Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com & Der Spiegel & RT News – 2015-08-31 00:48:06
German Envoy: US Considered Nuking Afghanistan After 9/11
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(August 30, 2015) — In comments to Der Spiegel, German Ambassador Michael Steiner, who is retiring this summer, revealed that the Bush Administration was seriously considering carrying out a nuclear attack against Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11, apparently at a loss for what to do.
Steiner was serving as a foreign policy aid to Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, and said he clashed with Schroder on Germany’s decision to provide a statement of unconditional support for whatever the US reaction might be after 9/11, saying it wasn’t appropriate to give anyone that kind of blank check.
Though Schroder went with the endorsement of whatever anyhow, a number of German officials were said to be seriously concerned about a “shocking overreaction” by the United States, with Steiner noting that the US was “playing through” all the different possibilities.
How close the US was to actually nuking a site in Afghanistan may perhaps never be known, and without details we can’t possibly estimate just how many civilians would’ve been killed in such an attack. Ultimately, the US decided on an open-ended military occupation as an alternative, which itself has killed tens of thousands of people over the past 14+ years.
US Considered Nuking Afghanistan after 9/11 – German Diplomat
RT News
(August 30, 2015) — A nuclear strike against Afghanistan was on the table in Washington in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, a senior German diplomat told Spiegel magazine.
Michael Steiner, the current German ambassador to India, served as foreign and security policy aide to then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder at the time of the 9/11 attacks. “The papers were written,” he said, confirming that the nuclear option was under consideration. “They had really played through all possibilities.”
There was a concern in Berlin that the Americans were so shocked by the attacks, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives, that they would overreact, Steiner told the magazine. He added that he objected to Schroder’s plan to express “unconditional support” for the United States, saying no nation should get carte blanche from Germany. The chancellor overturned his objections, Steiner said.
The 9/11 attacks were a turning point for the post-Cold War world, sending the United States on a global war against Islamic terrorism. The invasion of Afghanistan and the ousting of the Taliban from power was the most direct consequence of the attack. It was globally welcomed as a just move, unlike Washington’s later war with Iraq, in which several European allies of the US, including Germany, refused to take part.
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