Froggy Ruminations has this fascinating discussion going regarding his post Pondering the Nightmare. He references Citizen Smash's post here as the jump off point.
Both discussions are fascinating and very meaningful, considering the reality of rogue nations and groups developing and looking to acquire nuclear weapons.
Froggy has one commenter, TmjUtah, has such a great contribution, that I'm quoting it in full:
For a start I believe that the "You are with us or against us" component of our foreign policy would take on an entirely new weight in the eyes of our allies, former allies, and of course the EU.
We responded to the climactic final act of the Phony Terror War by resolving to change the part of the world that breeds terror one brick at a time, with our focus on the men and regimes that have led their culture into barbarism and a publicly declared end goal of leaving in our wake self-sustaining democracies. We have not declared war on Islam despite the best efforts of al Qaeda and their cohorts to force us to do so.
A successful terrorist nuclear attack anywhere on the planet, not even here at home, would remove the grace period for making our first chosen option work. The enemy (and a lot of our friends and even some of our citizens) do not understand that at the end of the day it won't be any politician or council that determines our response. No other nation on the planet so honestly reflects the will of its citizens as America does. We began our grand experiment with the concept that government was not authority but rather necessary management and custodial staff acting on our behalf and that relationship has put us where we are today.
The superpower without an empire. The hegemon that people die attempting to immigrate to on a daily basis. Able to wield more force than ever dreamed of by any dictator, owner of the largest nuke inventory mounted on the most brilliant and capable weapons, engine of the world economy...
Yet barbarians based in countries incapable of producing their own flush toilets murdered us at will for decades before we took notice. Because they believed our lack of outrage was based on timidity or fear.
They finally got our attention. It wasn't fear or anything like it that kept us from dealing with them as we should have beginning with Iran in 1979. It was apathy and poor electoral choices on our part, yes, but never fear on the part of the people.
We were too busy pursuing happiness, enjoying the fruits of material wealth resulting from our God-given rights, free markets, and the rule of law to pay attention to a bunch of thugs.
The scale of conflict now qualifies for world war status in every respect; a nuclear terror attack would be an act of sucicidal insanity on the part of the enemy...
The following discussion is extremely interesting and worth a careful reading.
