Clinton threatens to ‘obliterate’ Iran if Israel attacked.

That is the headline I heard twice this morning, and I thought to myself “what makes Israel so f###in’ important?”. Looking at the ABC news web site, I found this article which opens with the line:

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has threatened to “obliterate” Iran if it launches a nuclear attack on Israel, …

It seems Hillary was asked what she would do, as President, if Iran launched a nuclear attack on Israel.

Whatever happened to diplomacy, what ever happened to the UN?

I have so many problems with this whole scenario, First, it was an odd question, why would Iran nuke Israel in the first place? Aren’t there systems in place trying to prevent Iran from producing nukes? Call me naïve, but I can’t imagine any country just suddenly nuking some other country, surely there would be escalations of disputes between the two countries? Hopefully the world leaders could prevent these escalations resulting in a nuclear attack.

Hillary’s answer frightens me a little, as President she would have her ‘finger on the button’. To respond “I would obliterate them” is scary. There are countries all over the world attacking each other, and themselves. Is she going to ‘obliterate’ them? What makes Israel so important that your automatic response is that you want to obliterate the country that attacked them? Wouldn’t a more measured response to the original question be something like:

“I would hope it would never come to that, I would put systems in place to reduce the tensions before they came to a nuclear strike. If a country did launch a nuclear attack on another country I would consult with other world leaders as to what the best response should be. If that response was to attack the aggressor, we would ensure only sufficient force was used to quell the war”

Doesn’t that sound more responsible than:

“… we would be able to totally obliterate them.”

(I’m thinking WWII and Japan’s surrender here, Japan was asked to surrender, they didn’t, they got nuked, they were asked to surrender again, they didn’t, they got nuked again. Then they surrendered. The allies probably could have “obliterated” Japan if they had wanted to but they didn’t. 60 years later and a possible future President is suggesting she would obliterate a country which they aren’t even at war with!)

Global Warming may be a bit of a problem, but starting a nuclear winter isn’t the answer!

Hillary needs to win, and win big, in the Pennsylvania primaries today. Does she thinks this makes her sound tough? I don’t know anything about Pennsylvania, but is appealing to the rednecks “Yeah, lets nuke ‘em” mentality the best approach? To me, it just makes you look like a gung-ho war-mongerer. America, and the rest of the world, has had to put up with eight years of that with the current president. We don’t need more of the same!

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Footnote
I realise I’m simplifying the Japanese nuclear attack, so please don’t call me on it.