New Nuclear Policy Criticized by Republicans

Everything he does is criticized by Republicans. What else is new.

I’m surprised there wasn’t a republican uprising against the Easter egg hunt at the White House this week.

Besides contributing to Obama’s perpetual opposition for it’s own sake you gotta have a backbone problem in order to believe developing and stockpiling large quantities of unnecessary weapons makes us any safer. Either that or you work for a weapons manufacturer.

This isn’t even a major shift. It’s a change in policy and it INCREASES pressure on Iran and North Korea (this is the most explicit threat of nuclear reprisal any administration has made towards them). We have the weapons to end human life on earth, we’re going to keep them, we’re just pointing out that if you want to join the nuclear club you also join the ‘targeted for a glass parking lot’ club.

Anonymous, there is logic to us having better quality and more weapons to maintain our security.
But to have many, many times more active nuclear warheads than any other countries is just pure and simply a waste of money. If Russia reduces their active number to 1500 and we do the same, each country still has 5 times the number that the 3rd place country has. How would it make us safer to continue to have the 7 times more that we now possess?
Looking at it from a defensive position, what aren’t we able to buy because of the added expense of maintaining, guarding and manning those 700 superfluous active warheads?

Lydia: “And how can it make us less safe if Russia is doing the same thing?”
How about if Russia doesn’t actually do the same thing? I love how you liberals demonstrate more trust for our enemies than you do for the opposition political party in your own country. Just classic stuff here.
Lydia: “I wish Republicans, as well as Democrats, would first look into an issue factually rather than have a knee-jerk response to hate it just because the ‘other side’ proposed it. Lessening the number of nuclear warheads in Russia and the U.S. can only be a good thing.”
Lydia, we did look first, but we still disagree. It’s not just the reduction to existing nuclear inventory that’s most troubling. The fact that he’s doing it unilaterally further removes leverage we could use in negotiations with our enemies to reduce their arsenal. Also, I’m much more concerned with his weakening of our security posture and his banning of development of future nuclear weapons. It’s this sort of stifling of our security and innovation that will set us back with our enemies. They will be allowed to pursue future nuclear weapons and related technologies while we revert back toward sticks and stones.

Lydia: “If Russia reduces their active number to . . . How would it make us safer to continue to have the 7 times more that we now possess?”
If say our enemies didn’t actually tell us all their secrets and were actually developing and maintaining weapons outside of our view. In fact, anyone with even an elementary understanding of security and military strategy should view this as a very strong possibility. Your mentality on nuclear war assumes a one-for-one exchange. In all likelihood, it will be anything but as we and our enemies have even the score by taking out delivery vehicles and launch platforms and now we have missile defense to contend with. If anything, we should continue developing our nuclear weapons systems to better penetrate modern defenses, not scale them back and halt all future development as outlined in Obama’s new policy.

Lydia: “And how can it make us less safe if Russia is doing the same thing?”
Anonymous: “How about if Russia doesn’t actually do the same thing?”
jhw539: “What specifically are you talking about anyhow?”
You have to read the whole comment as well as the comment I was responding to to understand. This was in reference to Lydia’s assertion that Russia could be trusted to reduce their nuclear arms just by their saying so. This would be more related to START than Obama’s new nuclear policy for the homeland.
jhw539: “This policy statement made exactly zero – zip, nada, zilch – difference in our nuclear posture towards Russia.”
First, the NPR does indeed call for “reduced nuclear force levels” and “reducing the role of US nuclear weapons in US national security strategy.” And, unless you don’t consider Russia an enemy, the weakening of our security posture and nuclear capacity along with a ban on development of future nuclear weapons does indeed apply to Russia as well as any other potential enemy.

We made battleship treaties with the British in the early twentieth century….were they our enemies too? You’re disappointing all those Reagan fans who thought the collapse of the Soviet Union meant winning the Cold War.

“The paranoid among us see that they support our enemies, they discourage democracy, and are still very much a threat that is attempting to work behind the scenes to regain their lost glory and power”
There fixed it for you.

I think it’s just right-wing fear at the bottom of all of this.
Posted by: Skip | Apr 7, 2010 12:48:52 PM
I think its right-wing fear that is at the bottom of their entire agenda and the ideology they pay lip service to. Fear and greed, but mostly fear (and a willingness to be intellectually dishonest come what may– all in the name of political posturing)
On topic, per Think Progress: “The new strategy, which did not contain any radical changes to previous administration’s policies, took a “middle course” and “keeps first-strike strategy.”… Now that the details are known, many conservatives are completely misrepresenting them.Even former Bush administration Homeland Security official Fran Townsend refused to advance the right’s new false NPR talking point… Moreover, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said he “wholly endorses” the new NPR.”

I’m surprised there wasn’t a republican uprising against the Easter egg hunt at the White House this week.
Posted by: Coracii | Apr 7, 2010 10:37:13 AM
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They must have been too busy at the bondage bar.

“Now that the details are known, many conservatives are completely misrepresenting them”
That is because all the right wing has to offer are lies and fear.

Contrary to popular liberal belief, conservatives can actually agree with Obama on the rare occasion he’s actually doing good for the country.
Posted by: Anonymous | Apr 7, 2010 3:17:24 PM
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Nonsense. The Republican tactic to get re-elected is to oppose everything the Democrats do and to demonize them at every turn.
It’s the ONLY tactic they’ve used.
The vast majority of the Republicans even opposed lowering taxes on small businesses in the Jobs Bill.
It’s a blanket – Party First. Country Second approach.

