Last month, I published a three-part series on The Coming Nuclear Attack on the US. You’re welcome to review the posts if you’re interested but, if time is short, just focus on two things:
An attempted terrorist attack on the United States in the next few years is “a certainty.”
Given sufficient fuel any motivated group can build an effective nuclear weapon.
Now comes Francis J. Gavin of the University of Texas at Austin, to disagree with me. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece published yesterday, No Need to Ban the Bomb, Professor Gavin argues that we shouldn’t be very concerned about nuclear proliferation.
Read Gavin’s full piece if you have the time but here’s the nexus of his argument:
[It is an] overstatement that a catastrophic terrorist nuclear attack against the United States is inevitable. Eight and a half years after the horrific 9/11 terrorist attacks, we have not had the atomic attack on our soil that many experts predicted.
[It is an] exaggeration that the threat of rogue nuclear nations today is unprecedented in history. To some, a nuclear Iran or North Korea is so unacceptable as to justify preemptive strikes against their nuclear capabilities. We forget that the so-called rogue threat is not new: The peril presented by a nuclear-armed Mao in the 1960s was far more dangerous than anything Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran could offer today.
Gavin, in my opinion misses two key points.
First, time is not an issue for Islamo-Fascist terrorists. Sure, it’s been 8 1/2 years since their last big score. They’d like to do something big tomorrow if they could, but they haven’t found the fuel to build a bomb yet. They will.
Second, these terrorists are not aligned with any particular nation or geographical location. They’re on “a mission from god.” Even Professor Gavin’s so-called rogue nations don’t want to get involved in the terrorists’ plans because if, say, Tehran or Pyongyang were identified as the source of a terrorist nuclear device, nuclear retaliation from the United States would be swift and devastating.
Everything has its price, including enriched uranium and plutonium. There already is enough unaccounted-for nuclear material in the world to put together quite a few bombs. It’s just a matter of time until some jihadists get enough of the stuff together in one place to accomplish their goal.
As with the 9/11 attacks, we may be able to run down a few poster boys and prosecute them but it won’t reverse the damage we’ve suffered and it won’t really make any difference to the terrorists. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks) will be a hero and martyr to his cause whether we hang him or let him rot in jail.
Who knows how many virgins await the guy who masterminds the first nuclear attack on US soil.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 5:00 PM and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
No Nukes is Good Nukes
Last month, I published a three-part series on The Coming Nuclear Attack on the US. You’re welcome to review the posts if you’re interested but, if time is short, just focus on two things:
Now comes Francis J. Gavin of the University of Texas at Austin, to disagree with me. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece published yesterday, No Need to Ban the Bomb, Professor Gavin argues that we shouldn’t be very concerned about nuclear proliferation.
Read Gavin’s full piece if you have the time but here’s the nexus of his argument:
Gavin, in my opinion misses two key points.
First, time is not an issue for Islamo-Fascist terrorists. Sure, it’s been 8 1/2 years since their last big score. They’d like to do something big tomorrow if they could, but they haven’t found the fuel to build a bomb yet. They will.
Second, these terrorists are not aligned with any particular nation or geographical location. They’re on “a mission from god.” Even Professor Gavin’s so-called rogue nations don’t want to get involved in the terrorists’ plans because if, say, Tehran or Pyongyang were identified as the source of a terrorist nuclear device, nuclear retaliation from the United States would be swift and devastating.
Everything has its price, including enriched uranium and plutonium. There already is enough unaccounted-for nuclear material in the world to put together quite a few bombs. It’s just a matter of time until some jihadists get enough of the stuff together in one place to accomplish their goal.
As with the 9/11 attacks, we may be able to run down a few poster boys and prosecute them but it won’t reverse the damage we’ve suffered and it won’t really make any difference to the terrorists. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks) will be a hero and martyr to his cause whether we hang him or let him rot in jail.
Who knows how many virgins await the guy who masterminds the first nuclear attack on US soil.
Like this:
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 5:00 PM and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.