A community organizer in a nuclear world

Charles Krauthammer’s column in the Chicago Tribune titled “Obama’s wimpy nuclear posturing” is worth a comment. During the past fifteen months we’ve endured the Obama Administration’s disastrous domestic policy, and now its bad foreign policy moves are more numerous than the president’s bows to foreign leaders.

Charles Krauthammer’s column is  entertaining, hard hitting, and informative. He opens:

“Nuclear doctrine consists of thinking the unthinkable. It involves making threats and promising retaliation that is cruel and destructive beyond imagining. But it has its purpose: to prevent war in the first place.”

Now President Barack Obama has a new policy – Krauthammer quotes Defense Secretary Bob Gates:

“[I]f the state that has just attacked us with biological or chemical weapons is ‘in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the U.S. pledges not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against it.'”

Living his entire life in left field, Obama has now applied his worldview to U.S. nuclear weapons policy. What does Krauthammer think of this application?

“This is quite insane.”
“Apart from being morally bizarre, the Obama policy is strategically loopy.”

“The naïveté is stunning.”

Too harsh? You decide:

“Imagine the scenario: Hundreds of thousands are lying dead in the streets of Boston after a massive anthrax or nerve gas attack. The president immediately calls in the lawyers to determine whether the attacking state is in compliance with the NPT. If it turns out that the attacker is up-to-date with its latest IAEA inspections, well, it gets immunity from nuclear retaliation. (Our response is then restricted to bullets, bombs and other conventional munitions.)

However, if the lawyers tell the president that the attacking state is NPT noncompliant, we are free to blow the bastards to nuclear kingdom come.”

Those of us who are a little older remember when the topic of possible nuclear war was a little more on the minds of Americans than it is today. In fact, a friend just this past weekend suggested I read about “Able Archer,” a NATO exercise that, well, almost caused a big blow up.

Krauthammer isn’t the only writer taking aim at this new policy. Jamie M. Fly and John Noonan have an article in the Weekly Standard, “Debunking the Administration’s Nuke Myths.”

Townhall.com’s Austin Hill has also weighed in with his article, “Obama In the Nuclear World: The Enemy is War Itself.” In it, he writes:

“On foreign policy and national defense, Liz Cheney’s recent description of Obama’s three-pronged approach seems frighteningly accurate: ‘apologize for America, abandon our allies and appease our enemies.'”

I don’t believe that is too harsh.