I was thinking the other day about the question that was posed in the debates, about a terrorist WMD attack on two American cities, and how each of the candidates might respond if president. I wasn't completely satisfied with any response I heard, though all of them came fairly close to what I expected to hear.
But it got me thinking: what SHOULD the response of a Progressive president be to such a horrific event, and in what significant ways would it differ from, say, a conservative or neo-conservative response? How could a progressive approach safeguard the American public from further attack and determine an appropriate, forceful response, and at the same time avoid eroding civil liberties in the name of safety?
I regard the probability of such an event as being pretty low(single digit percentages over the next 20-30 years), but nonetheless, it seems like a good way to identify and/or develop how exactly a progressive approach to national security policy would be different from what has gone before.
The immediately tricky thing, it seems to me, is in determining the appropriate response(once we have identified responsible parties). If we are looking at an unprecedented death toll and unprecedented economic and infrastructure damage, the public outcry for retribution will be enormous. A forceful response seems inevitable and probably necessary, but how forceful, and in what way is that force directed?
Does a nuclear attack by necessity require a nuclear response, or is there some level of response which is adequate to eliminate a continuing threat without going nuclear? If we go nuclear, how do we go about determining what is an appropriate target and what isn't? In the event the bulk of the terror group responsible lived in 2 or 3 countries, what level of diplomatic pressure would we resort to, in order to flush out those members? Would we have a test for what constitutes a casus belli, or cause for war with those countries? How would we explain and justify our chosen response to the rest of the world?
Obviously, I haven't worked out the answers to these issues, but I thought I'd throw this out there in the Kososphere and see what other folks think.