So what is your red line? If Iran used a nuke and killed 1 million of it's own people

[TheKentuckian]

141. Where is yours? The real one, not the one that seems like an easy "we can do it"

How about your scenario in China or Russia? You still have that same lead in your pencil? So certain of your ability to use might to make right?

I also don't buy that an "international response" is us plus or minus token representation from random "stan" Soviet break aways and and our subsidiaries (we might even strike out there on this one).

This is no moral imperative, on the list or not we'll use just as heinous or worse and have done so fairly consistently and we have turned many a blind eye beyond wagging of the fingers in the face of grievous crimes against humanity and blatantly refuse to prosecute our own save low level fall guys.

It is bullshit dick swinging where the bully sizes up someone he can take and uses the phony moral imperative as an excuse to show how bad ass he is as long as he doesn't have to fight anyone that just might fuck him up on a given Sunday.

This one, the bully calculates will piss off the Russians (who they are in a snit with) but they do not believe quite enough to cause hot action but may be in the Goldilocks zone for pushing us into a neocold war state as to maintain and even increase the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex command and control factor. If not, it almost has to be a solid start.
If Russia decided to rain some justice down on Israel, we might be in WWIII territory. Don't get too fucking cocky.

To answer you, if Iran had even that level of nuclear capability then I suspect our options would be either to essentially do nothing no matter how much crying or turn them into glass and damn the torpedoes. We walk a very precarious line in Pakistan but even that situation has only so much elasticity.

The arrogance and the hypocrisy are astounding. The self righteousness is towering. The cowardly, technocratic nature stunning to behold.
All the furious anger not over number, suffering, environmental damage, who was hit, who was targeted, or really anything else than "we believe a substance on a treaty you have not signed off on has been violated".
Hell, we might be using fucking depleted uranium somewhere today and we refuse to sign the land mine ban.

Whatever the real motivation, it isn't any mercy mission and it isn't some imperative against mass murder. Neither hokey ass statement is believable in context only in the haze of mythology of exceptionalism and generational propaganda woven into the very fabric of our society as a tool of control.

C'mon man, the very best story for any semblance of moral authority to jump back into the middle east for the next stop on the Crusade is that we've turned over a new leaf over the past four and a half years (despite mostly rotating the same fucking war criminals around in our military and clandestine services under the smiling face of a Nobel winner). Which means we haven't got one of any worth outside of our own borders and I hope to God one without too much fertile ground here anymore.