We had our third debate last night. Jack did a great job. Sen. Ensign gave his usual shiny polished performance -- but, unfortunately for him (and the nation), if you listen to the words, he was simply bat guano crazy in a couple of places.
I'm going to mention just one of them now because it broke my Appall-o-meter.
If I told you that John Ensign's plan to deal with North Korea is to make sure Japan has nuclear weapons so that we can scare China into working with us, would you think that I was making it up?
You would? Then go look it up yourself. Yes, he really said this.
Analysis and the muffled sound of your diarist beating his head against the wall after the jump.
An excerpt from Ensign's response to a question about North Korea:
That is why we have to be so much tougher with the Chinese. The threat of Japan having a nuclear weapon would scare China to death. It's because of China's fear of Japan, because they have invaded by Japan a few times in the past, that is why that threat would be so real.
John Ensign thinks that our capitalizing on China's fear of Japan is a good thing. It -- and imagine this being said by George Bush -- "it makes us safer." How is this crazy? Let me count the ways:
(1) I was going to start out by saying "first of all, if Japan wants nuclear weapons, that's Japan's business, not ours." Then I remembered: oh yes, it is our business. That's what the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is about. We signed it, Japan signed it. We're committed to oppose the spread of nuclear weapons. That's part of what gives us the moral authority with the rest of the world to say that Iran and North Korea should not have nukes!
(2) We want China's help in disarming North Korea. How is helping Japan get nuclear weapons going to make China more likely to help us, as opposed to digging in its heels and saying "OK, in that case, Pyongyang can have what it wants"?
(3) Japan is under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. If China launched a nuclear attack on Japan, we would launch one on China. Therefore, they won't do it. This is called deterrence. It has worked for a long time. Why should China be deterred by a few nukes pointed at it in Japan as opposed to the many nukes we have pointed at it?
(4) What China would obviously do in this situation is what countries always do in that situation: start building more of its own nukes. Many of those nukes would be pointed at us, by the way. But that's not all! India and China have tense relations, and so a Chinese buildup means that India will now feel the need to build more nukes. And that's not all either! When India builds more nukes, that means that Pakistan (which doesn't know if India's nukes are pointed north or west) has to build nukes. And if Sunni Pakistan builds more nukes, Shi'ite Iran has a stronger argument that it can build nukes -- especially since Japan can. Oh, and Russia may factor into this equation as well. This is what negotiation -- which Senator Ensign rejects in principle -- is designed to avoid.
(5) A major theme of the early part of this century is the United States learning to get along with China as an emerging world power. One thing that the Chinese have done is put a lot of their money into dollars. This gives them leverage over us. If they pull out their money, our economy hits the skids. This is one reason that Clinton tried to reduce the deficit. Bush and Ensign have turned around and hocked our economy to China to make it pretty for the elections with borrowed yuan. We've made it easy for China to give a devastating non-military response to us.
(6) Let's say that we "scare" China. How is China going to try to get back at us? Is a "scared" and humiliated China more or less willing to press its advantage over Taiwan? How does Senator Ensign think that he's going to keep China's hawks -- who are temperamentally similar to our hawks -- bottled up?
We're going to try to take out this guy in two weeks. If he somehow survives his own callow nuttiness in this election, please file this one away. He'll try to run for national office someday and people will need to be reminded of just what an irresponsible space cadet he is.
Oh, and if you happen to be working on another campaign? Please ask your local GOP candidate what they think of Senator Ensign's response and get back to me. I'll be happy to post the results.