More On Obama's Nuclear Defense Failure

This is a very serious topic, so I wanted to hit it again. For background, see yesterday's post.

Erick Erickson at RedState offers an off-the-cuff witticism that is probably pretty accurate:

Doesn’t this new nuke policy, which puts Obama even to the left of Carter, just mean every regime out there is going to be rushing out to weaponize small pox?

After all, if they can take out a million of us with a bug or chemical instead of investing all the time, talent, and treasure into a nuclear weapons infrastructure *AND* they won’t in turn get nuked if they just use small pox, why the hell not?

This is truly a debt relief program for third world rogue nations. We save them money on uranium and they can plow it into castor oil plants.

Then, in a more measured tone, this:

The White House is announcing that should the United States be struck by weaponized small pox killing hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, the United States will not reciprocate with nuclear weapons — well, maybe, but probably not. They are hedging against it, but you know, they say they’ll reassess the facts on a case by case basis. Sigh.

In fact, the White House pretty much does not want to use nuclear weapons as a deterrent threat at all.

Signaling to our enemies that we will not punch back as hard as we can will just embolden them. Even if the President intended this, he should not advertise it to the world. It is one thing to have a wimp in office. It is another thing to admit it.

He's not just admitting it, he's broadcasting his wimpiness proudly.

Now, here is Frank Gaffney:

According to today’s New York Times, it took over a year and 150 meetings to translate Pres. Barack Obama’s vision of a nuclear-weapons-free world into a policy prescription known as the Nuclear Posture Review. Evidently, it took that much time and that much bureaucratic thrashing to wear down opposition from within the Obama administration to the only practical effect such a vision can have: disarming the United States.

Most Americans will be horrified that President Obama is compromising our deterrent to chemical and biological attacks on this country. Our allies will also be troubled by his aspiration to eliminate U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Foes and friends alike will be bemused by his assertion that such steps will, as the Times paraphrased it, “create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions.” In fact, none — not one — of the other nuclear states or the obvious wannabes has evinced any interest in abandoning such “ambitions.”

I believe that the most alarming aspect of the Obama denuclearization program, however, is its explicit renunciation of new U.S. nuclear weapons — an outcome that required the president to overrule his own defense secretary. Even if there were no new START treaty, no further movement on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and no new wooly-headed declaratory policies, the mere fact that the United States will fail to reverse the steady obsolescence of its deterrent — and the atrophying of the skilled workforce needed to sustain it — will ineluctably achieve what is transparently President Obama’s ultimate goal: a world without American nuclear weapons.

Worried yet? I sure am.

More explanation from the actual experts at Heritage (emphasis mine):

President Barack Obama today released five specific objectives regarding the United States’ future nuclear force, but the most important objective of all – defending the United States and its allies against strategic attack – was not among them. Now, it is up to Congress, the American people and America’s allies to ask the President a simple, pointed question: Why won’t you defend us?

The release of the President’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) raises significant questions about the soundness of the Obama administration’s nuclear strategy. First and foremost, the President’s priorities for his nuclear strategy are contradictory. By having a smaller, less reliable, less credible nuclear force, the President’s strategy will increase the incentive for nuclear proliferators to produce weapons, and other states’ reliance on nuclear weapons will only grow. In short, the world will become a more dangerous place to live.

... existing U.S. declaratory policy, which as written under President Carter and reaffirmed by other Presidents, (including President Clinton after the Cold War ended), has served the United States well. As it stood, the policy was a simple, clear cut and forceful declaration of the U.S. policy on the use of nuclear weapons for self defense. Conversely, the declaratory policy stated in President Obama’s NPR is something only a lawyer could love and lays out a series of muddled conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons. That only serves to send confused signals to both allies and adversaries.

The bottom line is that Barack Obama believes in a world without nuclear weapons. He naively thinks that if America throws away its own nuclear weapons and declares that it won't defend itself from anyone who attacks us, then everyone else will follow suit.

By thinking this, he is proving that he's a phenomenal idiot of historic proportions.

This will do exactly the opposite, prompting everyone else to hasten their own nuclear development instead, and probably get a whole load of Americans killed in the process.

Scared yet?

But this should be no surprise to anyone. After all, he literally promised to disarm the American military. Remember this?

We also mentioned this here, here, here, and here. In fact, we knew Obama planned to do this clear back in June of 2008. This is no surprise, but it is shocking to watch such dangerously irresponsible leadership in action.

There's my two cents.