NEW YORK, Ny. – In response to a question regarding his policy on ISIS, Republican presidential candidate and billionaire Donald Trump told Meet the Press on Sunday that as Commander-in-Chief, he would authorize the use of nuclear weapons to combat Islamic extremism. “Let’s face it, these people are barbarians,” Trump said. “And thanks to Obama’s failed policy in Iraq and Syria, they’re beheading Christians all over the world.”
Mr. Trump said he’s already conferred with a number of high-level active military officials and has put together a comprehensive strategy to defeat the Islamic State within his first one hundred days in office. “It starts with the deployment of four or five of our Ohio-class nuclear submarines to the Persian Gulf,” Trump said. “We’re going to hit them and we’re going to hit them hard. I’m talking about a surgical strike on these ISIS stronghold cities using Trident missiles.”
The Trident is a submarine-launched ballistic missile equipped with multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, or MIRVs. With a payload of up to fourteen reentry vehicles, each carrying a 362-pound thermonuclear warhead with a yield of 100 kilotons, a single Trident has roughly seventy times the destructive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
Trump’s plan to use thermonuclear weapons against ISIS-held areas such as the Syrian city of Al-Raqqah would result in an astronomically high number of civilian casualties, according to CNN military analyst Peter Mansoor. “Al-Raqqah alone has a population of over two hundred-thousand people, the vast majority of whom are not affiliated in any way with the Islamic State,” Mansoor said. “A strike of this magnitude would not only result in the loss of millions of innocent lives and infrastructure, but it would set diplomacy and stability in the region back at least a hundred years.”
Civilian casualties are an unfortunate “reality of war” according to Trump, who justified the use of nuclear weapons saying they “send a clear message to those who conspire against America and her allies.” Mr. Trump said that unlike past and present administrations, he possesses the “moral fortitude to do what must be done” to protect America. “We’re losing to China. We’re losing to Mexico. We will not lose to ISIS,” Trump said.
The Japanese and other nations called for increased restrictions on nuclear weapons Sunday as the world observed the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States. The bombings, which forced Japan to surrender from the war, left over 200,000 dead.
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