Recent Posts

Most Used Categories

Day: April 22, 2008

You are Here :
Perspective, Political, ,

A nuclear wait a minute here

From the Scotsman (as well as other sources): Clinton: I’ll obliterate Iran if it launches nuclear attack on Israel

THE Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton warned Tehran yesterday that if she were in the White House, the United States could “totally obliterate” Iran in retaliation for a nuclear strike against Israel.

On the day of a crucial vote in her nomination battle with fellow Democrat Barack Obama, the New York senator said she wanted to make clear to Tehran what she was prepared to do as president in the hope that the warning would deter any Iranian nuclear attack against the Jewish state. “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel],” she told ABC’s Good Morning America programme.

“In the next ten years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them,” she said…

This is really really sick, coming from a person who wishes to be the President of the United States.

This issue first emerged during the last Democratic debate, and I thought it was sick when Ms. Clinton said it then. Now this?

The person elected as President usually tasks a rather reticent approach toward such issues. They make general statements, things like, “We will consider our options,” or “We will defend our allies,” etc. Even our current president, while engaging in a lot of rhetoric that is unfortunate, doesn’t promise actions like this.

For my part, let Israel take care of itself. Israel has nuclear weapons, and tons of military hardware provided by this country. Why should we get involved. Are we, as a county, so bent on defending a foreign land that we would initiate a nuclear holocaust on their behalf?

A 2006 census pegs Iran’s population at over 70 million, with about 10.5 million being age 15 or under. We would kill them all, either in direct nuclear hits or in the radioactive aftermath? Really? The United States would do this? This is what we want from our leaders?

Beyond the obvious meaning of obliterate, we would irradiate the Middle East – Saudi Arabia, Turkey, much of the Persian Gulf, Pakistan (they have nukes too), Armenia, and he former Soviet Republics. Do we think that Russia and Pakistan and India would say, “Ok, you’ve irradiated our populations and now they are going to die horrible deaths, but we won’t do anything about it?”

That radioactive cloud won’t stay there either. We better lay in a big supply of iodine because our sons and daughters, right here in North America, will be dying in their 20’s from bone cancer and leukemia.

Our politics are sick and sad if our leaders can casually say that they will obliterate a country – and no one calls them to account for saying it. I lived through enough of the Cold War to know that living under the specter of a nuclear holocaust was no fun. Living in Western New York meant we were target one in a dual nuclear hit. As a former member of CAP I used to take part in radioactivity monitoring exercises – to prepare for the day. In reality I would have been dead – and even as a child I knew that. No child should have to live like that.

It may take a village to raise a child, but only one crazed leader to obliterate the village.

Fathers, PNCC

April 22 – St. Ambrose of Milan from On the Belief in the Resurrection

Why doubt that body shall rise again from body? Grain is sown, grain comes up again: fruit is sown, fruit comes up again; but the grain is clothed with blossom and husk. “And this mortal must put on immortality, and this corruptible must put on incorruption.” The blossom of the resurrection is immortality, the blossom of the resurrection is incorruption. For what is more fruitful than perpetual rest? what supplied with richer store than everlasting security? Here is that abundant fruit, by whose increase man’s nature shoots forth more abundantly after death.

But you wonder how what has yielded to putrefaction can again become solid, how scattered particles can come together, those that are consumed be made good: you do not wonder how seeds broken up under the moist pressure of the earth grow green. For certainly they too, rotting under contact with the earth, are broken up, and when the fertilising moisture of the soil gives life to the dead and hidden seeds, and, by the vital warmth, as it were breathes out a kind of soul of the green herb. Then by little and little nature raises from the ground the tender stalk of the growing ear, and as a careful mother folds it in certain sheaths, lest the sharp ice should hurt it as it grows, and to protect it from too great heat of the sun; and lest after this the rain should break down the fruit itself escaping as it were from its first cradle and just grown up, or lest the wind should scatter it, or small birds destroy it, she usually hedges it around with a fence of bristling awn.

Why should one, then, be surprised if the earth give back those bodies of men which it has received, seeing that it gives life to, raises, clothes, protects, and defends whatsoever bodies of seeds it has received? Cease then to doubt that the trustworthy earth, which restores multiplied as it were by usury the seeds committed to it, will also restore the entrusted deposit of the race of man. And why should I speak of the kinds of trees, which spring up from seed sown, and with revivified fruitfulness bear again their opening fruits, and repeat the old shape and likeness, and certain trees being renewed continue through many generations, and in their endurance overpass the very centuries? We see the grape rot, and the vine come up again: a graft is inserted and the tree is born again. Is there this divine foresight for restoring trees, and no care for men? And He Who has not suffered to perish that which He gave for man’s use, shall He suffer man to perish, whom he made after His own image? — Two Books on the Decease of His Brother Saytrus – Book II, para. 54-56.

All Right Reserved © 2005 - 2023