The Daily Background

A bit more on the Obama/nuke story, which must now be known as the Obama/Clinton/nuke story. Basically, Obama said that he wouldn’t drop a nuclear bomb on Pakistan or Afghanistan in order to fight terrorists, and Clinton said he was naive for ruling it out. Which begs the question: what the hell is Clinton thinking, that she won’t take that off the table?

Here’s MSNBC’s First Read wondered “Honest question: Is the criticism Obama getting here due to the original AP story (which didn’t put Obama’s nuke remarks in a proper context)? After all, does anyone really support nuking Pakistan?” (Click here to read about the misleading initial context that the story was portrayed in.)

Writes the Washington Post, pointing out that on the substance of the issue, Obama is clearly right:

U.S. officials rarely rule out nuclear attacks as a matter of diplomacy, preferring to keep the threat as a deterrent. Yet several foreign policy experts said Obama was essentially right: It would be unwise to target an individual or a small group with nuclear weapons that could kill civilians and worsen the United States’ image around the world.

Michael O’Hanlon, a Brookings Institution scholar, said Obama “clearly gave the right answer.”

“He’s certainly right to say you would never use a nuclear weapon to get Osama bin Laden,” he said. He said that if intelligence officials were able to locate bin Laden with the precision required for a nuclear attack, they would also be able to catch or kill him by more conventional means that would not signal to the world that using nuclear force is acceptable.

Okay, bad week for O’Hanlon to be praising Obama, but the fact is that he’s right in ruling out nukes to fight al Qaeda. As the Obama campaign said, “Frankly we’re surprised that others would disagree.” Exactly. Let’s put this in perspective: it is indeed surprising that Clinton says she’s willing to consider nuking Pakistan or Afghanistan to kill terrorists.

Chris Bowers mused, “If candidates refuse to rule out committing such heinous acts [like dropping a nuclear bomb on Pakistan or Afghanistan to kill terrorists] if they become president, maybe we should start asking them their positions on other crimes against humanity as well.”

As I said earlier of the Clinton campaign: “they’re eager to attack Obama over anything– whether it makes sense or not. I think they’re feeling threatened, and they think it’s open season now that the two candidates have had their first issues-based spat. They’re eager to brawl and they’re jumping at any opportunity they see, whether it’s a legitimate opportunity or not.”

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