Anonymous, I just returned to read your numerous comments to my questions to you.
I don’t know where to start. Most troubling is your attitude that we can’t trust Russia to accurately tell how many nuclear warheads they have, so why make a deal with them at all. Wouldn’t they be saying the same thing to us if there wasn’t serious spy network/satellites on both sides to keep things honest? And even if Russia lied, didn’t reduce their number to ours, certainly you realize that we would still have enough to blow up their country many times over, so it is certainly not a security risk.
I ask you again, how are we safer to waste money on having 7 times rather than 5 times more active nuclear warheads than the third place country?

Lydia: “Most troubling is your attitude that we can’t trust Russia to accurately tell how many nuclear warheads they have, so why make a deal with them at all.”
Exactly. That’s one of the primary reasons I oppose START and other NPTs at this point. While some things can be verified, there’s no way to know for sure that the enemy is adhering to the treaty, especially in a country that is much less transparent and free than the US. One would hate to find out in the form of a mushroom cloud. Of course, by then it’s way too late.
Lydia: “I ask you again, how are we safer to waste money on having 7 times rather than 5 times more active nuclear warheads than the third place country?”
And I say again: Your mentality on nuclear war assumes a one-for-one exchange. In all likelihood, it will be anything but as we and our enemies even the score by taking out delivery vehicles and launch platforms and now we have missile defense to contend with. If anything, we should continue developing our nuclear weapons systems to better penetrate modern defenses, not scale them back and halt all future development as outlined in Obama’s new policy.

Anonymous, do you have any idea of how few nuclear warheads hitting our country or Russia would make both countries uninhabitable? You make it sound like these are conventional weapons. Any situation where even a twentieth of the proposed 1500 warheads were launched would be a complete disaster for both countries. Humans as well as most life forms do not mix well with radiation.

Try as he and his fellow liberal utopians might…
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Whenever I hear those on the Right talk about “liberal utopians” I have to laugh as we all know who the utopians are– and how far out of touch with reality they are.
As Tahesi Coates puts it (referring to Bob McDonnell’s latest):
“… Bob McDonnell has decided to honor those who fought to preserve, and extend, white supremacy. I don’t really have much to say. The GOP is, effectively, the party of willfully unlettered Utopians. It is the party of choice for those who believe global warming is a hoax, that humans roamed the earth with dinosaurs, and that homosexuals should work harder at not being gay.
That the party of unadulterated quackery also believes that Birth Of A Nation is more true to the Civil War than Battle Cry Of Freedom, is to be expected…. people who believe that the Census is actually a covert attempt to put Americans in concentration camps, are also likely to believe that slavery was incidental to the Civil War.
This is who they are–the proud and ignorant…. If you believe that your president is a Muslim sleeper agent, this is the movement for you… IIf you are a “Real American” with no demonstrable interest in “Real America” then, by God, this movement of alchemists and creationists, of anti-science and hair tonic, is for you.” (Atlantic Monthly)

“The problem is the closer we get to having the magic number of nuclear weapons that our enemies believe they can overcome, the closer we are to having no deterrent at all.”
So how many times do we need to be able to exterminate all life on the planet for you not to shake in your boots?

The problem with this new policy isn’t about mothballing nukes – it’s about telling our enemies and potential enemies how we’re going to respond. This type of statement should remain classified and for the eyes of the Dept. of Defense only.
It’s like putting up a sign in your front lawn saying “if you try to break in I’m going to my closet for my Remington shotgun, which sits at the top shelf, and of which I only have 3 shells for. If you also have a gun, I’m going to shoot 2 rounds in the air as a warning. If you keep coming, I’l use my 3rd round in self defense so watch out – I mean business. Signed, Obama!”

I’m sorry tierra,but you are wrong.There never was an official policy ruling out the first use of nuclear weapons by the U.S. during the Cold War.The defense of Europe was predicated on the use of tactical nuclear weapons; NATO could not match Soviet conventional forces.Not being an American you probably don’t realize that the U.S. has already been the first country to use nuclear weapons.Apparently you don’t realize that Kennedy kept all options open during the Cuban Missile Crises,including striking your PM Trudeau’s pal Castro with what ever was necessary.You do like the Grits,don’t you?

President Kennedy – despite hard pressure from the right wing hawks – repeatedly rejected the first strike nuclear tactic.
He sided with Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, George Kennan and Gerard Smith in rejecting an Air Force proposal for achieving an American first strike capability – arguing that Russian knowledge of this strain of thought in the American top command did much to trigger the nuclear Soviet build up.
They were sane men.

Why does Mr. Obama hate America?

“You could almost say the same thing about the Chinese….but Republicans wouldn’t want to vilify them in this way since it’s where they like to ship all our jobs”
This is more ignorance from Leftists who have little idea what happens in the “real world”. Republicans do not “ship” jobs overseas, corporations do (perhaps in part because the corp. tax rate in the U.S. only lags Japan among developed economies). Furthermore, these are not “our jobs”, they belong to the corportations and, by extension, the shareholders. Corporations are not social welfare organizations.
If you are interested in keeping jobs in the U.S. I suggest you vote for candidates interested in cutting corp. tax rates, eliminating red tape, and ineffective (yet burdensome) regulations (these, of course, are all antithetical to the belief system of Democrats).

tierra’s ignorance is amazing.Apparently she never heard of Little Boy.A stategic First Strike plan has nothing to do with the first use of nuclear weapons.NATO policy throughout the Cold War was to use nuclear weapons early in the event of a conventional Soviet attack through the Fulda Gap.Eisenhower,Kennedy and Johnson all supported this strategy.As for Kennedy being so smart,how intelligent was it to get romantically involved with a suspected Stasi agent-not a rumor,a fact.How intelligent was it to be unaware of the Great Depression,as he himself admitted.Your responses are apparently from looking up online sources without any real knowledge of the history of the sublect.