The Bush administration explicitly left open the option this week to use nuclear arms against non-nuclear states. Foreign policy has been officially retooled to retaliate to chemical or biological weapons with guaranteed widespread destruction.
It is important to put this policy into the clearest terms possible: if a country looks the wrong way, they get a baseball bat to the chest.
Using nuclear weapons to respond to chemical or biological attacks tops all semi psychotic Cold War era foreign policy Ponzi schemes. The fact that Bush can look into the camera and get away with selling nuclear retaliation as a valid form of action is a demonstration of the profound ignorance and misplaced fear that people have about chemical and biological weapons.
Chemical weapons have all only a small localized impact. The chemicals do not stick around forever and very often incinerate upon impact. A warhead full of liquid is not an effective weapon.
Biological weapons suffer those same problems and more. There is no guarantee that biological agents will do a single bit of damage because so many things can go wrong. Ordinary sunlight can kill most biological agents and sunlight is hardly considered to be intense radiation.
Chemical weapons require accuracy on small, crowded populations. Biological weapons do not have much effect beyond terror. While both weapons can do significant harm to people, neither weapon compares to the widespread, permanent destruction that a modern nuclear weapon can do.
Neither chemical nor biological weapons have a guaranteed 30 mi. radius with its guaranteed nuclear fallout destroying everything throughout 2800 square miles. That is the yield of a 1950′s era hydrogen bomb. The only way that anyone should support the administration’s position is if the president can demonstrate that a chemical or biological weapon can even approach the level of destruction possessed by nukes.
Nothing comes close. W should settle down and try catching more flies with honey.
