"Striking back hard" by flattening cities is a stupid tactic. As the Nazis and Soviets learned to their great cost, it generally creates more enemies, rather than reducing their numbers.
The sensible thing is to take out the "leaders," and their followers. We've been quite effective at the latter, having killed thousands over the last couple of months. We probably need to step up our efforts on the former (and maybe we have -- the media probably wouldn't report on it even if they knew it was happening).
That's ridiculous. If that were true we'd have a Japan and German problem right now. What are you smoking? Oh, and btw, taking out their cities would include their leaders. Yeesh.