Have we won the War on Terrorism?

[Peter Dow]

[exploited]

[Indy]

I think you're underestimating the impact of 9/11 here.

Look what it did. Not just that day, but since then. Granted, most of it self-inflicted overreaction, but yeah.

You're missing my point: after 9/11 we pointed the cannon at... Iraq.

If some ISI guy allows an AQ buddy to smuggle a nuke into NYC and it detonates, I'm finding it hard to believe we'd simply obliterate the entire country with nukes.

That's not even the best part. The best part is that Pakistan has nukes because we decided in our infinite wisdom to look the other way when Pakistan started acquiring them because we were so obsessed with sticking it to the Soviets in Afghanistan as payback for Vietnam.

And now we're bogged down in... Afghanistan.

[exploited]

[Philly]

[gla22]

MAD only really applies to confrontations between large states with thousands of nukes. 10 nukes going off would be devastating but wouldn't be apocalyptic.

[The Comrade]

10 nukes might not destroy the world but they will effectively eliminate the nation they fall on which is the point of MAD in the first place.

imagine if america lost DC, new york, LA, chicago, seattle, atlanta, houston, and fill in a few other targets for good measure. the panic that would ensue would tear this country apart in no time.

be even worse for countries like russia, where three cities are pretty much the entire power structure.

[exploited]

[The Dharma Bum]

The only way to stop resistance to our economic activities ie "terrorism" is to develop some way to cheaply and easily exterminate the populations of the areas whose resources we wish to exploit.

Wish there was a better answer but there just isn't.

[Philly]