Obama rallies against Nuclear Weapons at Purdue University
The site Little Green Footballs comments on Obama’s new plan to rid the planet of nuclear weapons. Now I have been following everything that Obama says about Nuclear technology for personal reasons and most of it I simply think about and then add that to my list of reasons why Obama aggravates the piss out of me. I’m not saying he’s a horrible person and I’m not saying that I won’t vote for him (as I am still completely undecided), but he just is so aggravating sometimes that it’s ridiculous. Why would Obama take away our main deterrant force?
I hate to keep a Cold-War mentality about these sort of things (especially since I wasn’t really around during the Cold War) but I can’t see how getting rid of our nuclear stockpile is going to help us in the long-term. I personally like LGF’s comment:
He’s going to achieve this amazing feat by making sure the US adheres to nonproliferation treaties. [excerpt from article]
Because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-Il will look at the US adhering to those treaties, and be embarrassed into getting rid of their weapons programs.
Or something like that.
No ‘rouge’ nation/state/terrorist group/club is going to stop attempting to acquire or produce nuclear weapons because the US is sticking to treaties that we should be sticking to right now. That’s a rather ridiculous idea, to be frank. I would think that if a terrorist group realized that the US was no longer going to have nuclear weapons they would be more inclined to attempt to get and use a nuke against the United States. After all, if the US doesn’t have nukes anymore it makes it much tougher for us to inflict massive amounts of damage without taking over their country and attempting to regulate it in a Western democratic style.
Obama has a great quote in the article itself:
“All of this will demand the greatest resource that America has, and that’s our people,” Obama said. “In the Cold War, we didn’t defeat the Soviets just because of the strength of our arms. We also did it because at the dawn of the atomic age and at the onset of the space race, the smartest scientists and most innovative work force was here in America.”
That’s correct. Starting with the beginning of the Manhatten Project and ending sometime in the middle to late 20th century, America had the best scientists and engineers. Is that honestly the case anymore? More and more people are shying away from careers in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and we’re rapidly losing to countries like China who send their best students to America to benefit from our great colleges. I honestly wonder if we have the capability to make the same kind of technological advances that we made with what seemed like such ease during that period.
I’d also like to take a second to expand on my personal annoyances with Obama. For one part, he seems to be against nuclear energy. Then again, he’s also for nuclear energy. Would he please pick a side? It’s rather ridiculous. If you’re going to be against it then just be against it. I did get a bit of humor out of this article being that I go to Purdue, I’m in Nuclear Engineering and, oh yeah, Obama made this statement in West Lafayette. For those who don’t know, West Lafayette is the home of Purdue as well as Indiana’s only nuclear reactor, PUR-1. Well, at least he targeted his comments well. I will spare everyone reading this my rant on why we don’t have more nuclear power plants–but I’m sure I’ll return to that topic eventually.
Anyhow, we’ll see if Obama actually follows through on this claim or if it’s just more pandering, this time to the more liberal sides of the party. I can only hope that he’ll realize what a large mistake he’s making.