Lord Gilbert spoke a few months ago in the House of Lords on how the nuclear deterrent is effective in preventing wars.  At some point I’ll put his argument up here.  Meanwhile, a subset of his words were used in a number of articles online to say he was claiming we should “nuke the Taliban”.  It is ironic he was advocating a solution for maintaining peace to prevent the deaths of huge numbers of civilians and got attacked for it.

Anyway, you’ve gotta love the outraged headlines it produced.  Examples are:

• Huffington Post’s “Lord Gilbert Suggests Dropping A Neutron Bomb On Pakistan-Afghanistan Border“
• Russia Today’s “Bomb ’em into peace! British lord suggests dropping neutron bomb on Afghan-Pakistani border“
• Iran’s PressTV’s “UK Lord suggests nuking Afghan border“
• “Nuke ‘em for Peace! UK Lord Suggests Neutron Bomb On Afghan-Pakistan Border“
• “New (LUNATIC) idea of halting militancy: UK’s Lord Gilbert suggests govt to drop neutron bomb on Pak-Afghan border“
• “more on the demented labour ‘lord’ gilbert“
• “Mad English lord suggests using neutron bomb on Pakistan-Afghanistan Border“
• “British Terrorism — British Nazi Lord Gilbert advocates the dropping of Neutron Bomb on Pakistan & Afghanistan“
• “PSYCHOPATHIC WAR TALK:LORD GILBERT SUGGESTS DROPPING A NEUTRON BOMB ON PAKISTAN AFGHANISTAN BORDER“

As for what he said, this is taken from Hansard’s proceedings for 22nd November, 2012:

Lord Gilbert: … I draw your Lordships’ attention to what used to be called the neutron bomb.  The main thing was that it was not a standard nuclear warhead.  Its full title was the ERRB: Enhanced Radiation Reduced Blast weapon.  I can think of many uses for it in this day and age. … you could use an ERRB warhead to create cordons sanitaire along various borders where people are causing trouble.

I will give an example.  … 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. These things are not talked about, but they should be, because there are great possibilities for deterrence in using the weapons that we already have.

© Parliamentary Copyright

He did not say we should nuke the Taliban.  He was saying there are options for deterrence that are not being considered because the subject is taboo.  The media reaction proved him right.  If you want to read it in context, which is about how deterrence is preferable to war, he started speaking at 3.42 pm.

One has to be very careful what one says when advocating peace methods other than going to outright war.  Many people don’t like it.  Weird, innit?

As H used to say:

If things don’t change, they’ll stay the same.