[Columbusborn]

Capitulation or death are the options militant Islam offers the West. Assuming most Americans prefer a third way, the answer to the problem seems obvious: Adopt retaliatiatory ruthlessness as our governing foreign policy. Those who will never love us will at least grow to fear us.

While most would today recoil from proposals to answer a future 9-11 with, say, the erasure of Tehran, such reservations will evaporate with the next act of mega-terrorism in the U.S.

[AmericaUnited]

such reservations will evaporate with the next act of mega-terrorism in the U.S.

Yea, where even the Soccer Moms will go mega blood thirsty.

[tomzz]

You've got it. That and the large scale use of animal husbandry as it relates to hogs in our dealings with the slammite world. Jack Pershing had that figured out a hundred years ago, and it would still work.

We need the S bomb (Slammnation bomb), i.e. a weapon which spelled outright damnation for slammites within five miles of it going off, and this should consist mainly of freeze-dried pork ground at least as fine as flash powder.

[Frank T]

"While most would today recoil from proposals to answer a future 9-11 with, say, the erasure of Tehran, such reservations will evaporate with the next act of mega-terrorism in the U.S."

The problem with that is, what would be the appropriate response if the perpetrators were born in the US? Which country to strike in retaliation? So-called homegrowns have the advantage of being protected by the same laws as anyone else, but it also clouds the issue as to who is responsible.

When there was the threat of war with the Soviets, it was understood that a pre-emptive nuclear attack would be met with equally lethal nukes in return. With a divided muslim "ummah," who's in charge over there? Their advantage is that their religious schooling and centres for radicalising are all over the place, in many countries, including western Europe. Do bombs get dropped on them, too, if a nuke goes off in America? All this is to say, at least when the Soviets were threatening invasion, we all knew where we stood, and what the response would be. Mutually assured destruction, as a regulating concept, is gone.

Best, I say, would be for strong leadership to spell out which cities (ie. Mecca, Medina, Tehran, etc) would be wiped out automatically, if a catastrophic attack were to happen here at home. The concept needs to be put out there.