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from the it's-"talk-softly-and-CARRY-a-big-stick" dept.
Oder Aderet reports at Haaretz that the United States considered using nuclear weapons against Afghanistan in response to the September 11 attack according to Michael Steiner, who served as a political advisor to then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, as reported in Der Spiegel. "The papers were written," Steiner said when asked whether the U.S. had considered using nuclear weapons in response to the attacks orchestrated by Al-Qaida's Osama bin Laden, in which almost 3,000 people were killed. "They had really played through all possibilities." Steiner added that Schröder feared that the US, which was in a state of shock following the attacks, would overreact. "After Sept. 11, the entire administration positively dug in. We no longer had access to Rice, much less to the president. It wasn't just our experience, but also that of the French and British as well. Of course that made us enormously worried."
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Gravis on Tuesday September 01 2015, @10:06AM
one interesting thought experiment is how things would be if we had nuked Afghanistan. how would things be different today? how would the body count be vary of all sides of the conflict? would we still invade Iraq? would we still have armed drones? would the series of revolutions in the middle east still occur? who would hate us less and who would hate us even more?
i don't think many people appreciate how restrained the US response has been. sure we have mistakenly killed plenty of civilians in pakistan with drone strikes but the number is in the thousands over years when it could easily be millions in seconds.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by turgid on Tuesday September 01 2015, @10:09AM
We all live on one planet, we'll all go up in smoke.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @10:11AM
That argument is exactly the same as a serial killer would use: "I'm the good guy, because I didn't kill even more people! You have to believe me!"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday September 01 2015, @11:15AM
i don't think many people appreciate how restrained the US response has been.
Maybe for a funny definition of "restrained".
Al Qaeda was a terrorist group hiding in the hills of Afghanistan. Building on the political impetus of 9/11, the US ultimately attacked and destroyed the governments of no less than three independent countries: Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Plus substantial forays into other countries as well. The result of those massive incursions was to destabilize the entire area. Today, ISIS owes its success, and perhaps its very existence to the US.
On 9/11, around 3000 people died. In the course of the various wars, the US has inflicted around 100 times as many casualties. Add in the deaths caused indirectly by the US (for example, fighting ISIS), and it's quite the butcher's bill.
The US had the entire world's sympathy after 9/11. Making good use of that, it should have been possible to turn the terrorists, and the nations supporting them, into pariahs. Cut them off from the rest of the world, and let the wither.
Instead, the US decided to whack the hornet's nest with a stick, over and over again. Great tactic. Sure, using nuclear weapons would have made it worse, but that's about the only way it would have been possible to snatch even more defeat from the jaws of victory. Frankly, Bush, Cheney and the rest should have been sent up for war crimes.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Gaaark on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:35PM
Boo-yah, and Bingo! Spot on, my man. It seems that the U.S. likes using sticks where diplomacy would help more (and yes, i think 911 was their Pearl Harbour for entering into a war they wanted to enter... let it happen (even possibly cause it to happen), then you have plausible reason for going to war.
They go to war unilaterally and without diplomacy, and they end up with multiple stings to their asses. They need to stop being so damn 'Bushy'.
Architects for 911 truth http://www.ae911truth.org/ [ae911truth.org]
http://www2.ae911truth.org/downloads/29_Structural-Civil_Engineers_2009-06-17.pdf [ae911truth.org]
http://www2.ae911truth.org/downloads/NIST_Analyses_Brookman.pdf [ae911truth.org]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xif0jIT_ZM [youtube.com]
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:09PM
let it happen (even possibly cause it to happen)
I think they found out about the plan to hit the Twin Towers with airplanes because they had moles planted in Al-Qaeda.
Then they weakened the buildings themselves and planted thermite and explosives in time so that they would collapse when the planes hit. They also made sure that the buildings would not collapse by earthquakes, strong winds, fires or under their own weight before they were hit by planes.
...or maybe the planes were remote controlled.
Then there was the thing with the Pentagon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:33PM
While I mostly agree with your sentiment....
...it's sent down. "Sent up" means you take the piss out of them. They have been sent up, repeatedly and often, but sadly they haven't been sent down.
Posted AC as I don't want a reputation as a pedant.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @04:38PM
Today, ISIS owes its success, and perhaps its very existence to the US.
Indeed. But don't forget the rest of the anti-Iranian block - Saudi Arabia and the rest sending arms to "moderate Syrian opposition". Syria is a proxy war with Iran and everyone involved can thank those involved for ISIS. Somehow politicians still think that "war will be over by Christmas" (or Ramadan or whatever yearly even you want to pick).
Libya and Syria and Iraq wars are now causing refugee problems in Europe. I guess you reap what you sow? But hey, why call them what they are - refugees - while you can just label these people with more derogatory terms like "migrants". Hello BBC? People don't leave war zones because they want a better job - they leave war zones because they don't want to die.
