darksiege wrote:
I doubt they would leave any population to absorb...
Israel is not going to annihilate Syria for us - they do not want a radioactive wasteland on their borders, they are not interested in the disastrous political costs of this, they aren't going to deplete their arsenal expending the weapons it would take to do this.
This is ignoring the fact that - in the absence of any empirical evidence about what would actually happen - there's real risk that if one flies they all fly, especially with Russian forces in the area. As in, THEY ALL FLY. Do you WANT this to get out of control? There is all kinds of theory about what a nuclear attack could trigger, but no one knows for sure and the gravest caution is warranted.
If we're going to annihilate the region over this - which is not a realistic option - we should just go ahead and do it ourselves. We may not be able to nation-build anywhere in the world, but we can certainly annihilate one without even leaving home. If we are seriously going to trigger global thermonuclear war out of frustration with the middle east, we may as well just do it ourselves. At least we'll already have our planes in the air and have a good chance of hitting Russia and China before they can react.