Obama Apologizes for Hiroshima

The latest slap in the face to patriotic Americans who still "cling to their guns and bibles" from the divider-in-chief is President Obama's apology for the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, that ended World War II, just before Memorial Day weekend.

Liberal pundits insist Obama's speech at Hiroshima on May 27, 2016, was no apology, despite such guilty apologetics as these:

• "Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity's core contradiction . . . How easily we learn to justify violence in the name of a higher cause."

• "Hiroshima teaches this truth . . . The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of the atom requires a moral revolution as well."

• "The memory of August 6, 1945 must never fade . . . It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change."

• "Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare but as the start of our own moral awakening."

Sounds like an apology, like spittle on the memory of the great generation who won World War II, who Obama implies were morally inferior to himself.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the best of bad moral choices. The atomic bombings made unnecessary an invasion of Japan and saved hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides.

Obama has never understood the crucial importance of nuclear weapons to U.S. national security.

Nuclear arms as the most destructive weapons are also the most powerful politically and psychologically, shaping the mental geography of international relations, casting a shadow of influence over war and peace and even the daily lives of nations.

Nuclear dominance makes possible conventional military aggression without resorting to nuclear arms, and makes possible victory without war — through nuclear blackmail and intimidation.

Accordingly, the rapid modernization by Russia and China of new generations of advanced nuclear weapons and missiles — that have no counterpart in the West — is alarming.

The U.S. nuclear deterrent is decades old, decreasingly credible, and there are no near-term prospects of correcting the growing strategic imbalance between East and West in modernity and technological advancement of nuclear weapons:

• The U.S. B-21 next-generation strategic bomber, designed to replace the venerable B-2 whose stealthiness is fast disappearing against new Russian and Chinese radar technologies, will not see Initial Operating Capability (IOC) until, at the earliest, 2020.

• U.S. ballistic missile submarines, the survivable backbone of the U.S. nuclear deterrent, during the Cold War used to number 41, have been reduced to 14 aged Ohios, and will be further reduced to 12 Ohio Replacement Program submarines scheduled for IOC in 2031.

• U.S. Minuteman ICBMs, now decades old and long past their original service life, may be replaced by a new ICBM after 2030, although the Obama Administration and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter oppose any new ICBM program.

Thus, a gaping window of vulnerability yawns open in the technological nuclear balance that has no prospects of being closed for many years.

What might Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran do with this opportunity?

In the worst case, merely about 50 ICBMs like Russia's SS-18 could make a disarming surprise attack, delivering 500 highly accurate warheads against the U.S. nuclear deterrent's 450 Minuteman silos, three strategic bomber bases, two ports where half the ballistic missile submarine fleet (seven boats) is normally anchored, and key command and control centers.

Would the seven Ohios at sea survive the scores of Russian attack submarines hunting them? Would any surviving Ohios be able to receive an Emergency Action Message through a Russian Super-EMP attack? If any Ohios survive and can execute a ragged, uncoordinated retaliatory strike against some Russian missile silos (many empty) and bomber bases (all vacated), what would then be the fate of U.S. cities?

Today, even North Korea, with its 6 KN-08 ICBMs, could potentially destroy the 3 U.S. strategic bomber bases, 2 Ohio submarine ports, and make an EMP attack that could cripple the U.S. nuclear deterrent and civil society.

The waning credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent explains why Russia, China, and North Korea are increasingly aggressive.

The credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent is further diminished by President Obama's very public contempt and abhorrence for the idea of using nuclear weapons to defend Western Civilization — even during World War II at Hiroshima.

If President Obama and his fellow travelers would not authorize Hiroshima and Nagasaki — when the moral and strategic necessity of ending World War II and saving hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives on both sides was clear — then they are sending an unambiguous signal to potential adversaries that the U.S. will not use nuclear weapons under any circumstances.

Obama's naive quest for "a world without nuclear weapons" by disarming the U.S. could make America the victim of future Hiroshimas and Nagasakis.

Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He served in the Congressional EMP Commission, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA. He is author of "Blackout Wars." For more of his reports, Go Here Now.