If Al Qaeda assassinated President Obama, what do you think the appropriate U.S. response should be?

Nuke every muslim country that exists.
Oh wait, you said should, not would.
Nevermind.
What they should do is make sure that it really was Al Qaida that is responsible and not an internal plot to get rid of an uncomfportable president.

Sit around the kitchen table and suck on peppermint stick candies.

Oy veh.

@ragingloli really? You think Biden (even as stupid as he can be) would do that?

The answer is not an easy one. You’d have a sweep to round up any and all suspects. If found to be done with a foreign government’s support you would probably see war within a month or two.

Luckily I don’t think it’s as easy to kill a President (even ones we don’t like) as just saying it.

@jlelandg there was actually something set up like that, I believe it was that if terrorists ever used WMD’s on US soil, we’d nuke certain sites throughout the Islamic World. There are a few holy sites that we would spare (such as Mecca) to more or less hold hostage in the sense of you do something like that again, we’ll nuke this. And yes, most nations worldwide more or less accept this protocol and would not retaliate, and every Muslim state has been informed of this protocol as well, which has gotten several of their governments to give us anonymous tips on potential terrorist attacks on US soil.

@ragingloli Obama supposedly shut down this protocol though so I doubt we’d nuke them all…probably just Iran and Northwestern Pakistan. lol

I’m a traditionalist. So I say invade Iraq.

I was going to say “lay back and take it.” but @wundayatta seems to have covered that.

@Winters I don’t think WMD and an assasination equal out, even in the eyes of the US.

Revenge is not a tactic, has no place in war and seems to be all this question is about.

Well, seeing as how I strongly dislike Obama, I wouldn’t give a crap. I’d probably chuckle Yes, that was so mean. :P

@ducky_dnl: So “strongly dislike” = “happy he’s dead”

Wow, it’s a good thing you don’t “hate” the man. ;-/

@Winters nailed it. There is already a protocol in place regarding Islamic terrorist attacks that US policy makers regard as worthy of extreme response. These include (but are not limited to) detonating a nuke on US soil, and killing a president on US soil. There is a list of Islamic countries, including SA, that would have specific targets destroyed in response. There is no promise in the protocol that nukes will not be used. Every leader in the ME has been informed of this policy. That is one reason they give up so much great intel.

@josie Thanks for backing me up on this one. I forgot to include assassination of the president, I meant to include that.

The U.S. wouldn’t do anything, We wouldn’t want to offend the muslims.

I’m more of a traditionalist than @jaytkay, so I say we invade Haiti… again.

I don’t for a second believe in the tit-for-tat retaliation scenario that @Winters and @josie have put forth. Not. One. Bit.

No, the people who give us needed intel on radical groups on their soil do so because of their recognition that things are starting to spin out of control—meaning out of their control as well as ours—and would like to put off the next world war for a few more decades if they can.

Aside from the fact that Obama is no Archduke Ferdinand, and the US is no Ottoman Empire, there are a lot of parallels to this period in history and the early 1900s. Something like the scenario described above could conceivably set off another world war. No thinking person wants that, and fortunately we still seem to have mostly thinking people in charge.

I used to think that as much as we all decry nuclear weapons and hated the fact that all through the 1960s until 1990 and beyond the USA and USSR had their arsenals pointed at each other… having that in place, and a bit of thought behind them actually prevented war between those two enemies. I fear that if enough demagogues take power in the Middle East there may not be that kind of thoughtful restraint any more.

I’m not as optimistic as Tom Lehrer, either. I don’t think it’ll be over in an hour and a half.

Still I don’t care how funny it is, mutually assured destruction is mad.

this isn’t exactly the best source I’ve ever used, but as of 2007 according to this paper and a Presidential candidate at least part of the policy you guys are saying didn’t exist. Please find this on google, because I’m not. (I’m not saying I don’t believe you, I just want proof).

