"Presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons. ... I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or nonuse of nuclear weapons," Clinton said.
No, this is just flat wrong. In the current global environment, about the only time to use them is if your intent is to blow up the whole damn world. Nukes are not scalpels, they're a nukes, and for just about any task that the US would be involved in, there are better tools available. Want to blow up a large area? FAEs aka Daisy Cutters are great for that. Underground bunker? We've got penetrators, or if you want to got old school, break out something like Barnes Wallis' Tallboys or Grand Slams. Take out an individual? Nukes pretty much guarantee you'll do it, but take every man, woman and child in the area with them. Laser guided bombs are the way to do that one. And oh yeah, "tactical nukes?" In theory, you can "dial-a-bomb" a nuke down to 10 tons, but at that point you're talking about a fizzle, and a very dirty bomb. More realistically, you're talking something in the 10-20 kiloton range, and that's Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Tactical? Sure, if your tactic is genocide. |