This is disturbing. Members of the elected legislature of a democratic country are openly advocating the use of nuclear weapons. This is happening in the only country in the world that has ever used nuclear weapons before. This is from 2013:

Rep. Duncan Hunter Jr., R-Calif., appearing on C-SPAN, encouraged Washington to get ready for war, arguing that “if you have to hit Iran … you do it with tactical nuclear devices and you set them back a decade or two or three. I think that’s the way to do it, with a massive aerial bombardment campaign.” …

Play out Hunter’s proposal and one quickly sees how devastating it would be. While Hunter doesn’t specify what type of “tactical nuclear device” he would propose for such an attack, the Federation of American Scientists notes that launching the least powerful of such weapons would cause nuclear blasts that would “blow out a huge crater of radioactive material, creating a lethal gamma-radiation field over a large area.

“Suppose Hunter would opt for something more lethal. If the United States were to use a more powerful tactical nuclear weapon, like the B-61, it could unleash an explosion many times more powerful than Little Boy, the atomic weapon the United States dropped on Hiroshima. Any such nuclear attack would incinerate untold numbers of Iranian civilians, including those working in Iran’s nuclear power facilities, and those in nearby urban centers.

We’re lucky in this country that the grownups are in charge most of the time. But there are moments when they are not, so while they are they should do whatever they can to idiot-proof the place before our next Lord of the Flies moment arrives.