Brent Budowsky, The Hill, August 3, 2007
It is a testament to the triumph of positioning politics over common sense and sound national security strategy that Hillary Clinton has now raised the possibility of a nuclear strike.
Let us be blunt: It would be a profound and catastrophic disaster for America to launch a nuclear attack, as Hillary Clinton suggests may be proper. When he rules out a nuclear attack, Barack Obama is 100 percent right — and when Hillary says she might do it, she is 100 percent wrong and for 100 percent the wrong reasons: her endless maneuvering and positioning.
Let’s be clear: If there is actionable intelligence about Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan or Pakistan it would be proper to kill him through attacks via missiles or air power.
However, it is not necessary and would be a disaster to send American ground forces into Pakistan for such an attack. It is not necessary and would be a catastrophe of regional and worldwide dimension for the United States to launch a nuclear attack.
Parenthetically, it is ironic but predictable that one Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution appears to be backtracking fast and furious from his support of the Bush-Cheney escalation in Iraq, which he and Kenneth Pollack so unwisely and grotesquely endorsed in The New York Times and their round of the cable talkies.