Ed Kyle wrote:
Jordan wrote:

Ed, this is sheer fantasy, unless you are assuming an American
President who is idealistically determined not to decisively strike
back, to the point of making political losses by his party inevitable,
and even perhaps to the point of risking impeachment. Under the
conditions you describe, the political pressure would mount on the
American President to use "whatever means necessary" to stop the
attacks -- and the most obvious means would be our own air and missile
power, including perhaps nuclear weapons.

First, recent history shows that there isn't a decisive way to strike
back to stop missile attacks, save for boots on the ground.

Destroying the country or at least the military of the country
launching the attack would probably do it. Israel can't do this, or
even decisively use "boots on the ground," _because we restrain
Israel_. Who are you envisioning restraining us?

Boots on the ground is a much different kind of war than the high-altitude
low-casualty air conflicts that the U.S. has engaged in during the
last few decades. Boots on the ground evens the playing field a bit.

We just _fought_ that kind of war with Saddam Hussein, and crushed him
in about a month. Under the current conditions in Iraq, no insurgency
is in a position to run ICBM production lines much less set up
launchers to attack the American homeland.

Second, on what basis would the U.S. be able to justify a nuclear
response to a conventional attack?

"Justify" to whom?

The American government is primarily the servant of the American
people, who would be the ones _demanding_ a decisive end to the
bombardment. Other countries might not like it, but the populations of
other countries don't get to vote in American elections.

If the U.S. engages in a war,
during which its bombers strike civilian targets like bridges and
power plants, etc., (inevitably killing civilians) why shouldn't
the other participant in said war have a right to counterattack
against the U.S. mainland?

Of course it does. And we, of course, have the right to attack that
other country with any and all weapons we possess. Including nuclear
ones.

Why should U.S. civilians think that
they are not susceptible to becoming fully involved in any war
that their government becomes involved in? History shows that
it is becoming rare for civilians *not* to be caught up in modern
warfare.

Ok, and thus the civilian population of the country launching the
conventional ICBM bombardment would be "caught up" in the "modern war"
their regime had started, when our nuclear missiles scoured their land
with fire.

I think that the fantasy is to believe that the U.S. can forever
protect its civilians from involvement in modern warfare.

Who stated this belief?

I do think, however, based on firm historical experience, that attacks
on the American homeland will enrage the American population, and given
the correlation of forces between America and any Terrorist State or
combination of such States, the effect of an enraged American
population will be the destruction of the State which launched the
attacks. Which makes your proposed strategy very unlikely to succeed,
unless you define "success" as "kill a few thousand Americans, then
have yourself and your whole regime, possibly your whole country, be
destroyed."

If you define "success" that way, then ... bring it on.

- Jordan