A Republican state lawmaker caught a lot of flak on Sunday after he called for the United States to use a “strategically placed nuclear weapon” on the Islamic State terror group.
Arkansas state Sen. Jason Rapert (R) said in a Facebook post that it was “time to annihilate the strongholds” of the terror group, also known as ISIS, and that the quickest way to “turn things around” would be to employ a “strategically placed nuclear weapon.”
Rapert also posted about using nuclear weapons against the Islamic State earlier Sunday on his personal Facebook page, the Arkansas News pointed out.
“I imagine a nicely placed intercontinental nuclear weapon would shut them up for awhile,” he wrote. “I cannot understand why our president won’t stand up – wait, I forgot that he doesn’t acknowledge the Islamic terrorists.”
Rapert’s post on the “Jason Rapert for Arkansas Senate” page was met with immediate backlash. The lawmaker responded to several of his detractors in the comments.
“It seems some of you haven’t read anything about the use of ‘tactical nuclear weapons’ and only remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” he wrote in one response. “Please do some research and you will find that we have battlefield capable small nuclear weapons that would be perfect for the areas where ISIS has run everyone else out and use as their strongholds.”
In another response, Rapert slammed his critics as “leftist liberals” who “hurl insults and slurs because I actually support force strong enough to stop these barbarians.” He echoed that sentiment on Twitter:
Seems liberals even love ISIS more than stopping them cold in their tracks. They truly amaze me with their anti-American arguments. Bizarre.
— Sen. Jason Rapert (@jasonrapert) February 16, 2015
Moron! An intercontinental nuclear weapon would set off early warning systems in Russia and China, they would have less than 5 minutes to decide weather they are being attacked, and then launch their own missiles. Game over.
No military service or background relating to the use of nuclear weapons, but he plays the fiddle and travels to Africa, forcing his noxious Christian BS on poor and uneducated Africans!
“Rapert and his wife have two daughters. He plays the fiddle, which he learned to play by ear when he was ten years old.
Rapert is the founder and president of Holy Ghost Ministries, and he makes missionary visits to Ghana on a yearly basis.”
The first, most stupid knee jerk reaction is always the use of overwhelming force but it simply does not work the same way they show in the movies. It would leave an even bigger mess to clean up. Why that lesson is so hard to learn for some who knows, but people keep wanting to repeat the same mistakes, over and over again
Orwell was talking about a different group’s naiveté in a different time, but the phrase is still often appropriate: “a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.”
Apparently, Sen. Rapert doesn’t understand the concept of war crimes. I’m sure he thinks Jesus would have nuked Rome if he’d had an ICBM. In short, he is the kind of Christianist who gives religion a bad name.