Losing a Fight They Stupidly Started, Bitter Wingers Want to Go Nuclear

[BurtWorm]

Literally.

Glenn Greenwald analyzes a Walter Williams rant:

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/08/those-opposed-to-nuclear-annihilation.html

Like all lovers of the Western way of life, Williams blames the free press for these threats to our freedoms: "Our adversaries in the Middle East have advantages that the axis powers didn't have -- the Western press and public opinion." After spilling his nuclear annihilation fantasies out in the open, Williams pays lip service to the idea that we should at least think a little bit before eradicating entire countries -- "I'm not suggesting that we rush to use our nuclear capacity to crush states that support terrorism" -- but there is little doubt about what he is advocating.

Many Bush supporters routinely play this game of leapfrog where they inch closer and closer to being explicit (rather than coy) about what they really want -- the use of unrestrained force, meaning nuclear force, in Iran, Syria, against Hezbollah and even in Iraq. Williams advances that ball rather substantially. He goes so far as to mock as "handwringing" concerns over the (hundreds of millions or so) innocent lives that would be eradicated if we dropped nuclear weapons and eliminated whole countries. Those who think we ought not to vaporize Syria and Iran off the face of the earth are, to Williams, weak, appeasing losers who can't stop their annoying "handwringing" over all this "innocent life" garbage. What is there to say about that? It would be funny if it weren't quite so sick. Maybe it's time to hear some more life-affirming sermons from Ramesh Ponnuru about how amoral Democrats are the Party of Death.

It is tempting to dismiss insanity like that spewing forth from Williams because, well, because it's so insane, patently so. Some ideas are so self-evidently outrageous that even analyzing them rationally is impossible. If there is any such "idea" which clearly qualifies, it would be using nuclear weapons to offensively eradicate a country which has not attacked us. Even suggesting that is monstrous and dangerous (isn't that supposedly what makes the Iranian president so evil, so Hitlerian -- that he openly speaks of eradicating Israel from the map?).

And yet Walter Williams and Mark Levin are perfectly mainstream figures, as are Shelby Steele, John Podhoretz and scores of others who -- with varying degrees of candor -- have insinuated their support for similar bloodthirsty proposals. All this complaining about how we are losing in Iraq, being humiliated by Iran and Syria, getting pushed around by Hezbollah, all because we are too restrained in our use of military force has been edging closer and closer to collective calls for all-out destruction of our enemies.

It's plainly time to add pre-emptive nuclear annihilation of entire countries to the list of policies (along with the use of torture as an interrogation tool, rendition, laweless detention of U.S. citizens, and presidential law-breaking) which are so self-evidently contrary to the defining values of our country that they used to be taboo even to advocate, but are now commonly accepted policies among many mainstream pundits, including those who most ardently support the current president.

[w4rma]

1. These are the types of people who support the rape of that 14 year old

Iraqi girl and the cold blooded murder of her entire family.

These people would just outright irradiate that family.

[BurtWorm]

2. kick