Hillary; there's tough, and then there is dumb!

In the latest spat between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama (see below), Hillary chose tough over smart.

Obama said he would not use nuclear weapons against Al Qaeda ot Taliban targets in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Hillary pounced, "say[ing] presidents never take the nuclear option off the table, and extending their feud over whether Obama has enough experience to be elected president in November 2008."

So. Now we know Hillary might nuke Taliban or Al Qaeda, which is about the stupidest idea voiced in a good long while.

Taking nukes off the table, or not, is a cold war relic. During the cold war we always left nukes on the table, which was important (supposedly) because we needed to give the Russians reason to doubt they could get away with a conventional attack on western Europe. Since they had NATO outnumbered in conventional forces, a nuclear threat was all we really had.

Of course, the cold war is over. The Russians no longer lead massive Warsaw Pact forces in Europe's heartland and the rationale of the cold war is over too.

Leave aside the morality of using nuclear weapons, there are times when they would make sense and times when they don't. And in the kind of terrain Al Qaeda and Taliban are hiding in, a nuke would make no sense, at all.

Why not take a really stupid idea off the table, particularly when no president in his or her right mind would waste a nuke--and risk all the flack it entailed--on a target abysmally suited for a nuke.

Why should Hillary make a fuss about taking the nuclear option off the table. Well, I think she is so threatened by Obama's candidacy that she is desperate for opportunities to paint him as inexperienced and dangerous.

Obama made an intelligent observation about nuclear weapons; that they are poorly suited for some purposes. So why not acknowledge it and lose the cold war rationales (that weren't all that rational in the first place).

Hillary could have used Obama's comments to start a discussion on how we think about the dreadful arsenal. Instead she reverted to stale "conventional wisdom" and talking points. That was worthy of the Bushies. Hillary owes us better.


Obama, Clinton in new flap, over nuclear weapons
By Steve Holland, Reuters, Thursday, August 2, 2007; 6:03 PM

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama found himself embroiled in a new foreign policy flap with rival Hillary Clinton on Thursday, this time over the use of nuclear weapons.

Obama ruled out the use of nuclear weapons to go after al Qaeda or Taliban targets in Afghanistan or Pakistan, prompting Clinton to say presidents never take the nuclear option off the table, and extending their feud over whether Obama has enough experience to be elected president in November 2008.

Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, told a reporter after a Capitol Hill event that he would not use nuclear weapons in those countries, an aide said.

"His position could not be more clear," said Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki. "He would not consider using nuclear weapons to fight terror targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

That position came a day after Obama vowed he would be willing to strike al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan with or without the approval of the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

Obama struck the tough tone after Clinton accused him of being naive and irresponsible for saying in a debate last week he would be willing to meet without preconditions the leaders of hostile nations Iran, Cuba, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela in his first year in office.
Clinton's position was that she would only meet those leaders after careful lower-level diplomacy bore fruit. Obama said she represented conventional thinking in line with that of the Bush administration and would not bring the fundamental change Americans need.

The New York senator and former first lady quickly pounced on Obama's remark about nuclear weapons at a Capitol Hill news conference.

"I think presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use, or non-use, of nuclear weapons," she said.

"Presidents since the Cold War have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace. And I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non use of nuclear weapons," she said.

The sharpest disputes of the Democratic race have come as Obama, aiming to become the first black U.S. president, struggles to close a big polling gap on Clinton.

A new poll by the Pew Research Center said Clinton now holds a nearly two-to-one lead over Obama in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, with the support of 40 percent of Democrats to 21 percent for Obama.

Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd, a senator from Connecticut, also criticized Obama, saying that over the last several days, "Senator Obama's assertions about foreign and military affairs have been, frankly, confusing and confused. He has made threats he should not make and made unwise categorical statements about military options."

"We are facing a dangerous and complicated world. The next president will require a level of understanding and judgment unprecedented in American history to address these challenges," Dodd said.

Nuclear deterrence has been a tenet of American foreign policy since the Cold War.

Obama, outlining his foreign policy ideas in the latest edition of Foreign Affairs magazine, said the United States and Russia should work together to "de-emphasize the role of nuclear weapons," and avoid rushing to produce a new generation of atomic weapons, while still "maintaining a strong nuclear deterrent."

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell)
© 2007 Reuters