[Note: This post is part of what was supposed to be a series of satirical posts that explore aspects of the United States’ involvement in conflicts in the Middle East. If it seems neither funny nor informative, that’s because these posts didn’t work out. Please don’t assume I actually believe any of what I’m saying.]
This is the second installment of a series of modest proposals for victory in Iraq.
Proposals for changing our Iraq strategy have often been given simple names such as Go Big (send more troops), Go Long (plan a permanent occupation), or Go Home (the core of my previous proposal). I guess this proposal’s simple name would be Go Nuclear.
Many people claim that this is a war against Islamofascism—the desire by some Islamic leaders to conquer the world and convert it to Islam—and that it’s our job to fight it. I’ve also heard people claim that Islamic culture (or maybe it’s Arabic culture) is oriented to respect power and authority, not democratic cooperation, meaning that the hoards of people fighting for our Islamofascist enemies won’t recognize the advantages of a western liberal democracy and won’t take an opportunity to form one.
In other words, if we believe these two theories, our enemies are an implacable foe who would rather fight than live a better life. They cannot be bargained with or reasoned with. They feel no pity or remorse. They are not deal makers or coalition builders. And they seek to destroy our civilization. Our only recourse is to defeat them by force of arms.
Then that should be our strategy.
The United States has a stockpile of about ten thousand nuclear warheads. According to our arms reduction plans, we’re planning to reduce this stockpile considerably. One way of doing so is to expend the warheads in the middle east. Think of it as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
We start at the top, by launching a multi-pronged attack against Iran.
Our first priority is to establish air supremacy by sending nuclear-armed stealth missions to suppress all the major airbases, beginning with the air force headquarters at Doshan Tapeh Air Base and the large airbase at Mehrabad International Airport just outside Tehran, then Ghali Morghi, and then Imam Khomeini International Airport under construction to the south. Other air supremacy targets should include Tabriz (which also has nuclear facilities), Hamadan, Dezful, Umidiyeh, Shiraz, and Isfahan in the Western Command, and Bushehr, Chah Bahar, and Bandar-e Abbas in the Southern Command.
These targets overlap with several other kinds of targets, such as weapons of mass detruction. Thus, the mission to Tehran should also include the Tehran Nuclear Research Center and the missile program facilities in the southwestern suburbs. In addition to bombing the airbase at Isfahan, we should also bomb the the missile plant, the chemical weapons factories, and the Nuclear Technology/Research Center, along with the nuclear fuel production center at Roshandasht to the southeast.
Shiraz also has chemical weapons facilities and is home to Iran’s special forces, and they could form the core of a pretty effective terrorist organization and cause a lot of trouble in the aftermath if we don’ t catch them at home, so Shiraz should be one of the first places we hit, along with the special forces garrisons at Kermanshah, Zahedan, Orumieh, and Mashad.
If we don’t catch the Iranian navy in port, we’ll have to chase them down on the ocean. That wouldn’t be a huge problem, except maybe for the submarines, so we should be sure to destroy the submarine pens at Bandar-e Abbas while we’re bombing the airbase. We should also send missions to destroy the naval yard at Bushehr, the chemical weapons and anti-shipping missile sites in the Abu Musa islands, and Kharg island, all of which threaten shipping in the gulf.
Another prime set of targets are the nuclear facilities at Anrak, Arak, Ardekan, Bonab, Chalus, Darkhovin, Fasa, Gchine, Karaj, Kolahdouz, Lavizan, Mo’allem Kalaych, Natanz, Neka, Parchin, Saghand, and Tabas. We will probably also want to either bomb or capture the uranium mines in Yazd, Khorassan, Sistan va Baluchestan, Hormozgan, Bandar-e-Abbas, and Badar-e-Lengeh Provinces.
We could also bomb the chemical and bio-weapons facilities in Damghan, Parchin, and Qazvin, along with the chemical and missle sites on Qeshm island and in Abadan, Aliabad, Dasht-e Kavir, Dorud, Emamshahr, Gamsar, Gotaresh, Hama, Islaker, Khorramabad, Kukh-e-Barjamali, Maghdad, Mashhad, Okaraman, Pairzan, Saidabad, Sharud, Sultanatabad, Sarji, Semnan, Shahriyar, Shiraz, Seman, Shahroud, Sargfabad, Sirri Island, Sirjan, and Taba. Some of those are only suspected missile sites, so with a little intelligence we might be able to save ourselves the cost of a few multi-million dollar warheads. Or not.
