http://www.nando.com/special_reports/terrorism/opinions/story/161500p-1535347c.html
I guess Mr. Thomas has more time for writing columns now that he got banned from the SDMB…
-Ben
I might buy the “nuke 'em to spare our boys” argument, if this was the same as 1945 and thousands of soldiers had already been ground up in the Pacific campaign. But so far we’ve lost, what, 3 guys? And one of them was squashed by a forklift in Qatar?
Cal Thomas was a Doper? Who?
No, it was a joke in the “What if Wildest Bill were really George W. Bush?” tradition. As you may remember, Cal Thomas isn’t the only one who recently argued for the use of nukes against the Taliban.
-Ben
Back when I was in Bristol VA/TN, and I got Cal Thomas twice a week in the local paper, I could usually find six major logical fallacies or factual errors in that day’s column before finishing my breakfast cereal.
If there was an award for being America’s Dumbest Columnist (appearing in at least, say, fifty papers), Cal Thomas would be its perennial winner.
This has one BIG fact it’s overlooking: that nukes haven’t been used, year after year, for five and a half decades, seems to have had the beneficial effect that they haven’t been used. I know that sounds like a tautology, but bear with me.
If we’d nuked North Vietnam (1967), or Iran (1980), or Iraq (1991) or Afghanistan (2001), it’s hard to imagine that the other nuclear powers would feel as constrained as they have to avoid using them in their own conflicts. It would be a more dangerous world than it is, if Russia had used nukes on Afghanistan (1980s) or Chechnya (1999-present); if India had used them on Pakistan (or vice versa); if Israel had used them on Syria or Lebanon. To the extent that other nations feel constrained to follow the example of our restraint, the world is a safer place.
Sure, nukes are always an option. But once one nuclear power uses that option, they become that much more an option for everyone else who’s got one. And that’s a pretty dumb-shit thing to do, unless all other reasonable options have failed.
Cal has always been fond of the whole Armageddon thing. He slips admiring references into his essays, much like Bill Safire uses his columns to say nice things about Nixon.
I agree with you all that it would be insane to actually use nuclear weapons, as CT suggests. However, by raising the possibility of using them, Cal Thomas and others may be helping to deter Osama bin Laden from mounting a large-scale chemical or biological weapons assault on civilian targets – an assault that could cause tens of thousands of casualties.
Think about it.
I think some clarification of the term “tactical nuclear weapons” is needed. As I understand it, they are far less powerful than the nuclear weapons that were dropped on Japan. They were designed to destroy heavily fortified bunkers & caves etc. rather than to inflict widespread destruction. I get the impression that it is the phsycological import of using “nuclear weapons” more than anything else that is stopping the US from using them.
If this is correct I don’t think the proposal is so out of line. But I may be wrong.
december, no it doesn’t. Osama hopes that the US do drop a nuke, just to show the Muslim world that the US is on a Crusade to kill all Muslims.