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June
4, 2003, 8:45 a.m.
At the mere mention of the word "nuclear," all the Aunt Pittypats in our media got a collective case of the vapors. The L.A. Times's Robert Scheer wrote, "Having failed to stop a gang of marauders armed with nothing more intimidating than box cutters, the U.S. is now using the "war on terror" to pursue a long-held hawkish Republican dream of a "winnable nuclear war," as the president's father memorably described it to me in a 1980 Times interview. In such a scenario, nukes can be preemptively used against a much weaker enemy — millions of dead civilians, widespread environmental devastation and centuries of political blowback be damned." Kennedy, Durbin, and Scheer haven't had a new thought since the Cold War ended. No one is planning the "winnable nuclear war" Scheer describes, preemptive or otherwise. To the contrary, the Pentagon plan is to research and develop weapons that could be used against otherwise impervious targets while avoiding massive casualties and destruction. The president's National Security Strategy, released last September, affirmed our right to strike — even with nuclear weapons — to preempt the use of such weapons against us. What the liberal handwringers don't understand is the application of this doctrine by the technologically enabled American military. President Bush, in his speech on the USS Lincoln, explained that we now have the capability to destroy despotic regimes without destroying the people and the nations they oppress. Precision low-yield nuclear weapons link the strategy of preemption to a capacity for applying these fearsome weapons without destroying peoples or nations. Moreover, even as we continue to focus the effects of our more capable weapons away from civilian targets, our enemies are doing just the opposite. Arms race, Senator Durbin? Yes, there is an arms race going on. Terrorist nations are desperate to get nuclear weapons, and that has absolutely nothing to do with the issue of U.S. research on battlefield nukes. Iran's entry into the terrorist nuclear-arms race does not signal that it is competing against the pace of developing American arms. Gen. Chuck Horner — air boss in Gulf War I — said in his postwar memoir that we taught the Islamic fundamentalists an important lesson in 1991: You can't beat America without using WMD. The Iraq campaign has reinforced that lesson. Saddam was involved in terrorism. The mullahs in Teheran are too. We are, right now, fighting Iran on several fronts. Their agents are fomenting unrest in Iraq, doing their best to prevent democracy from taking hold. Hezbollah, Hamas, and many other terrorist groups are operating with Iran's help — even under their direction — in the Middle East and elsewhere. Al Qaeda fugitives are hiding there, and may be operating from there. The indefinite postponement of the National Security Council meeting on Iran (scheduled for last Thursday) is not a good sign. The State Department and the CIA are muddling again, and while they muddle, the mullahs build nukes. President Bush needs to turn his attention to Teheran soon — very soon. Because the mullahs can't beat us — or even deter us — with conventional weapons, they are determined to build or buy nuclear weapons. Not only will they use them to discourage us from removing their regime, they will use them against us and our allies whenever they believe they can do so without suffering annihilation in return. And that means anonymously, without warning, in terrorist attacks. Iran's main nuclear plant, at Bushehr, is being built by the Russians. Two other plants — one at Natanz and one at Arak — are busily enriching uranium for weapons. MAD — mutual assured destruction — worked against the Soviets and the ChiComs because they lacked the ability to deliver a nuclear strike against us without our knowing where it came from. Now we may never know who has attacked us with sufficient certainty to retaliate. No American president will incinerate another nation on a "maybe." Because MAD doesn't work when it comes to dealing with terrorists, we cannot deter the Iranians, the North Koreans, and others from giving these weapons to Hezbollah and their ilk. But we can — and must — preempt terrorists' access to such weapons. In our almost six decades as a nuclear power, we have met our nuclear fiduciary duty to the world by restraint. Nuke Rule #1 is that we will not use nuclear weapons unless the only alternative would be to inflict — or incur — casualties of a magnitude vastly greater than the nuclear weapon will cause. I am able to write this because Harry Truman chose to use nuclear weapons on Japan, inflicting tens of thousands of casualties. The alternative was invading Japan at the probable cost of one million American lives (one of which almost certainly would have been that of my father, a Marine captain) and several million more Japanese ones. And we can destroy the Iranian nuclear program without using nuclear weapons. The Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs are vulnerable to our current conventional weapons. The MOAB weapon — the 21,000-pound massive ordinance air-burst weapon designed for Iraq — had to be shoved out of the back of a C-130, which has the radar signature of a Pennsylvania Dutch barn. Its newborn, 30,000-lb. brother is designed to fit in the bomb bay of a B-2, which has the radar signature of, well, of nothing any of those guys will see. That Iran intends to build weapons cannot be in dispute. Last September, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspected the Natanz facility, which reportedly has 160 operational centrifuges for enriching uranium. Another 1,000 are said to be in the works. Somewhere between the next six months and the next two years, Iran will be able to produce several fission weapons a year. On June 16, Mohamed al-Baradei's IAEA will report on the Iranian nuclear program. Whether or not it reveals the Iranians to be able to produce weapons soon, it will be couched in terms that provide for more inspections, not for sanctions or military action. The IAEA and the U.N. will not bring an end to the Iranian nuclear-weapons program. We will have to. The Israelis set the Iraqi nuclear-weapons program back by at least a decade when they destroyed the Osirak reactor in 1981. We should warn the Iranians to evacuate the Natanz and Arak facilities, then do the same. The next entrant into the terrorist nuclear race will build its facilities deep underground, where not even MOAB can reach. For that, we need to have the option of low-yield, precision-guided bunker-busters capable of penetrating hundreds of feet into the ground. There's really not much choice. — Jed Babbin was a deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration, and is the author of the novel Legacy of Valor. He often appears as a defense commentator on MSNBC. |
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iberals
remain adamant that nuclear weapons are more dangerous in our hands than
in the hands of our enemies. They're in a high fever over the Pentagon's
plans to research precision-battlefield nuclear weapons, and don't even
seem to care that the terrorist regime in Iran may be able to mass-produce
nukes much sooner than anyone expected — maybe in a matter of months.
