Paddy forgets one crucially important bit of fact: We had a policy of targeting the cities of the Soviet Union with thermonuclear warheads. This policy kept things civilized.
Paddy often forgets such inconvenient details.
The analogy would be threatening to bomb the capital of any country that supported, aided, abetted, or sheltered the terrorists. That at least has some logic to it. But how does bombing Mecca as retaliation deter, say, a secularist moslem like Assad of Syria? If he shelters a terrorist group that nukes Detrout, how is the thread to bomb Mecca in retaliation relevant?