The threat is contained in a White House document called the "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction," which was released today. (The complete text of the document is available here.)
"The six-page strategy outline underscores long-standing policy that the United States 'reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force -- including through resort to all of our options -- to the use of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) against the United States, our forces abroad and friends and allies,'" reported the Associated Press.
The AP reported that "in rare agreement with the White House," Al Gore voiced his support of the policy. A spokesman for Gore said that Gore "feels this is in keeping with America's long-held strategy of using our own weapons of mass destruction principally to dissuade any aggressor from using their WMD arsenal against us."
While I don't believe that the United States should ignore a biological or chemical weapons attack, responding with a nuclear attack seems like responding to an attack with a BB gun with an attack with a shotgun -- much the way the United States did when it nuked Japan twice in 1945 during World War II. Yes, nuking Japan ended the war, but that doesn't somehow make nuking tens of thousands of innocent people OK.
According to the AP, the "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction" states that "some unspecified states that support terrorists already have weapons of mass destruction and seek even more 'as tools of coercion and intimidation.'"
Isn't threatening other nations with a nuclear attack the largest "tool of coercion and intimidation" that one nation could use against another? Is it OK for the United States to threaten other nations with nuclear attack -- and to actually attack other nations with nukes -- because the United States is morally superior?
Not even Bush's "Axis of Evil" -- North Korea, Iraq and Iran -- to my knowledge has threatened to nuke another nation.
Makes you wonder which nation is the real global menace.
