Happiness is a Warm Nuke

Matthew Yglesias, who recently beat me out in a tough race to be the latest blogger for Atlantic Monthly, highlighted this question from last night’s Democratic debate (as paraphrased by a commenter):
Lets say, heaven forbid, that we just learned that two American cities were catastrophically attacked during this debate, and we know that Al Qaeda was responsible. What would your response be?

And Matt notes that several of the candidates mentioned “retaliating”, but he had a hard time understanding exactly who we’d retaliate against, which I think totally calls into question his ability to blog for Atlantic Monthly. Because for me, this one is a no-brainer. And seeing as how MSNBC purposefully excluded me from the debate (despite my position as the leading blogger presidential candidate who hasn’t officially announced yet); I’ll give my answer here instead.

If Al Qaeda attacks two major U.S. cities, then the obvious response is for us to immediately begin nuking Iran and North Korea. One for each city attacked, even if they technically had nothing to do with the attacks. Because as all we all know, Bush is the most serious understander of how to deal with terrorists, and as the Bush Doctrine states, the existence of these rogue states encourages Al Qaeda to do these bad things. So we’d have no choice but to attack. And we needn’t bother with any formal declaration of war, because the terrorists never bother with such formalities.

And because it’s fairly inevitable that some terrorist would be able to attack at least two of our cities at some point, the first thing I’d do as President would be to have nukes trained on both of those countries; with special buttons set-up right next to my TV, so once I got the news, I could just hit the button and the missiles would fly. One button would say “Ragheads” and the other “Gooks”. After all, war is no place for political correctness and I found it’s best to objectify the people you’re nuking as much as possible. How else to waylay those niggling feelings of guilt that inevitably pop-up?

And seeing as how it’s evitable that we’ll eventually have more than two cities attacked, I would also have a list prepared of all the remaining countries we’d need to nuke; in order of their rogueness towards American policy. For example, Syria and France would be towards the top of the list. England, Canada, and Germany would be mid-range targets. And finally, with our resource-allies like Saudi Arabia and Mexico at the bottom (cheap labor is so hard to find these days). And naturally, we’d have specific missiles and buttons assigned to each of them also. Perhaps I could have a special control panel set-up to resemble the layout of the UN. It’d be awesome.

And sure, nuclear annihilation is an atrocious event that should always be weighed with all seriousness, but so are attacks on American cities. And that didn’t stop Al Qaeda. So now that I’ve gotten my Atrocity Acknowledging Disclaimer out of the way, I’m going to proceed in the construction of my UN Assembly Nuclear Control Panel, knowing that this will be considered a sure sign of my foreign policy credentials; and thus a big boost to my presidential campaign.

In the post-9/11 world, a good arsenal is the best sign of a serious presidential contender. I’m quite confident that someday, all the top candidates will have their own nukes, and that voters will appreciate that I’ve already got a jump on that trend. After all, there’s nothing more reassuring than personal nukes or the inclination to use them.


P.S. Is there any airheaded “heavyweight” newsman more empty than Brian Williams? I can’t see how. It pains me to even look at pictures of him. How can anyone look so serious, yet so vacant? I’m amazed every time.