Victor Davis Hanson Runs With Nuclear Scissors

Following David Ignatius' incredibly wrongheaded proposal yesterday, here's VDH with some more of the same:

we should reestablish deterrence, by warning any suspect states that should terrorists hit the United States with strategic weapons, we would respond state-to-state to any country that armed or otherwise subsidized or sheltered such mass killers. That needs to be reiterated in the case of North Korea and Iran. Deniability of culpability was a big Pakistani and Saudi stratagem in the 1990s, but is fading, once the United States warned both about the consequences of another al Qaeda attack. We should revisit that posture, and inform now a Syria, Iran, and North Korea that if they either house terrorists or proliferate nuclear material, fine—BUT their cities, industries, and militaries will become immediate strategic targets in the hours after a terrorist attack on the U.S. Lunacy is an advantage in nuclear poker, but so far they have had a monopoly on supposed craziness. It is time—to prevent a nuclear 9/11—to remind them that the United States, if hit, will not merely be angry, but become the berserker as well.

Like Ignatius, Hanson perpetuates the uber-right myth that the "axis of evil" - the evry countries being watched closest - are the most likely sources for a terrorist nuke, rather than, say, a Pakistan that has successfully played the neocons for every dime and weapon they could while supporting Islamist etrror or the vast and unsecured nuclear resources of the former Soviet Union. Unlike Ignatius, though, Hanson doesn't want to wait for forensic tests - he just wants to nuke his favourite targets back to the Stone Age within "hours".

Sheer unmitigated lunacy - and from one of the foremost remaining members, along with Bill Kristol - of that unrepentant rump of the bloodthirsty theorists who got us into the current messes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Never mind if the theories don't fit the facts - just "stay the course". Such a policy would make the U.S. a "rogue state" all on its lonesome, and would ensure the rest of the world would begin to wonder exactly what it should do about the madmen in charge of the sole superpower.

Oh...and it is still possible, even likely, that North Korea isn't a nuclear power yet.