I understand somewhat the exigencies of producing a public affairs talk show and certainly respect the challenges inherent with interviewing a friend and former colleague. A couple of weekends ago however, Stephanopoulos interviewed John McCain and was utterly devastating. He effectively exposed McCain’s seeming ignorance concerning domestic fiscal and monetary policies. He repeatedly refused McCain’s own economic platitudes and even called him to task on his infamous losses of temper. Stephanopoulos’ technique was so effective McCain almost lost it on the show. Stephanopoulos demonstrated a deep understanding of the state of America’s budgetary woes, evincing a hard-hitting style necessary in this election cycle. All of which magnifies his kid gloves with Clinton and constant pulling of punches.

Despite Stephanopoulos’ overall failure yesterday, he did press Clinton on her remarks regarding Iran’s threats against Israel. When asked about her answer to questions about America’s response to a hypothetical Iranian attack on Israel, she repeated, defended, and developed her previous answer. She indeed would “obliterate” Iran were they to strike Israel, which admittedly she deemed highly unlikely. Stephanopoulos indicated the deleterious effects such a threat was having on the large and growing democracy movement in Iran, according to those Iranians who support America generally. Clinton was undaunted and again threatened “massive retaliation.”

In a staggering moment of clarity, Clinton waxed nostalgically about the good ol’ days of the Cold War: "We had a Cold War where each of us, the Soviet Union and the United States, had missiles on hair trigger alert aimed at the cities in our respective countries. And we deterred the nuclear conflagration that could have occurred by having tough diplomacy, by having presidents who really stood their ground." She even “joked” about being old enough to remember the school emergency drills, where students were encouraged to get under their desks and put their heads between their legs. (She actually suggested that at that time she was suspicious of the efficacy of such a response to a nuclear attack . . . hmmm.) Stephanopoulos registered obvious and appropriate dismay at her answer.

In their monumental 1990 treatise, The Genocidal Mentality: Nazi Holocaust and Nuclear Threat, Robert Lifton and Eric Markusen expressed severe reservations about deterrence. They realized that to be credible deterrence must be willing to follow through on threats of massive, nuclear retaliation. The willingness to engage in nuclear obliteration indicated a further willingness to exterminate whole populations. This attitude was a hallmark of “the genocidal mentality.” Most assuredly, Lifton’s and Markusen’s work had its flaws—for example, its treatment of nuclear war as a possibility in the future, with only two historical antecedents, clearly ignoring the over six decade (low-level) nuclear war being perpetrated against Native North America (but that’s a topic for another day). Despite these shortcomings, The Genocidal Mentality is a tour de force.

Think about what Clinton is authorizing: massive retaliation, obliteration, and an explicit embrace of mutually-assured destruction—not just counter-force doctrines that target military targets, but a counter-value doctrine that targets large cities and guarantee a terrifying loss of civilian lives, infrastructure, and possible genocide. Cold War deterrence brought us to the brink of nuclear war numerous times and forced generations of American and Soviet citizens to live in fear of nuclear annihilation. Even massive, conventional retaliation would result in immense “collateral damage,” to employ a deadly, military euphemism intended to code "killing civilians."

Bombing cities from the sky usually fails to bring those responsible to “justice” and instead sentences countless noncombatants to horrifying deaths. The incendiary bombings of Japanese and German cities near the end of World War II were an abomination. Twenty-four hours of incendiary bombing of Dresden, an open city (that is, no military targets, all civilians), resulted in over a 100,000 Germans being burned from above. During the incendiary bombing of Hamburg, the air temperature rose to over 1000 degrees, melted the tar, and trapped corpses once the tar solidified again in grotesque statues, eerie monuments to dedifferentiated slaughter.

To demonstrate her foreign policy credentials and convince American voters that she is “tough enough” to make the hard decisions, Hillary Clinton is willing to authorize genocidal killing of Iranians and, by extension, whoever is foolish enough to mess with America.

Obama’s charge that these policies mirror the current Bush administration is apt and accurate. In 2002, Bush promulgated his National Security Strategy (aka the “Bush Doctrine”) that called for preemptive war against any nation that even approaches America’s military capability. The Bush Doctrine authorized nuclear first strikes against non-nuclear states. In her zeal to repudiate nonsense sexist stereotypes about women and the military, Clinton has gone way too far. She has become a pathetic caricature of unbridled military aggression. She should be ashamed and we must be forewarned.

Despite the manifold failures of yesterday’s This Week, its revelation of Clinton’s genocidal mentality was a real breakthrough, for me at least. Seeing her, in what appeared to be an unguarded moment, honestly and glibly contemplate the obliteration of Iran made me shudder. Her deluded nostalgia for mutually-assured destruction and tough leaders with nuclear hair-triggers was genuinely frightening.

I cannot help but remember the magnificent Helen Caldicott and her 1984 Missile Envy, which suggested we would never move away from the nuclear madness of men playing with their (nuclear) toys until we elected and appointed women to positions of power. I guess she did not contemplate the nightmare of Hillary Clinton playing with her (nuclear) prosthetic while dreaming about strong leaders like Ronald Reagan and Leonid Brezhnev. Talk about your 3 am call!