Indeed yes. It'd be a really good idea for Ahmedinejad to remember (a) who the only nation on earth to deploy atomic weapons against an enemy is, and (b) who defied its staunchest and oldest and most natural ally to protect Israel, because Israel was the super-underdog. He doesn't want to mess with us.

Except that unfortunately he has the example of the last thirty or forty years to draw on, and thinks he does. Dangit, I don't want us to kill as many people as he seems to want us to kill. I'm a peacenik, I am. (A peacenik who believes that the preservation and advancement of individual freedom is considerably more important than mere peace, that is.)

We already know Ahmadinejad was there, on the ground, when the U.S. did nothing in response to Iranian seizure of the U.S. embassy (which should have been regarded as an act of war).

Quite, true, Ahmedinejad knows we’re not the same nation that defeated the Japs with nuclear weapons. We’re not even the same nation that could contain communism with the threat of Mutual Assured Distruction –- a doctrine that says we will kill every man, women, and child of the enemy’s if they launch a nuclear attack against us.

Today, if anyone advocated MAD they’d be labeled a genocidal maniac. You’ll hear cries of “how can we kill innocent civilians in the enemy’s territory especially when it’s just the dictator and a few henchmen that are responsible for nuking our cities.” They very thought of doing the same to the enemy will be met with “we can’t do that or else we won’t be better than them.”

Or, I’m wrong and there’s an anger building-up towards those who hearts bleed for the enemy as our men and women bleed for real in the fields. Please tell me I'm wrong!

By the way, the fire bombing of Tokyo on March 9-10 of 1945 killed as many if not more than an atomic bomb. However, our intelligence couldn’t detect any demoralization; subsequent bombing of cities were preceded by the dropping of leaflets to warn the people so that we’d do damage mainly to the military and industrial targets. It was in August that we resumed the deliberate targeting of civilians with our atomic bombs.

Some believe we were mistaken to stop targeting civilians after March 10-11. It all depends on whether you believe it was our willingness and ability to target and kill civilians that did it or a particular fear of dying with atomic weapons.

Ironically, we couldn't producing many atomic bombs and if we need to destroy a few dozen cities more to end the war, we'd have to use conventional bombing. If it was the atomic technology that convinced them, we bluffed them!