[Perndog]

The benefit of limiting your political activity to speculation on Internet message boards is that no one gets hurt if you're wrong. Bear in mind when reading any of my political posts that I neither think at length about my opinions nor talk about them anywhere but here; as far as I'm concerned, all political speculation is just jerking off with your brain anyway. I'm not a policy maker, and even the big powers are controlled to an unfortunate extent by public opinion. That said...

Yeah, maybe Jerusalem was a bad choice, though with the number of Muslims already vehemently out for Jewish and Western blood, I don't think pissing the rest of them off by destroying Mecca would create a whole lot more enemies than we've already got. What it would do is scare the shit out of them; you're right that it might just make them more violent, but I'm betting the other way.

If a holy city that isn't directly involved in the conflict would be a poor target no matter what, then any devastating attack on a more military target would do, so long as it is sufficiently brutal. If maximum force is never used, they will never take threats seriously enough and will never back down. Think of Hiroshima; that put Japan down in a quick hurry, didn't it?

Yes, I was serious. Nobility isn't exactly a priority for me, though it is one of the main reasons why this won't actually happen. Even if world leaders wanted to do such a thing (and I have a hunch a couple of them would love to), they would never get away with it under the millions of eyes watching them on TV.

Oh, and I didn't say ultimate peace. We're talking about peace in a particular conflict. Ultimate peace is an utter pipe dream, no matter what measures are taken.