Hard to ignore the news when the President of the United States is talking about how he could kill ten million people. And here I was planning on spending this week blogging about Prokhorovka. Anyhow, an article with a video of his comments is here: https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-boasts-afghanistan-would-be-easy-to-fix-i-just-dont-want-to-kill-10-million-people-190412501.html
His two main comments were:
We’re like policemen. We’re not fighting a war. If we wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in the week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people.
I have plans on Afghanistan that if I wanted to win that war, Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth. It would be gone, it would be over literally in 10 days.
Well, to start with it is pretty hard to kill 10 million people. We won’t discuss the six or so cases where people actually succeeded in doing this, they are pretty well known. None of them were done in 10 days. It would appear that the only way you could cause such havoc in 10 days would be through a massive nuclear attack. It would have to be fairly extensive attack to kill 10 million of the 35 million people in Afghanistan, especially as they are somewhat dispersed.
Is someone actually discussing this possibility inside the White House or Pentagon? I seriously doubt it.
Now, I have never been involved in estimating losses from a nuclear attack. It can be done. Each bomb or missile has a lethal radius, a less-than-lethal radius, and of course, there is radiation poisoning, nuclear fallout, and a rather extended long-term series of illnesses, as the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could recount in painful detail. It would certainly require dozens of nuclear bombs. The U.S. has around 1,800 deployed nuclear warheads.
He also said:
If we wanted to, we could win that war. I have a plan that would win that war in the very short period of time.
I do find that hard to believe, as large insurgencies have been particularly intractable. See page 47 of my book America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.
I think he overestimates the operational skill of the Army, see WW2, Korea or Vietnam and justifying the deployment of nuclear weapons, well this is not a world war. What he needs are capable institutions, better intelligence agencies.
Chris, remember that Donald talks for emotional effect (and not necessarily to communicate anything more than “Donald is good, Donald is great”).
Yes, Donald probably is speaking about one-sided nuclear warfare along the lines of the fictional attack upon Iraq at the end of “Deterrence” (1999 movie set in a rural diner during a blizzard in Colorado). A big difference (besides not being about the same country) is that there would be some within Iran who would desire apocalypse in order to stimulate the return of the missing imam (Imām Zamān ). Anyway, it would be a cool (or blizzardly) movie to watch while staying cool during a hot weekend.
Meanwhile, on another front, Donald isn’t likely to threaten Putin with nuclear warfare over meddling in elections of America (although he technically should be impeached for the “high crimes and misdemeanors” as an “accomplice to the fact” for not reporting to the FBI about what he learned was being done by Russia), even though a study at Georgetown University suggests destruction of only 20% of population in America and at least 80% of population in Russia as result of nuclear warfare between the two countries.
Anyway, it wouldn’t be all that hard to kill ten million people in Iran through nuclear warfare. However, it’s “Donald talk” …