We are now rapidly approaching the moment that many of us have long feared. Either we accept the acquisition of nuclear weapons by a maniac state which will almost certainly use them against Israel (and probably the United States as well), setting off a nuclear exchange which will kill millions of people or we launch a pre-emptive strike of our own – for which we will face certain retaliation and probable economic losses – and do so using all the means at our disposal, including nuclear arms.

Before us – the people of the free world – is a choice. Do we choose to live the rest of our lives in fear? Do we even, as some are sure to propose, commit an act of evil so great as to demand that six million Jews – and millions of free Arabs – either die, abandon their homes, or live under the rule of theocratic madmen? Do we want to live in a world where a nuclear Iran, shielded by its missiles and its nuclear bombs, routinely commits and supports Islamic atrocities?

Further, I put it to you that we cannot even, were we to abandon those who surely lie under the shadow of the Iranian bomb, rely upon deterrence to prevent attacks upon our own homes. In this era of weakness, do you believe that most Western leaders would have the will to properly retaliate for a nuclear attack which, say, killed half a million New Yorkers?

I’m not saying that we wouldn’t use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack – we surely would. But would we use them against targets sufficient to deter such an attack? It would be one thing for Iran to launch a nuclear attack in the certainty that, in response, the United States would wipe Tehran and a hundred other Iranian cities off the face of the Earth. But I – and I suspect the Iranian leadership as well – tend to believe that our people and our politicians are too weak to inflict such deserved punishment upon our enemies. Instead, I tend to think that they’d dither and then finally launch a nuclear response against the military of the enemy. What we face here is the real possibility of asymmetrical nuclear warfare, with our enemies perfectly willing to kill millions of civilians and our leaders unwilling to respond in kind.

Perhaps the above isn’t true of President Bush – I don’t believe that it is – but it certainly will be true of future leaders. It would even be true of many possible ostensibly ‘conservative’ American leaders. The primal call for an eye for an eye seems to have slipped from the minds of the Western elite.

And, I would note, the above assumes some degree of rationality on the part of the leaders of our enemies. Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, appears, like most Islamist leaders, to be a wild-eyed, raving, lunatic who believes that he’s some kind of Islamic spiritual figure – the Persian edition of Martin Sheen’s character in The Dead Zone, who launches a sudden and senseless nuclear attack simply to “fulfill his destiny.” The idea of a man who sees visions of divine lights and is actively and openly preparing for the arrival of the “12th Mahdi” with control of nuclear weapons and a global terror network is the stuff of nightmares.

More to the point: no Islamist leader can be trusted with the bomb. Frankly, I’d be more comfortable if no Islamic nation (including Pakistan – and hopefully someday India will do something about that) had nuclear weapons. Perhaps there are trustworthy Moslem leaders in the world but, at this point in time, allowing them to possess nuclear arms is something akin to handing out Assault Rifles to escaped mental patients.

Some will say that there’s nothing to be done about Iran’s acquisition of nuclear arms – that the military options are all unworkable. I don’t believe that to be even remotely true. Certainly, the conventional military options are limited and it is equally true that a strike is likely to miss some facilities. As well, Iran is sure to retaliate by launching terrorist attacks against the Israel and the West and to stir up trouble in Iraq. We know all of that to be true.

However, we still possess the capability to strike. Indeed, in contemplating action against Iran we ought to recall an old phrase – “Shock and Awe.” What we saw over Baghdad in 2003 was far from what the inventors of that phrase envisioned. What happened in 2003 was a limited air campaign designed to minimize casualties in the part of the enemy. What is needed in 2006 is an all-out air campaign designed to utterly devastate Iranian military and industrial capacity.

As well, I think that we need to strongly consider the use of nuclear arms against Iranian targets. A lot of these facilities are certain to be deeply buried and heavily defended. They need to be totally destroyed as quickly as possible. In order to make that happen, there’s only one option: ground-penetrating free fall nuclear bombs.

Of course, once the decision to use nuclear weapons in any capacity has been taken, there’s no real reason to limit their use. One nuclear attack and fifty are going to have pretty much the same effect in American and global public opinion (so long, of course, as we don’t blow up Tehran or a major city). If we’re going to use nuclear weapons to destroy Iranian underground nuclear research and development sites, they might as well be used to destroy Iranian missile bases, airfields, and other vulnerable installations set out in the open. It would probably also be safer to use them against chemical and biological research facilities. Depending upon the shape of the events that followed, it might also be worth using them against Iranians ground forces in the field, assuming that they’re clear of densely populated areas.

Such an attack would have to be larger in scale that the 1981 operation by Israel against Iraq not only on account of the size and sophistication of Iran’s program, but also because of the obvious need to neutralize the major economic threat posed by Iran – their ability to disrupt shipping in the Persian Gulf. It would make sense if, at the same time as the air attack is launched, the US Navy destroyed every single ship in Iran’s Navy along with Iran’s coastal missile batteries and paramilitary forces capable of operating on the water.

The ability is there – hard though it might be. What seems to be lacking is the will.

For some reason I recall the words a great man who once said that the supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils. There is no question that an Iranian nuclear bomb would be a wicked thing – the only question is the scale of the evil that would be wrought by it. If Iran gets a nuclear bomb, millions of people will die: our people. Innocent Israelis, Americans, or Europeans will die under a nuclear bomb if we let Iran have one.

Perhaps this day will condemn President Bush if he strikes – especially with atomic arms. But history is not made by the weak-hearted. The future is secured by the action of the bold. I do not wish for history to record that we are the generation who stood by as the Iran acquired nuclear weapons and made its President’s wish for a second Holocaust a reality.