[r9etb]

Points for honesty. Points off for making a dumb move: do you really think the bin Ladens of the world would be all that upset if you chose to nuke random Muslim cities? And do you really think the response against us would be limited to followers of Islam? Isn't it just possible that, say, China, Russia, and a few other places might become upset or opportunistic, and begin making things difficult for us elsewhere?

The case of Japan differs from this one in the sense that we were unambiguously at war with Japan, as a coherent nation. We have no such enemy in this case -- we have a movement composed of small cells spread throughout the world. In some cases (e.g., Afghanistan) it was possible to identify a nation-scale supporter. Nobody on this thread has yet bothered to identify who committed the deed -- and so it's impossible to formulate a response.

[Kozak]

do you really think the bin Ladens of the world would be all that upset if you chose to nuke random Muslim cities?

The bin Ladens don't operate in a vacuum. Without the support of a friendly government, or a friendly population, they can't function or at least are a much much lower level of threat. If we make it plain that the Muslim world is going to suffer a thousand times more then we are for any terrorist activity against us, THEY will take care of it. And frankly thats the only way the problem is going to be taken care of.