[j23]

I do not mean attacking cities. I mean attacking concentrations of armies. This is exactly what general McArthur proposed to do to the Chinese during Korean War. Reduce civilian casualties to minimum, but overpower the enemy.

[Mad Mammoth]

I do not mean attacking cities.

Why not? It was good enough for Dresden (to name one clobbered German city) and it was certainly good enough for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If the United States and the former Soviet Union had ever gone to war, you can bet the rent that there would not be ONE major city which would not have been on one target list or another, and most of them would have ended up as radioactive craters.

That is the nature of war - to destroy your enemy. Unfortunately that includes civilian populations because most (if not all) governments do not avoid placing military targets near large population centers. That is why there will be a great hue and cry when we are ultimately forced to nuke Pyongyang when Kim Jong Ill's luck finally runs out and he pushes us too far.

In the above mentioned hypothetical nuclear war, would the population of America have accepted some altruistic clap-trap strategy of sparing Soviet cities when New York, Washington, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, LA, etc., were wiped from the face of the earth by Soviet warheads?

I don't think so. As General Sherman said, "war is Hell" (and he made sure it was).