Sunday, August 20, 2006

If A Nuclear Bomb Falls In The Forest ...

Commenter Doug, at Belmont Club, proposes what I think is a brilliant strategy for handling Iran:


... a blast in the wilderness, followed by demands, then a process of walking the blasts toward Tehran, step by step, until compliance is obtained!


Talk among yourselves.

5 comments:

KG said...

lovely, just lovely. THIS is what's needed. and soon.

Anonymous said...

In classic warfare, the first target was normally the holiest place. DIstress the enemy by showing their god worthless. Khom is a city of nearly 1 000 000, Directly a Nuke there is too much for our public opinion. A Bunker Buster in the holy well must do. No more chance for a hidden mahdi to crawl out of it.
Step by step to Tehran ??? Take at the same time the palaces where their Mullah's live. Afterwards step by step, a mosquee at each. Religiocide, oblige them to convert, it doesn't matter if they become Hindu, Christian, Buddhist or atheist. Just not another branch of Islam.

Epaminondas said...

Just as in 1945, just as the men morally responsible decided then...if it's to be war, such a weapon should be used without warning and to maximum effect, and it should not be used alone, as a singlet, to see if they 'get the message'. We should not use warmaking to send a message.

I seriously reccomend all take a look at the discussions had by the committee on use of the Hiroshima weapon in the spring of 1945. Every word then is valuable now. And just as valid

If we decide on war....then MAKE IT, or 'stay home'.

If we decide on use of nuclear weapons to safeguard the people of this nation there must be no halfway measures so a few people can 'look in the mirror'.

Qom makes a very nice target. As does Teheran, Bushaer, Natanz... there's no ankle deep, as some message sending life sparing measure in war. There is war or no war.

Pastorius said...

Epa,
Yes, it's true, I have never read the records of the discussions prior to using the bomb on Hiroshima. Your point is, obviously, important.

Differce is, of course, we have thousands of these weapons now, and we have a whole world full of people educated as to exactly what these weapons can do, so they do have a deterrent effect of a different magnitude than they did in those days.

mts said...

Not a good idea. Too much crap thrown into the atmosphere, and too much nasty stuff for the neighboring countries to have to deal with, depending on how the wind blows that drop day.

Just like a gun, which you never point unless you mean to shoot, the a-bomb is for the total defeat of the enemy, not for compliance ensuring. We've already dithered around with conventional warfare, why dither further with the nukes? The problem is not our tools, the problem is with how we use what we have. As long as they know we'll drop it in their desert, they won't be fazed, and it just might unify them, like half-assed warring has done for the enemies of the U.S. and Israel today. If we went General Sherman into Iraq, and Israel eliminated Hezbollah, we wouldn't be thinking nukes now.

I love the bunker buster idea for the 12th Imam's hole. And don't we still have the big mac daddy of them all, the moab? Maybe drop some along the fault lines, instigate earthquakes, and convince Iranians that not only are we mad at them, so is God. We woke up God, and allah can't do a thing to help them. The Spanish not only defeated the Aztec empire, they defeated the Aztec religion, so human sacrifices went from tens of thousands to zero, just like that. Time to turn off the insane number of islamic human sacrifices?