Sammy
I agree that if a nuclear threat against us does not come from a country, nukes do not do us much good. But Al Qaeda is not a country and any place with lots of Al Qaeda has many more non Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda hangs out in a large wild lawless Moslem area of Pakistan. Nuking the whole area would take several H-bombs and would give Al Qaeda a giant recruiting pitch in all Moslem countries, so they would quickly become much bigger than before.
Problem not solved. Problem made much much bigger and spread to many other areas, including much of the world's oil supply. Problem made much more dangerous.
Remember how we helped the Afghan freedom fighters resist the Soviets so eventually they chose to get out of Afghanistan (like what they did to us in Vietnam)? Those freedom fighters were fundamentalist Moslems. They accepted our help against the Soviets, but they didnt like us either. In order to organize to fight for what they believed in, they started Al Qaeda.
Sammy, you just gotta know what's going on. You gotta case the joint,have a plan, not just rush in guns blazing. Our enemies are shrewd and sneaky. They will do something to upset us so we rush in, and it will be a trap, a setup, an ambush. That's why they bombed the World Trade Center, and when we got upset and responded by invading Iraq we gave them a gigantic present, big beyond their wildest expectations. We weakened ourselves by spending a trilliion bucks, over 4000 soldiers, and a whole bunch of other stuff on a war we did not have to fight--and meanwhile let ourselves come close to defeat in the war we did have to fight--Afghanistan. Osama got away, and he will likely die a free man unless Obama finds him.
It's the story of Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Vietnam was our tar baby. Afghanistan was the Soviet's tar baby. Iraq wasnt even a tar baby, just sheer ignorant stupidity.