And then we have the Internet to thank for allowing all the nutters to talk to each other. If there is 1 ISIS-thinking-nut in a population of 10,000, that's not much of a problem because they are isolated. But today, 1 out of 10,000 can be 1,000,000 total, which is a sizable problem. Even if only 10% will actually go into war for ISIS, that's still quite a large army. And no, I'm not advocating people start censoring the Internet or shutting things down - that will NOT help but make things worse. The solution is NOT TO DESTABILIZE A NATION WITH PROXY WARS in the first place. Looking at you, Russia and US - why can't you be a little bit more like China instead when it comes to foreign relations? Less army more politik.
As to nutters - it's not a movement if you need Twitter or Facebook to "communicate". If more than half of your *neighbors* and their neighbors and so on are not willing to join in your movement to overthrow some government, then you are not part of a movement. You are part of a crazy Twitter/Facebook group.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Tuesday September 01 2015, @07:26PM
Maybe for a funny definition of "restrained".
...
Sure, using nuclear weapons would have made it worse
worse? WORSE?! you have no idea about the shear devastation that a nuclear attack would unleash. you are complaining that an angry gorilla gave people paper cuts when it could have just as easily torn them limb from limb!
The result of those massive incursions was to destabilize the entire area. Today, ISIS owes its success, and perhaps its very existence to the US.
if we nuked Afghanistan, how do you know we would even bother with the other countries? how do you know how other countries would respond after such a complete annihilation?
On 9/11, around 3000 people died. In the course of the various wars, the US has inflicted around 100 times as many casualties. Add in the deaths caused indirectly by the US (for example, fighting ISIS), and it's quite the butcher's bill.
it would have been easier to nuke them resulting in a 100 times more death.
it should have been possible to turn the terrorists, and the nations supporting them, into pariahs. Cut them off from the rest of the world, and let the wither.
Pakistan has done that but it has done nothing to slow them down. Why do you think doing the same would render a different result?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:32PM
I was recently reading an article [counterpunch.org] that mentions how poor an understanding most people have of the destructive capability of a nuclear warhead. [google.com]
(Thanks, corrupt bureaucrats for making up the lies and thanks corrupt Lamestream Media for repeating the soft-pedaled crap.)
The Hiroshima bomb had a yield of 13 kilotons.
It obliterated a city and killed 140,000 people (mostly civilians, a third of them children).
Modern weapons dwarf that weapon by orders of magnitude.
...and these heinous modern weapons are actually smaller than the multi-megaton weapons of an earlier generation.
Additionally, Chernobyl was a -steam- explosion and it caused increased cancer rates in northern Sweden--hundreds of miles away.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:13PM
Of course, that still leaves the issue of whether a protracted conventional war in Iraq and Afghanistan vs. a single tactical nuke in Afghanistan would have resulted in more or less fallout of the non-nuclear kind. Certainly the political ramifications would have been huge, but how that might have impacted on the Arab Spring and its own repercussions, the rise of all the various Al Qaeda off-shoots, Boko Haram, Daesh, and so on is anyone's guess.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @03:22AM
Still, the chances are pretty good that a tactical nuke in the right area (actually finding that area with sufficient degree of confidence being another matter) would have met the US' stated objective of bringing Osama to justtice
And, would have created a martyr in such a spectacular event that the entire Musilim world could be mobilized against the Great Satan. Your analysis is spot on the kind that led us into Iraq, Afganastan, etc. in the first place (besides the whaky Christian Crusade and revenge for daddy motivations of Baby Bush, and the self-serving motivations of the rich parasites who advised him). Those with power in the administration, military etc. in the US knew fuck all about the region, and didn't listen to anybody who did, nor even read *recent* history of such escapades by Brittain, and then Russia. "Afganastan, where empires go to die."
Of course, that is just the immediate fallout, assuming it didn't trigger WWIII. Decades later, the entire world will be a nuclear armed hell-hole on hair trigger alert because the only countries safe from US aggression are ones that can send a nuke back at em.
(Score: 2) by miljo on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:28PM
"War, war never changes..."
One should strive to achieve, not sit in bitter regret.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:59PM
Well, detonating a nuclear bomb quite close to Russia would certainly have not improved the American-Russian relations. Also the relation to the allies would have suffered. Well, maybe there would not have been a war in Iraq because no one would have been willing to fight with the mad Americans. Or maybe the war would have happened anyway, just with the USA as only aggressor.
Terrorist groups would have had far more convincing arguments to get more followers. There probably would have been a dramatic increase of terror attacks to the US and its allies; possibly causing some allies reacting by ceasing to be allies (it would be more easily justified, too, as America threw the bomb). And the USA would then have gotten much less solidarity, as then many people would have said, they asked for it by throwing the bomb.
There's a worldwide consensus that nuclear weapons are weapons of last resort. Afghanistan was no last-resort situation, and therefore the reaction of the world to America nuking Afghanistan would have been be accordingly.