Forgetting About the Nuclear ‘Or’

Again and again, the United States has been given reasons why we better not go after the terrorist groups and the regimes that support them. You probably know them as well I do by now: Europe, the UN, and the Muslim world won’t support us, the Muslim ‘street’ will rise up against us, we’ve got to use sanctions instead, for every terrorist we kill another martyr will rise up in their place, etc.

Those are flimsy excuses that don’t stand up to the most basic scrutiny. For the most part, Europe, the UN, and the Muslim world didn’t give us any real support beyond lip service before September 11th, so why do we think they will now? Wasn’t the vaunted Muslim Street supposed to rise up as we bombed through Ramadan? That didn’t materialize did it? So what makes anyone think there will be an uprising if we take on Iran or Iraq? We had extensive sanctions on Iraq and Afghanistan before 9/11 and they accomplished nothing except giving Saddam Hussein an excuse to starve his people and blame it on us. Most of the people in Afghanistan seem too busy getting their beards shaved, playing music, and burning their burqas to want to engage in martyrdom. Etc, etc, I could go on and on with how silly these reasons for sticking our heads in the sand are.

However, there is one thing these ideological sons and daughters of Neville Chamberlain don’t want to discuss or deal with in any meaningful way. Nuclear weapons.

Imagine if you will, what would of happened if on Sept 11th, if instead of being hit with 4 planes, 4 nukes had been detonated in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Chicago. The casualties? There are around 15 million people living in those cities. The property damage? Sept 11th has been estimated to have cost upwards of 150 billion dollars in damage, lost business, etc. If 4 cities were obliterated? The damage would be in the tens of trillions. There are many other questions that would have to be answered as well: If the government was wiped out along with the rest of the DC, how could 150 members of the ‘shadow government’ replace 3 million government workers until we put replacements together? Could we cope with millions of severely injured people? How much damage would the radiation do to surrounding areas and across America? How deep of a depression would the economy go into and how many years would it last? Would the resulting economic crash in the US trigger a deep worldwide depression? What sort of draconian security measures would have to be implemented afterwards? There are no comforting answers, only troubling questions on top of questions.

There are those that claim the likelihood of terrorists sneaking a nuke into the US is remote, but I’m sure those same people would of claimed that terrorists flying planes into the Pentagon and the WTC was preposterous before 9/11. The fact is that the Russians already have large amounts of nuclear material and suitcase nukes missing. What group has more incentive to purchase those nukes on the black market than al-Queda? Furthermore, between Osama Bin Laden’s personal fortune and the money al-Queda made from heroin trafficking in Afghanistan they have billions of dollars they could spend on nukes if they could find a source.

Then we have to consider the ‘Axis of Evil.’ The governments of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea all hate the United States with a passion, have ties to terrorists, and are actively pursuing nuclear weapons. Consider how easy it might be for a terrorist supplied with a nuke and supported by a foreign intelligence agency to sneak over our large and porous borders into cities across America.

Then what would the world reaction be after a nuke went off in the US? I’m sure it would be about the same as it was after September 11th. At first there would be sympathy but that would fade within a few months. More than ‘ the Muslim world world deny that Muslims had carried out the attacks and would insist that we not retaliate against any Muslim nations. Europe would be concerned that we American ‘cowboys’ would overreact and wouldn’t support any action unless we could prove to their satisfaction which nation supplied the nuke to the terrorists. Left-wing rags across the globe would talk about how we ‘deserved it’ and how we ‘need to ask what America did to make the terrorists hate us so much that they’d kill millions of people.’ So in essence we’d be exactly where we are today’except with millions more dead American civilians and cataclysmic damage done to some of our major cities.

However, getting a nuke into America isn’t a total cakewalk. You need massive amounts of money/and or know how to acquire a nuke. You need some poor sucker or more likely a group of drones that are willing to risk their lives getting it here. You’ll probably also need a sophisticated team that’s heavily financed to acquire passports, get intelligence, and help transport the nuke across the world. This is something that would require either a highly sophisticated organization or the help of a state.

That’s why it’s so essential to deal with the ‘Axis of Evil’. Not only do you eliminate a possible source of nukes, but you also eliminate havens that allow terrorist groups to organize and grow strong. Al-Queda would of never been capable of pulling off the attacks of 9/11 without having a secure base in Afghanistan to train, recruit, and plan in. If we deny these terrorists shelter and force them to flee for their lives instead of planning their next attack we can drastically reduce their effectiveness even as we attempt to hunt them down and eliminate them.

That’s why it’s so important for us to take military action against not only the terrorist groups, but against the regimes that support them as well. Because contrary to what some people believe, the consequences of not taking action are much greater than the consequences of taking violent, military, action. You just have to put it in the proper perspective. Is it more important that Europe approves of any action we take or is it more important that our inaction may lead to millions of Americans dying in nuclear infernos? Is it more important that Kofi Annan may work himself into a frenzy if we invade Iran or is it more important that our inaction may lead to a nuclear holocaust in America? Is it more important that the Arab League will condemn our invasion of Iraq or is it more important that our inaction may lead to multiple Hiroshimas and Nagasakis across America? Those are the real questions that have to be answered and we don’t dare forget about the ‘or’.

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