So what is the proper response to a terrorist attack in New York that kills 3,000 and injures many, many more? Is it an intellectual one? Or do we nuke Mecca and King Saud?
This was my prediction, posted here on 9/13/01, while the towers were still smoking rubble.
The "proper response" would have been to ask Congress on 9/16/01 for a Declaration of War on Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and for a 60-division expeditionary force to conquer, occupy, govern, and reconstruct those territories.
I would have used nuclear weapons, but only once. Whent Bin Laden was definitively identified at Tora Bora on December 4, 2001, I would have used a Minuteman III to erase him and the mountain top.
"Nuking Mecca and King Saud" would have accomplished the same thing as what I referred to in my post as "paving Afghanistan", or what the horrific and incompetent military actions in Iraq did - exactly nothing.