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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rambi who wrote (27558)	8/30/2006 11:23:29 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541429

I think that a nuclear strike against the US by terrorist could indeed cause a major change in how the US reacts, but that major change would probably be more likely to be a much more aggressive stance against anyone who even vaguely seems to be supporting terrorists, than it would be a mass movement to convert to Islam. If the strike could be traced back to a particular country, that country would face a big risk of an American nuclear strike. If it could not be traced back, we might just "guess" and lash out anyway, or even if we didn't we would really get tough with anti-proliferation efforts and tough on those who have supported terrorism. For example if something like that happened soon, it obviously wouldn't be from an Iranian nuke, but its possibly we would threaten Iran (up to the threat of a nuclear strike) if they didn't abandon support for Hezbollah, quit messing around in Iraq, and give up their nuclear program, and accept a tough inspections regime. North Korea does have nukes, so they might be a suspect, but even if it couldn't be proven, and even though North Korea could cause tremendous damage if threatened, we wouldn't be likely to be very patient or "reasonable" with NK. How that would all shake out is unknown. Your starting with a tremendous atrocity, and maybe more would happen down the line. I'm certainly not advocating that we act that way now, but if people though the US was too aggressive after 9/11, you can dial up that response by several orders of magnitude to get the type of response that a nuclear attack might provoke. If, God forbid, you had repeated nuclear terrorism (which I don't think very likely) at some point the US could become radicalized enough to really try the "nuke them to they glow" option across the Middle East that some hot heads argued for after 9/11. Most likely that whole scenario will never happen, but I don't think our response to nukes is likely to be a meek one. But to get back on your point I agree it wouldn't be likely to make Americans accept such forced conversion or Shira law or anything like that.

To: Rambi who wrote (27558)	8/31/2006 12:19:06 AM
From: MrLucky	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541429

Hi there! Since my name was mentioned I thought I would add a brief comment. Not one of us can accurately forecast what the general population of the USA would do under the severe stress of several cities being nuked. We have a pretty good idea of what people will do when captured and held prisoner. Fox News had two two guys who just converted after being held prisoner for a couple weeks without being nuked. Are you familiar with the Stockholm Syndrome? Many examples of people committing to their captors.