[americanophile]

You know I'm getting the the point where I don't care anymore. If Russia wants to spend billions on new ICBMs let them waste their money. Europe's economy taken together is bigger than our own, so they can pay for their own damn defense. If they want to be dominated by Russia, then let them. We should stop garrisoning the whole world, get to work on an top-rate American missile defense shield and upgrade our own offensive capabilities without regard to Russia - let everyone know that if they mess with us, it's no more Mr. nice guy, limited-engagement, hearts-and-minds, nation rebuilder crap. We'll make a smoking crater out of your sh*t country in time to catch the evening news. We're tired of being blamed for the world's problems. They can fight dictatorship, economic blackmail, Islam, Marxism and the rest of it on their own. We've kept the lid on the stinking corpse of humanity long enough - the world's going to tear itself apart again because that's what humans do. Time we prepared to weather the storm again like WWII. Who wants to buy arms?

[FroggyTheGremlim]

I think we should give a few small tactical nukes to Chechnya.

[justlurking]

let everyone know that if they mess with us, it's no more Mr. nice guy, limited-engagement, hearts-and-minds, nation rebuilder crap. We'll make a smoking crater out of your sh*t country in time to catch the evening news.

You know, I agree.

That's what we should have done in Afghanistan: just blockade the border with Pakistan to keep them from escaping, and drop bombs and missiles until every cave in the mountains was sealed and nothing else was moving.

Then depart, leaving nothing behind but a simple message: if you bother us again, we'll be back and do 10 times the damage. You want to prevent it? STFU and clean up your act. You want help rebuilding? Talk to the people that got you into this mess.

We should have done something similar in Iraq the first time.

I too am tired of footing the bill for the "world's policeman". The rest of the world can go to hell without our help or hindrance.

[mad puppy]

Just for fun (?), suppose the unthinkable did happen and the US and Russia (or China, or...) traded somewhere in the area of 25 to 50 nukes, then what? Easily 30% of us are dead and the another 30-40% are going to die within a couple weeks. Does it matter that we died because of a bigger nuke? At that point, the only thing that would matter to me is that 1) similar or worse was inflicted on the enemy and 2) several Muslim ‘holy’ sites got hit as well.

The ‘MAD’ logic won’t stop the nut-jobs in NK, or Iran or the radical muslim. But is should give serious pause to any leader of a ‘normal’ country. So long as the US has the realisitic ability to deliver a freakishly horrific nuke nightmare (and we do), I don’t think nukes will be the weapon of choice for the Russians or Chinese.

Today, the US has enough enemies who are using economic weapons which are kicking the crap out of us. Spending billions to make the dead even deader doesn’t make a lot of sense.