In comments to Der Spiegel, German Ambassador Michael Steiner, who is retiring this summer, revealed that the Bush Administration was seriously considering carrying out a nuclear attack against Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, apparently at a loss for what to do.
Steiner was serving as a foreign policy aid to Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, and said he clashed with Schroder on Germany’s decision to provide a statement of unconditional support for whatever the US reaction might be after 9/11, saying it wasn’t appropriate to give anyone that kind of blank check.
Though Schroder went with the endorsement of whatever anyhow, a number of German officials were said to be seriously concerned about a “shocking overreaction” by the United States, with Steiner noting that the US was “playing through” all the different possibilities.
How close the US was to actually nuking a site in Afghanistan may perhaps never be known, and without details we can’t possibly estimate just how many civilians would’ve been killed in such an attack. Ultimately, the US decided on an open-ended military occupation as an alternative, which itself has killed tens of thousands of people over the past 14+ years.
Could there be a very large group of homiciadal sociopaths whose blood lust will never be satiated and like heroin or crack junkies they keep looking for a super fix.
Any day now we will see actual tactical nukes and not these smaller neutrons that US, Israel, Saudi and Ukranians have been practicing with.
US Shock “n” Awe while killing thousands in one burst upon Iraqs troops who had already left Iraq was kinda scary obviously it was not scary enough because 15 years latrr we are still practicing new weapons and tactics upon Arabs Africans and Phillipine peasants along with Central Asians.
Just as the brain dead childre, 5- 50 years of age in US crave newest electronic gizmos and hollywood crotch shots and cheap blow jobs over real sex, , those in power seem to care less about crotches and more about adrenaline and endopherine production, all sure to come via the next blockbuster movie , drug or super bombs or a fn tablet of ego drools.
"…a nuclear attack against Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, apparently at a loss for what to do.."
Dubya was/is a stooge. Why nuke Afghanistan? 9/11 was an inside job carried out by the CIA,
with help from its pals in Saudi Arabia and Israel.
We tend to forget in hindsight that the actual US action in Afghanistan was unprecedented, and an unexpected success. It was a culmination of decades of thinking about Special Forces working with local forces.
Conventional military thinking was that we could not get to Afghanistan and there was nothing we could do about the place with conventional forces. It was too far into the back of beyond. We couldn't even get there, much less do anything useful.
In that context, wild thinking about nuking them becomes predictable. It is the go-to option of our "military thinkers" of the civilian DoD variety when all else fails and we "must do something."
It was the same in the Cold War. If we couldn't win a conventional war in Europe, we'd just nuke the Commies, and of course our friends too for being invaded by the people we were nuking. We even had nuclear land mines in Germany. Think about a nuclear land mine — where do you put land mines? In this case, it was under German bridges in German towns.
That was the insanity, and Germans in particular knew our thinking on that all too well.
The whole point of the Afghan invasion was to secure it as a pipeline route and a base area to threaten and destabilise Russia and China. Why on earth would anybody consider nuking it? Of course I don’t discount the possibility that “nuking” was suggested only so that invasion and a colonial occupation would look like a better option in comparison.
And US officials have the audacity to criticize Iran! which doesn't even have a nuclear bomb.