Is Senator Webb Calling For Us To Use Nukes In Iraq?

It sounds like it. Check this out, from Jonah Goldberg at National Review's The Corner:


Subject: Hey, Webb implies we should use nukes to win in Iraq
Sir,
Believe it or not, that's what he implied

Here's what Jim Webb said in the Democrat's response to the State of the Union Address:
As I look at Iraq, I recall the words of former general and soon-to-be President Dwight Eisenhower during the dark days of the Korean War, which had fallen into a bloody stalemate. "When comes the end?" asked the general who had commanded our forces in Europe during World War II. And as soon as he became president, he brought the Korean War to an end.

These presidents took the right kind of action, for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight we are calling on this president to take similar action, in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way.

Just how did Dwight Eisenhower bring the Korean War to an end? Col. Tom Snodgrass, writing at American Thinker, explains:

This disparity of total vs. limited war objectives first became apparent as the Korean War dragged on and President Truman's administration could find no way to conclude the conflict. When President Eisenhower assumed the presidency from Truman in 1953, he quickly recognized the logical solution to the strategic conundrum was shifting U.S. war-fighting from limited to total war means, and he thereby ended the Korean War by communicating to the communists his intention of escalating with nuclear weapons if the communists persisted in their total war objectives. Civilian limited war advocates should have seen the glaring fallacy of their theory at this point, but they didn't. For his part, Eisenhower did not believe that limited war could remain limited.

As a warrior who knew war first-hand, President Eisenhower opted for a historically-based defense doctrine of "Massive Retaliation," which promised an all-out nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in the event of aggression. Throughout the better part of the 1950's, Eisenhower's national security strategy insured that there was no military superpower confrontation. Because Eisenhower had doubts that a "limited war" would remain such, his over-all national security policy, called the "New Look," was based on the unstoppable nuclear striking power of Strategic Air Command. During this period of relative peace, Democrat political opponents and social-science civilian theorists were in constant chorus that the New Look Massive Retaliation was simply too risky for the country and the world.


Yes, and it was also, of course, exactly this kind of confrontational policy which Reagan used to win the Cold War and bring about the fall of the Soviet Union.

However, it doesn't seem to me it is time to go nuclear on Iraq. You guys know me, I'm pretty "extreme" but I'm not that extreme.

However, as George Bush always says (and never seems to mean) all options are on the table.