British Lord calls for Nuking Af-Pak border

The terrorism emanating out of Af-Pak borders – specially the FATA area is exasperating, as US pounds the area with drones.  So, we have Britain’s House of Lords member Lord Gilbert has come up with an ingenious although asinine solution – Drop a Neutron Bomb (ERRB warhead) there.

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“Your Lordships may say that this is impractical, but nobody lives up in the mountains on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan except for a few goats and a handful of people herding them. If you told them that some ERRB warheads were going to be dropped there and that it would be a very unpleasant place to go, they would not go there. You would greatly reduce your problem of protecting those borders from infiltration from one side or another.” (link)

Little does he know perhaps that its not just a few goats and goat herders who live there but millions of Pashtuns and Balochs as well.  There are a lot of “bad people” out there, but there are a heck of a lot of innocents as well.  How do you get them out.  And what impact will rendering the homeland of millions unfit for human habitation do for them?

ERRB, or Enhanced Radiation Reduced Blast, is a fission-fusion thermonuclear weapon (a hydrogen bomb) that releases a large amount of neutron radiation. Also known as a neutron bomb, ERRB weapons release a greater number of neutrons than a fission bomb of the same explosive yield. Its primary purpose is to reduce property damage and increase human casualties. (link)

However, he was roundly criticized and taken to task.

Cabinet Office spokesman Lord Wallace of Saltaire said the Government did not share Lord Gilbert’s “rumbustious” views on the sensitive issue. “The UK retains a firm commitment to the long-term goal of a world without nuclear weapons,” he said. “Our aim is to build an international environment in which no state feels the need to possess nuclear weapons – an environment that will allow nuclear states to disarm in a balanced and verifiable manner.”