So then when the question of illegal immigrants gets raised the cheapest solution would be to simply nuke Mexico out of existance. Win the war on drugs by nuking Latin American, nuke Canada because Toronto pinched the World Series and winning the ice hockey Olympic Gold would be really neat.
Then you have those dammed commies in the People’s Republic of Santa Monica. Those whinging rednecks in Alabama who want The Cause to be revived and shithey wouldn’t that be a effective way to clear out some of those intractable urban slums? And the missiles are just sitting there … it’s cheaper to use them than keep them in storage. Win-Win-Win.
And at some stage you’ll need to take the Typex to the Declaration of Independence before you quote from it again such as:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all American Citizens are created equal, that they are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are the American way of life, liberty and the pursuit of self-gratification.”
I know I said nuke but didn’t mean it so literally. More of just an overall devastation of the place mostly through bombing. Simply to show we are not to be f’d with. And then no more after.
Perhaps immediately after 9/11 wouldve been better timing for this.
Yeah that’s pretty much all true and more than likely…
I know I said nuke but didn’t mean it so literally. More of just an overall devastation of the place mostly through bombing. Simply to show we are not to be f’d with. And then no more after.
Perhaps immediately after 9/11 wouldve been better timing for this.
The OP seems completely ignorant of political and military realities. Our “enemies” are not soverign nation states but networks of terrorist groups. And they tend to dispurse themselves among civilian populations. So to “blow them up” you would need to kill millions of innocent people and most likely it would just make the problem worse. You would create thousands more terrorists and they would just dispurse themselves among other nations.
And how would you “blow them up” anyway? The United States dropped more that 7 million tons of bombs in Vietnam. That’s about 3.5x the tonnage dropped in all of WWII and about a thousand pounds of explosives for every man, woman and child living in Vietnam. Clearly not all problems can solved with explosives.
You mean like how we attacked Iraq? The people of the ME already know we are amorally, randomly homicidal and don’t regard their lives as worth anything; killing more is unnecessary to prove the point. We’ll kill them for profit, or for power, or just for fun and they know it.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but isn’t the strategy that you’re describing here exactly what the United States has done in the Middle East for a long time? We’ve invaded countries, mass slaughtered the population, tortured huge numbers of innocent people, installed puppet dictatorships, and/or seized oil fields by force in many middle-eastern countries: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Kuwait, … What exact changes are you envisioning that are different than what the United States currently does?
Also, why do you describe people who are “willing to kill us” as “crazies”? 236 years ago Americans noted that our land was occupied by hostile British soldiers. Luckily we were willing to kill those soldiers and continue doing so until the British departed and agreed to let us be an independent nation. Similarly the Iraqis and Afghans have noticed their country occupied by hostile American soldiers. Luckily they are willing to kill those soldiers and continue doing so until the Americans agree to give them independence. There’s nothing crazy about it a desire for freedom. It’s the most sane position that any human being has ever had.
How have we gotten this far into the thread without anyone using the word “genocide” to describe the OP’s posited foreign policy? Because that is precisely what’s being advocated here.
Even Osama bin Laden, the jihad-iest of all the “crazy” Muslims, is primarily political in his aims, and religious in his justifications for his actions. Bin Laden mostly wants the end of American violent intervention in the Middle East, with a side order of the end of American economic hegemony. He does not “hate us for our freedom” or want to kill us for being non-Muslims. Rather, because he is a devout Muslim*, he feels the need to justify his political actions with religion.
Ok I understand this is not the morally right thing to do. My question is more geared toward would it work? (which most of you point out it won’t) And then in the wake of an attack like 9/11 what is the appropriate response? Would showing our power and that we are not afraid to use it in order to deter our enemies from starting shit with us work? Not necessarily nukes either just something to get the point across.
Of course not. No one ever stops fighting for what they believe in because they are afraid. Least of all people who have shown a willingness to die for their cause.
Every time I see something like this, I want to ask the OP what he would do. If the Russians managed to pull of a Red Dawn and took out the U.S. government and begin taking all our natural resources and using former Americans as slaves, would you just accept as the status quo? Even if you felt you couldn’t directly attack the invaders, would you embrace them or secretly cheer for the resistance?
Which bring us to the practicalities. From what we have seen in the last thirty years it is very easy for a vastly superior military to defeat a much weaker military. We could have beaten Saddam or the Taliban and been home for Christmas. Holding hostile territory and remaking it into a friendly nation on the other hand is hard. In Germany and Japan we poured billions of dollars to rebuild and we started from a higher point both physically (more industrialization), and cultural. Plus, we had a common enemy we were all afraid of. The only way to do what you suggest is total scorched earth, and that would leave us completely isolated from the world.
I already asked you a clear question which you’ve refused to answer. Here’s the question again: what do you want to do that’s different from what the United States has already done in the Middle East? Kill millions of civilians? Already done. Bomb civilian targets? Already done. Set up puppet dictatorships? Already done. Steal oil supplies against the will of the native population? Already done. So this time, please state clearly what you want to do that is different from what the United States is currently doing.
Also, while you’re at it, what exactly do you mean by “starting shit with us”? The Saudi terrorists who destroyed the WTC did not start a conflict with the USA. The USA started the conflict with Saudi Arabia by occupying that country with our military since 1991.
It is surprising how people are calmly discussing the OP’s proposal like it’s not completely insane. I am your typical mild-mannered Brit and very well disposed towards America and Americans, but I would probably sign up to join the Taleban if the US perpetrated anything remotely like this. The OP says things like
seemingly blind to the problem that the fact that it would be morally wrong would make it much less likely to work, because it would turn all the US’s allies into avowed enemies. You’re supposed to be the good guys, remember?
We got it the first time: US bad, everyone else good.
The OP asked if it was possible if you didn’t bring morality into it. Yes, it is completely possible. Keep killing until they stopped fighting. Easy peasy. If that meant you ended up killing everyone, well, you still would have won and no longer have the problems with the local population.
What ITR hasn’t figured out is that it takes killing millions (actual millions, not the imaginary ones he refers to) to get a country to completely surrender such as Germany and Japan. Otherwise, you end up fighting fires continuously like in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Hey, it isn’t like Islam is against such maneuvers as Moh’d (may he never have peace) himself wiped out villages and tribes as required.
I can think of one possible way it could work. A tailored viruse that is extremely communicable and extremely lethal. We would have to be able to innoculate Americans without Americans knowing it, which I suppose would mean it would have to work through the water supply.
Anyway, you release it and it kills virtually everyone else in the world, and yeah I suppose some millions of Americans would die too. The best part is that it would be hard to prove where it came from and whether or not it was deliberate. But, real estate prices would go down, and we could all have summer homes in really cool places.
Oh yeah, and we’d really have to hope that the viruse didn’t mutate as it raced around the world,
Except that the world would unify against us, and we’d be ruined or destroyed. What happens to our economy when all our trade goes away? And we aren’t the only ones with nuclear weapons, so no we can’t just conquer the whole planet.