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from the it's-"talk-softly-and-CARRY-a-big-stick" dept.
Oder Aderet reports at Haaretz that the United States considered using nuclear weapons against Afghanistan in response to the September 11 attack according to Michael Steiner, who served as a political advisor to then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, as reported in Der Spiegel. "The papers were written," Steiner said when asked whether the U.S. had considered using nuclear weapons in response to the attacks orchestrated by Al-Qaida's Osama bin Laden, in which almost 3,000 people were killed. "They had really played through all possibilities." Steiner added that Schröder feared that the US, which was in a state of shock following the attacks, would overreact. "After Sept. 11, the entire administration positively dug in. We no longer had access to Rice, much less to the president. It wasn't just our experience, but also that of the French and British as well. Of course that made us enormously worried."
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Interesting) by zocalo on Tuesday September 01 2015, @12:13PM
Of course, that still leaves the issue of whether a protracted conventional war in Iraq and Afghanistan vs. a single tactical nuke in Afghanistan would have resulted in more or less fallout of the non-nuclear kind. Certainly the political ramifications would have been huge, but how that might have impacted on the Arab Spring and its own repercussions, the rise of all the various Al Qaeda off-shoots, Boko Haram, Daesh, and so on is anyone's guess.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @03:22AM
Still, the chances are pretty good that a tactical nuke in the right area (actually finding that area with sufficient degree of confidence being another matter) would have met the US' stated objective of bringing Osama to justtice
And, would have created a martyr in such a spectacular event that the entire Musilim world could be mobilized against the Great Satan. Your analysis is spot on the kind that led us into Iraq, Afganastan, etc. in the first place (besides the whaky Christian Crusade and revenge for daddy motivations of Baby Bush, and the self-serving motivations of the rich parasites who advised him). Those with power in the administration, military etc. in the US knew fuck all about the region, and didn't listen to anybody who did, nor even read *recent* history of such escapades by Brittain, and then Russia. "Afganastan, where empires go to die."
Of course, that is just the immediate fallout, assuming it didn't trigger WWIII. Decades later, the entire world will be a nuclear armed hell-hole on hair trigger alert because the only countries safe from US aggression are ones that can send a nuke back at em.