Before the beginning of the Afghanistan War the Rand Institute put forth several studies and advised that a nuclear pre-emption would be the best bet to solve the problems of Middle Eastern International Terrorism. If we had nuked the entire Afghanistan, where would we really be today?

In hindsight I would like to take a look at this issue. Number one, Saddam may have re-considered his threats, come clean on UN inspections and thus prevented the war in Iraq. In fact Saddam may have toned down his bluff and threats and come into the fold as a friend of the World Community.

Also if we had nuked Afghanistan in response to 9-11; then North Korea would have immediately backed down to its demands, nuclear weapons program and demands. Iran certainly would not be preparing for war right now or working to build nuclear weapons, funding Hamas or sending in insurgents to Iraq to prevent the emerging Democracy. Iraq would have changed from Dictatorship to some form of Democracy without a shot being fired.

Iran certainly would not be making statements of blowing Israel off the map and they would not be threatening the World. If we had followed the Rand Institutes advice we would be seeing a build up of this level towards a potential WWIII. Currently the tactics we used have cost billions of our US Treasury and Iraq still has work today to do. And now we have another problem in Iraq, Palestine area of Jordan and the ramp up to nuclear war thanks to Iran and their vision of the world.

Sure nuclear weapons are horrible indeed, but now we may actually see them used against us, when we might have stopped some of this insanity with a more hawkish approach to dealing with the Middle East. So obviously this is only one side of an argument and we have already heard the other side. But in the future we will be forced once again to make a decision after we or one of our allies is attacked, this time it will not be like 9-11, but rather a nuclear weapon detonation in a major city. What will be our response then if such an event actually occurs? Consider this in 2006.