"A Profound Mistake"

I'm really confused by the newly ginned up Democratic candidates' dispute over "the use or non-use of nuclear weapons." I mean, it's nice in theory, to say that "all options are on the table," but I think it's pretty telling that nuclear weapons have been used exactly twice in war--by the United States, in 1945. That's more than 60 years ago, btw. Since then, thousands of these things have been built, but no one with the actual power to order their use has had the poor judgment to use them. And that group includes Richard Nixon and George W. Bush.

Now, I understand that deterrence explains a great deal of the non-use of nuclear weapons. But I think that there's also a moral consideration here, which is that, having seen the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no American president (or Soviet premier, either) wanted to be responsbile for unleashing such a hell on earth.

Now I'm being told that it's a mark of seriousness to be willing to do that--not because the USSR may start a full-on nuclear exchange, but in the mountains of Pakistan? To my mind, a more serious mark of seriousness would be to just say "no."

Oh, one last thing: Remember that Barry Goldwater pondered using nuclear weapons in Vietnam? Maybe Hillary really is a Goldwater girl after all.