@USA_Government The murder of millions of innocent people over one man is sickening. We are not statistics to be used in negotiations. If this policy is real then the U.S. is just a diplomatic terrorist group.

@anothermember if you really feel this way you should try to google to prove me wrong (I applaud you if you do!). I won’t believe this until I see it.

Edit: I’ve now googled about 10–15 different search criteria and am still drawing a blank. Tancredo said it wasn’t in place in 2007 so I am not buying it. I’ve heard about this site wtfhasobamadone.com (curse omitted) this issue should (not would) be filed under wtfhasn'tobamadone.com.

So most everyone has responded by stating what they think the gov’t will do, based on protocol. I’m a bit surprised the protocol for assassinating a president is to nuke a nation, and I’m not convinced that’s what we would do at all. It is also the main reason I chose Al Qaeda as the assassin, since they have no nation to attack.

We’ve been fighting Al Qaeda for a while now. If they got the president, what would change in the way we pursue them? If we aren’t pursuing them with full aggression now, why not, and what would full aggression look like?

Also, although many have stated what they think the US will do, what do you also think they should do?

@cockswain I think we should do what I hope we would do: You’d round up any and all suspects (if they didn’t kill themselves like chickensh*ts) and either execute or put them away a long long time. If found to be done with a foreign government’s support you would probably see war within a month or two.

Find, arrest and try the perpetrators. Don’t sacrifice the rule of law.

Fight Islamism more seriously at home and elsewhere, because it’s the breeding ground for Islamist terrorism.

This policy was designed on similar principles of MAD, it’s there so it never happens.
With MAD, both the USSR and the USA had a “healthy” fear of death, thus MAD would have never happened.
Sure these Terrorists don’t fear death seemingly at all but threaten to annihilate the whole Muslim world and hold their holy sites hostage, and suddenly they respond positively, sure there’ll still be terrorism but the actual fear of the world going up in flames is still unfounded.

That’s the beauty of nuclear weapons, and let’s not get into their ugly side.

And as I said, this protocol is no longer in effect, supposedly (No one knows what happens behind closed doors).

I’m sure Al Qaeda would love to assassinate the president but I would say it is more likely to be a home grown terrorist and for similar distorted ‘reasons’. It would be a horrible event in itself and it would require a measured and determined response. Find who did it and bring them to trial. No waterboarding.

And as I said, this protocol is no longer in effect, supposedly (No one knows what happens behind closed doors).

You did, sorry.

I think half the country would dance in the streets and the other half would retaliate.

@WillWorkForChocolate You think half our nation would rejoice if Obama was killed? I sincerely hope that, despite those that don’t agree with his polices, would not celebrate his death nor it’s results.

@cockswain Okay, so maybe not an entire half of the country… I’m just thinking about all the people who sent out emails calling him the Antichrist and all that crap. They’d probably be ecstatic.

I’d hope that number would be 5% or less. I watched a movie last night called “Death of a President”, a fake documentary where President Bush was killed. As much as I disagreed with many of his policies, the documentary was realistic enough that I know I personally would be very disturbed if any sitting president was killed.

Nuke the Bush estate then find the perpetrators of this horrendous act.

Behind closed doors is no proof…I see this listed no where on google.

@jlelandg And I bet you would be one of the people who would never have believed that we were involved in Vietnam since the 1950’s and that the Government lied about every damn body bag that came out for the longest time until finally a little picking revealed a little truth and a little more truth until, to save face, the Government came out and publicly said that we were involved. Funny thing is that still the history books say, what, 1964?

And looking through google isn’t always going to get you the answers, sometimes you gotta get a crowbar and pry.

Actually funny thing is I just typed it into google and found several hits,on the first page, you really aren’t looking hard enough are you?

@Winters I saw a great documentary called “The Most Dangerous Man in America” about Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed a lot of the gov’t’s early Vietnam involvement. Also “Fog of War” about McNamara.

I think that the Tea Party, among others, would hold thank-you parades for the assassins.