<I was specifically speaking to the tendency around here to deliberately be frightening and reveling in anything in the news that sounds like we are going to get some revenge.

A few people have made a case for going in and shredding the target country down to the Mohorovicic discontinuity. Nuclear weapons. Carpet bombing. Nerve gas. Megaton after megaton raining down on the cities. Fallout drifting around the area for years.

The Bloody Works.

The end result would, of course, be an entire planet horrified at the lunatics that the Americans had become. What kind of insane society would do this to someone? Every country would think of us as monsters, total barbarians.

And no one would ever touch us, or even piss us off, again.

The end result would be that the very thought of doing something to America or an American would make the shit run down their legs. These people are CRAZY!!!!! A lunatic terrorist who popped up to attack the U.S. would be torn to shreds by his own countrymen.

Hey, it works in prison. When someone goes after you, you leap on them shrieking and eat the eyeballs out of their heads. It does get you left alone.

Ah, but it would be wrong....

Seriously, something is worth thinking about. We do have the capacity to erase the very memory of an attacking nation from the face of the Earth, yet our enemies are obviously absolutely certain we will never do this, and treat us accordingly. Is there a less drastic solution for this?