What Would America Do (WWAD)...

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Albert Einstein famously said that if you cannot explain 'it' simply, then you don't know 'it' well enough. He applied this philosophy to anything from theoretical physics to the meaning of life and to his many anecdotal truths about society and humanity in general.  Einstein was also famous for his 'thought experiments' in which he used simple, basic, ordinary language to explain the most complex of complicated problems.

I try to adhere to this same philosophy.  I will now apply it in order to explain the following:  What Would America Do if a hostile neighbouring country started indiscriminately raining down rockets into its city centers??

Obviously, I am trying to draw an analogy from the Israeli-Palestinian situation.  So, what would the U.S. do, if, say, Mexico started sending rockets over the border into Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California (I have to scale up the relative size of such an 'operation' due to the immensity of the United States)?  I think it's quite clear, based on history, that the U.S. would totally annihilate the enemy.  Unfortunately, civilians would die, and the U.S. typically discards this fact and labels it as 'Collateral Damage' -- a necessary evil in the ugly battleground that is otherwise known as 'War.'

I will give you two historical examples:  (1)  The bombastic 'Shock & Awe' campaign of the second U.S. Gulf War against Iraq; and (2) The nuclear bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan at the tail end of World War II.

Shock & Awe

The Second Gulf War:  This first example is quite unique in that the U.S. spent EIGHT YEARS (from 2003-2011) annihilating the 'enemy' before the enemy even used the weapons that, as it turns out, it did not even possess at the time.  In 2003, when then-acting U.S. General Colin Powell, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, famously presented his erroneous 'weapons of mass destruction' evidence to the United Nations, as we all know, the notorious U.S. military campaign called 'Shock & Awe' proceeded to destroy the 'enemy' with due haste (even though it took eight years, and even though the situation in Iraq is much worse now than it was then -- but that's 'in the past'......).  

More Shock & Awe

Classified US military documents released by WikiLeaks in October 2010, record Iraqi and Coalition military deaths between January 2004 and December 2009. The documents record 109,032 deaths broken down into "Civilian" (66,081 deaths), "Host Nation" (15,196 deaths),"Enemy" (23,984 deaths), and "Friendly" (3,771 deaths).

 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War].  
I don't think I need to explain this one any further, do I?

U.S. nuclear bomb decimating Hiroshima

World War II (Japan):  Back in the 1940's, 'rocket-fire' did not exist.  Instead, the Japanese army deployed 'Kamikazee' planes to hit Pearl Harbor.  Please note:  even though this was a 'military target' (as opposed to 'civilian'), the United States responded by declaring war on the Empire of Japan the very next day, and then it proceeded to send 110,000 Japanese-Americans to internment camps on the Pacific Coast for the duration of the war.(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans).

Hiroshima

And, in case anyone forgot, when it was all over a few years later, the number of Japanese military casualties was estimated to be around 2,100,000 (yes, that's 2.1Million).  The number of Japanese  CIVILIAN casualties ranges from 500,000 to 1,000,000, including 225,000 civilians killed when the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945.  (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWII_Casualties#endnote_Japan).  

Again, I don't think I need to explain this one any further.  I believe in the concept called the 'Economy of Words' -- using the fewest words to make a powerful POINT.

Now, children, let us revisit the question:  What Would America Do if a hostile neighbouring country started indiscriminately raining down rockets into its city centers??

I think we all know what the response would be.

Peace/Warm Regards:

Jude Blues

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