There's a reason Warren is surging

[NNadir]

104. I'm sorry. I'm an old man. For my entire life I've been hearing generalized opinions about...

...putative nuclear wars.

The nonsensical evocation of them has been more dangerous than nuclear wars themselves.

I remind you that hundreds of thousands of human beings died in Iraq in the early part of this century because Dick Cheney, assisted by Colin Powell, used nuclear scare language to kill people, in vast numbers, with dangerous fossil fuel weapons of mass destruction.

There has been one, and only one, nuclear war, despite all the talk I've heard since I was a child - and I'm an old man - about the danger of nuclear wars. That nuclear war took place before I was born, and in fact, before the majority of people now living were born.

It would be interesting if we could pay as much attention to oil wars as we pay to theoretical nuclear wars, since oil wars and oil based weapons of mass destruction have killed tens of millions of people since the last nuclear war, which was in 1945 and oil (and related) wastes have killed hundreds of millions of people since 1945. The number of people killed in nuclear wars, going back to 1946, despite endless discussion and violence derived from these discussions, is zero.

Nuclear fear mongering is certainly not an obscure opinion but it is nonetheless an absurd one. Many things that are popularly held are simply mythic nonsense. It is comparable, in my view, to the view held by tens of millions of people - not any of us of course - that Donald Trump is a great man. It's a lie that gets credibility simply by being constantly repeated.

Lies have that property. Repeated enough, they gain credibility.

I also don't believe for a New York second that because Biden "has spoken of India and Pakistan" that he is in any position to deal with either country or to bend them to his will because he's Joe Biden.

You and I are "speaking of India and Pakistan" right now, and I don't think that either nation is impressed by our discussion.

If Elizabeth Warren begins speaking on India and Pakistan, that is not likely to have any more or less effect than India and Pakistan than Joe Biden doing so.

It is probably the case that Pakistan in particular, holds a jaundiced view of the United States, since, with justification, American aircraft flew into their air space and killed Osama bin Laden. As much cheering as there was in the United States, Pakistan was humiliated by it, and I'm sure they have a long memory. They might notice Joe Biden sitting by Obama during the famous photographs of the raid being monitored in the situation room. Now I believe killing Osama bin Laden was a good idea, and I admire Obama's guts for doing it; but then again, I'm not the leadership of Pakistan.

Neither is Joe Biden.

Their interests are not American interests, nor are they dependent on the United States to survive.

Let me tell you something, OK? India and Pakistan are not our little brothers. They are fully capable independent nations. They don't need a Daddy to come straighten them out.

It is absurd to think that any American President, even a sane one, will have as much impact on India and Pakistan as the knowledge of what they can do to each other.

You seem to think that without Joe Biden's parental guidance they will fight a nuclear war.

This is silly, and occurs at the level of Common Dreams kind of journalistic thinking.

I certainly wish that people could demonstrate a little common sense, rather than toxic common nightmares, when approaching nuclear issues. If they had been able to demonstrate such sense, perhaps, as should have been the case, Colin Powell would have been laughed off the stage and the US would be facing international sanctions for unjustified aggression.

Every serious nuclear expert knew that Cheney and Powell and Bush were liars, from Hans Blix on down. It was the ignorance of the general public, fed by scientifically illiterate journalists - I do recall that idiot Wolf Blitzer on CNN for example - that led our country into a frenzy of unwarranted violence.

The real nuclear issue is climate change. Without nuclear materials we will be unable to address it, and we do need to "go nuclear" to have even an outside chance of addressing it. Climate change will kill more people and destroy more resources with a higher certainty than any tiresome nonsense about nuclear war. Unlike nuclear war, it's happening now.

It's not time for more drunken hysteria. It's time to be sober and serious.