essential. It is perfectly justifiable to issue ultimatums to that nation to capture those responsible immediately or allow us to do so, but an emotional and rash nuclear response against an entire nation to punish a small group hiding therein would be irresponsible in the extreme.

Harry Truman approved the use of atomic weapons against Japan in WWII because tactically it made sense to demonstrate destructive power to Japan’s government in order to convince it to surrender. The government of Japan, not wanting to see any more of its citizens annihilated, surrendered, ultimately saving millions of lives in both nations. Nuclear response against terrorists is an entirely different matter. There is no central government anywhere that can be intimidated into halting all terrorist attacks by Islamic radicals. Likewise, the deaths of possibly millions of innocent Muslims would be viewed as merely the creation of millions more martyrs to the cause and further incentive to continue targeting America and our allies. Use of nuclear weapons in a declared war between nations, as tragic as it is, makes tactical sense. Using them against an enemy hidden within nearly every nation on earth would be logically unsound and tactically impractical.

Obama likely did not weigh such considerations before arriving at his decision to never use nuclear weapons to fight terrorism. It is far more likely that his opposition to such weapons is purely ideological and reflects the influence of the view held by many on the anti-war left that nuclear weapons are innately evil and never should be used under any circumstances regardless of the enemy we face. However, as it applies to combating terrorism, an undefined and nomadic enemy, Obama was right to suggest that nuclear weapons not be used. Nuclear weapons carry a finality that never can be undone.

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Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Tom Tancredo, Nuclear Weapons, War on Terror, Mecca, Muslim Holy Sites, Radical Islam