Iran’s land forces are spread out all over the place, but in addition to the special forces units mentioned earlier, we would also want to bomb the ones closest to the border with Iraq, including Abadan, Khorramshahr, Ahvaz, Dezfuland, and Mahabad.
That takes care of the purely military targets, which were the most time-critical. After that, we can set about nuking the industrial and commercial centers at Tehran, Mashad, Esfahan, Tabriz, Karaj, Shiraz, Qom, and Ahvaz, some of which will already be damaged from the military attacks. We could also use nuclear weapons to close mountain passes and major river crossings.
To be clear about our strategy, the goal here is not mere military incapacitation. The plan is to destroy our enemies’ industrial civilizations, reducing them to a state of struggling for subsistence. It’s hard to mount an international terrorist conspiracy, let alone a religious empire, when most of your people are scavenging for scrap copper and aluminum in the rubble of your cities.
A similar strategy will serve in Syria, beginning with the destruction of air bases in Abu-a-Dhur, Aleppo, Blay, Damascus Dayr az Zawr, Dumayr, As Suwayda, As West, Hamah, Kamishly, Khalkhalah, Latakia, Marj Ruhayyil, Messe, An Nasiriyah, Neirab, Quasayr, Rasin el About, Shayrat, Tabqa, Tiyas, Tadmur, and Sayqal, then continuing with the naval bases at Latakia, Baniyas, Minat al Bayda, and Tartus, and finishing with the special weapons facilities in Al Safir, Cerin, Homs, and Palmyra. We should also strike Damascus, because that’s the seat of government.
Many people reading this far will ask why the Saudis get a pass, when they were at the heart of the 9/11 terror attacks and they’re financing radical extremism all over the world. For purposes of this proposal, they don’t. However, rather than destroying Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons, I propose a conventional attack aimed at bringing down the House of Saud because I have other plans for the region. I want to end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians by giving the Arabian peninsula to the Palestinians as their new homeland.
As with any plan, there are a few drawbacks.
For one thing, it would make us the biggest mass murderers of all time. In histories written about this period, Stalin and Hitler will be reduced in status to mere portents of the calculated savagery yet to come.
Of more practical concern, we’d be bombing the places where they keep all our oil. To mitigate this, we may want to use conventional attacks on some sites to preserve oil production capacity.
Another concern is nuclear fallout, which will spread throughout the region and (to varying degrees) all over the world. Naturally, we can expect protests from other nations.
We can meet these protests in three ways. First, we can point out that we set off about a hundred nuclear weapons in our own country during World War III (a.k.a. the Cold War) to protect western civilization, and you didn’t hear us whining all the time about a little fallout. Second, we can offer them compensation for damages. As we’ve learned from our experiences in Iraq, conventional warfare is expensive, so even a few hundred billion dollars in reparations would be a bargain. Third, we can point out that we just killed several million people whose existence annoyed us, so they should just shut the hell up.
In conclusion, although not without controversy, a massive nuclear strike in the middle east would be quick, it would be cheap, and it would save American lives that would be lost in a long conventional war.
(A note on sources: All information about foreign military facilities was drawn from GlobalSecurity.org, and all errors herein are theirs and theirs alone.)
Since Nagasaki, the policy of the United States has consistently been that nuclear weapons are an absolute last resort. On balance, I’d say this has proven to be a good idea.
But to people who think the way folks in the Arab/Islamic culture think, said policy may have made it appear that we’re unwilling to use them in _any_ context. Which may mean that they’ll continue fighting until we either kill each one of them individually, retail-style, with infantry, or until we offer up a radioactive counterexample.
Given the direction of the conflict, the most optimistic response that can still be called realistic may be “well…it only took two to convince the Japanese to surrender, so maybe we don’t have to kill EVERYBODY in the Middle East…”.