I don’t think we should be coddling terrorists or villifying our own troops or any of those other things, of course; I just wanted to point out that Al Qaeda makes itself out to be much stronger than it is, and that our media is only too happy to oblige them.
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Army vet, OIF 1

When push comes to shove, they know to send in Mother Green and her killing machine.

Marines are here for one thing:

"Our morale began to break when the dying Marines kept coming."
-Japanese survivors captured at Tarawa.

Marines don’t quit until they are dead. And that commitment still holds. Just show us where they are and let us do our jobs. That’s all we ask.

Edit in response to poster: We, the military, don’t make that decision. Our elected civilian leadership will turn us loose at the proper time when it comes to nukes……
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First, as a former nuclear soldier, the last thing in the world that I and most of my fellow crewman ever wanted to see was our birds stand on their tails and fly. It was the Cold War then, and we knew that if we launched, we would certainly be dead within ten minutes of the rounds leaving the pad. The only question would be the manner of our deaths and by whom it would be accomplished. We were not afriad to die, we joined with the thought very much in the forefront of our minds. But, we also knew that our deaths would precede a million or more people who had done nothing to us and were little different than our own families.

Nukes don’t kill terrorists. Nukes don’t kill facist regimes. Nukes don’t destroy enemy governments. Of the tens of thousands of people (the lucky ones) who were vaporized in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the hundreds of thousands who died from exposure to radiation, the vast majority were innocent civilians, women, children, the elderly. And, regardless of the fact that Japan surrendered 6 days after the Nagasaki attack, the bombs were not the catalyst for surrender beyond the fact that they only hastened it. Surrender was coming, Fat Man and Little Boy only illustrated to the empire that the US was prepared to go further than Japan could.

If there were a way to specifically target a nuclear device on those who are actually committing the evil, leaving NO collateral damage, I’d say go for it. But, there isn’t. In the reality of war, we still need grunts to slug it out face to face with the enemy. Most who serve know that going in. It is the hallmark of their courage. Please don’t cheapen the gift they offer by presuming a piece of technology can replace it with the push of a button.

Cry for the soldiers we lose. Weep for the wounded. Cheer for those who return. Celebrate the sacrifice of every one of them. But, don’t surrender to panic. And, unless you have stood watch on the wall yourself, don’t even dare pretend to know the best course of action for those who have and do.
References :
Cold War Veteran, US Army, and proud Pershing 1A and Pershing II Crewman