Ed Kyle wrote:
Jordan wrote:
Ed Kyle wrote:

First of all, if any Power chose to launch a "rain of missiles" at
American cities, we would certainly respond at least with a
counterattack on the enemy's strategic targets including their missile
launchers; we might respond with unrestricted conventional bombardment
of their cities, if sufficiently provoked.

I would only point out that Israel was unable to stop the attacks,
despite total control of the air, just as the U.S. was unable to
stop the Scud attacks during the first "Gulf War".

Both Israel and America in both those cases was able to greatly reduce
the frequency of the attacks, and you will note that Scud attacks
proved impossible from territories America _overran_ during the second
"Gulf War."

The use of
mobile launchers to perform "shoot and scoot" attacks makes
it nearly impossible to stop such attacks. Even if the launcher
positions are known, it may prove impossible to take them out.

Given the removal of political inhibitions against using whatever level
of firepower might be required to take the launchers out or to
disproportionately retaliate against the launches, I find this hard to
believe. An America suffering such bombardment against civilian
targets would not be under such political restraints; the political
pressure would instead be on the President to retaliate against the
attackers with as much force required, and indeed under such
circumstances additional casualties inflicted upon the enemy _beyond_
those required would be popularly applauded rather than criticized.

The U.S. was, for example, never able to "take out"
(or even locate) the mortar and rocket positions that pounded
Khe Sanh for weeks during the Vietnam War even though the
positions were all within relatively short range of the base.

Mortars and rocket-launchers are much smaller weapons, and given the
technology of the 1960's it was impossible to track mortar shells in
flight. In general, it is easier to hide a smaller weapon than a
larger one.

Secondly, I don't believe that it _would_ be "politically impossible"
to respond to such an attack with nuclear weapons.

It depends on the circumstances. A nuke-armed China or Iran
threatening retaliation might limit the response options, for
example. I sincerely hope we never have to find out for sure.

Actually, under those circumstances, even conventional ICBM launches
might very well lead to total thermonuclear war. For one thing, we
would not be able to verify that a given launch was conventional until
_after_ it either hit or was intercepted. For another thing, our
leadership would be well aware of the possibility of the tactic you
have just described; they could neutralize this tactic by deciding and
announcing ahead of time that _any_ such missile attack, _regardless of
payload_, would be treated as an escalation to total strategic warfare,
and responded to as such.

This is not some right-wing fantasy, it is the actual doctrine we
operated under during the Cold War.

I hope we check Iran's nuclear ambitions before they try any such
aggression; China is (I believe) too sane to try the experiment.

Sincerely Yours,
Jordan