Sunday, November 7, 2004

[1837 - Elijah Lovejoy killed by pro-slavery mob while defending his anti-slavery newspaper]

[1972 - Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew reelected in landslide victory (60.7%)]

Nuke 'Em

As William puts quill pen to parchment to write these words, our occupation forces in Iraq are storming the city of Fallujah. Usually reliable intelligence experts estimate that about 3,000 insurgents are dug in there. Fallujah is a city of around 300,000 population that is now an Islamic symbol of Iraqi resistance to the U.S. occupation. It is estimated that about 100,000 civilians, mostly those too poor or infirm to travel remain. These unfortunate human beings are caught between the insurgents and a US and Iraqi force said to number around 15,000. It is reported that our troops have been instructed not to take the extraordinary measures they used in the assault on Najaf to avoid civilian casualties and collateral damage. This apparently will be a less surgical form of bloodletting.

There is no doubt that the three US divisions (2 Marine, 1 Army) assigned to the mission will take the city. Their first move was to seal off all access to the city, seize the hospital so that it could not be used to treat casualties, and gain control of key bridges. This is the best fighting force in the world, and they know what they are doing. They have unopposed air superiority and tremendous firepower, but urban combat is messy and there will be US casualties. William believes that the cost of more than eleven hundred of our troops who have paid with their lives so far, the thousands more who have been maimed, and the hundred thousand Iraqis who have died, far outweighs any conceivable benefit we can derive from this unnecessary, illegal, and immoral war.

Any further loss of US lives is intolerable. In WW-II when faced with a similar situation where the prospect of invading Japan might have resulted in untold US casualties, we knew what to do. A couple of atom bombs on Japanese cities carried the implied message that the next round of targets might include Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama, Yokosuka, Sasebo, Nagoya, Kobe, etc. The Japanese leadership got it, and quickly signed an unconditional surrender. The same strategy would clearly work in Iraq. One stealth bomber nuclear payload could take out Fallujah and most of the Sunni Triangle, with the added benefit that if we dropped during a time of prevailing westerly winds, the radioactive fallout could render most of Baghdad a ghost town, and perhaps deal finally with the nasties in Sadr City. There is nothing like the detonation of some megaton-sized weapons to concentrate the minds of the civilian population wonderfully, and put an end to all resistance without firing a shot. Just a thought, Mr. President. Your preemption doctrine should cover this, and now, as Vice President Cheney astutely observed, you finally have a mandate.

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