The Faux Deterrent of Nuclear Arms

So the latest non-issue has conservatives and many Republicans moaning and outraged over Obama’s newly developed nuclear policy.  The outrage is about Obama setting policies where nuclear arms aren’t used against countries that don’t have them, even if they attack with other kinds of weapons of mass destruction.

Normally, I would agree that showing our hand in this manner would be detrimental to our foreign policy and cripple our standing amongst our enemies.  At face value, it would certainly open us up to more attacks from foreign powers and many of them would now look down upon us.

The fact is, though, that this is nothing more than a clarification of what most of these foreign powers already knew, or at least suspected.  The thing about nuclear weapons is, nobody wants to use them  I bet if we did a poll where the question was should we nuclear arms in response to a non-nuclear attack on the United States, at least 90% of the people polled would respond with an emphatic ‘no’.  The others would suggest that maybe we should do it, depending on the situation.

The truth is, nobody in America has the will to use nuclear arms against any nation, whether or not they have nuclear weapons themselves and whether or not they have attacked us with any kind of weapon of mass destruction.  America had lost the will to use nuclear weapons long before President Obama solidified this unspoken agreement.  As such, they exist solely as a relic of a madness that overtook two nations, neither of which has truly recovered from that long, cold war.

Since they haven’t been a deterrent for at least a decade or more, then there is no point in pretending anymore.  If we lack the will to use the full power of our military against other hostile nations, then we should not be too concerned when the President echoes this sentiment.  Whether or not he knows this is up for debate because nuclear disarmament has always been a staple of the communists in America.

A sad result of all this is that we continue business as usual with the madness of more wars that are prolonged where nuclear weapons could end many of these wars in very short order.  I’m not advocating nuking entire regions in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but if we were willing to do so, do you honestly believe that 9/11 would have even happened?

As a nation, we should be willing to go to war with all the weapons we have at our disposal.  That includes nuclear weapons and a sad fact is that President Bush was perfectly to paper bomb whole villages but not wipe them off the planet with just one.  The stigma of nuclear weapons has eliminated the image of them working as a deterrent.

Conservatives and Republicans should take note of this and not latch on to Cold War-era ideals that don’t do us any good anymore.  It is time to stop this faux outrage on what is nothing more than a continuation of Bush’s own policies when it comes to foreign wars and national defense.