The only reason we don't do it now, is because we don't have to. The US was definitely offering Mutually Assured Destruction to the Soviets. We still do, it's just that both sides decided to take their fingers off the trigger for a spell.
Right on. The wars in the Middle East these past few years are small compared with the World Wars. It's not necessary to go to the lengths we went in World War II. Those countries were more powerful than Iraq and Afghanistan and we needed more to defeat them. For crying out loud, it took two atomic bombs before Japan surrendered. The only other option was to take the country town by town, city by city, slaughtering resistance and costing the lives of thousands of Americans. By the time the war was ending, the Japanese were training their women and children to fight against the American army.