Rush Limbaugh is all in a tizzy again, this time because President Obama wants to reduce America's number of deployed of nuclear weapons by up to 80%. Rush calls this plan "staggering," and deliberately uses the words "regime" and obviously drops Obama's middle name - Hussein - into the conversation as well. What Rush is signaling here is that Obama is a man with foreign intentions, a double agent trying to weaken America by taking away its weapons.

 

Okay so one thing here is, Rush is ignoring the difference between our stockpiled weapons and our deployed weapons. Obama wants to reduce the number of deployed weapons, from the current number of about 1,550 to anywhere between 1,000 and 300 (they are still weighing the options). Our number of deployed weapons is a sub-set of our number of stockpiled weapons. 

Another thing is, we can always make more if we have to! 

 

Rush Limbaugh's argument might make sense if:

 

A. We didn't have SO DARN MANY NUCLEAR WEAPONS.

 

B. Nuclear weapons weren't SO DARN EFFICIENT.

 

Right now, America has 5,113 nuclear warheads, down from our peak of 31,255 in 1967. Obama wants to reduce our stockpile further, to somewhere around 1,000 nuclear warheads. Mind you, we will retain the capacity to manufacture more, if a thousand turns out not to be enough!

 

Which leads to our next point, how many nuclear weapons will it take to destroy a country? The world? Two nuclear weapons were enough to bring a sudden and complete halt to WWII, which was at the time raging out of control. Maybe we're more cynical today, our crazy despots crazier. Maybe we need five. Six? Surely not more than ten.

 

Ten nuclear weapons, were they all to be used at once, would pretty much bring an end to life as we know it on Earth. Think of the ten Ground Zeros, blasted into empty glassy plains. The fallout, drifting on trade winds to neighboring countries and continents. The ash, flying up into the atmosphere and lingering there, producing a black rain and a nuclear winter.

 

Incidentally, on this count, Rush Limbaugh is working counter to both Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. Ronald Reagan's dream was, in his own words, "a world free of nuclear weapons." He hated the theory of mutually assured destruction, which is the driving force behind stockpiling as many nuclear warheads as you can. He also proposed the START treaty, which George H. W. Bush signed during his first term as President. The START treaty ultimately resulted in reducing the number of nuclear weapons in our arsenal by… wait for it… about 80%.