nash,
Quick and dirty response as I don't have time to stay at the keyboard today, I don't even have time to do a spell check, sorry.
As to your assertion that a nuke makes a strategic vs tactical operation, bovine feces. It is an explosive device of very limited yield. It does not make the enemy any deader than say napalm or shrapnel. That is has other possibly lasting consequences is obvious but hardly the dividing point between strategic, tactical or political considerations. The scope of the conflict can also be defined by the size of the forces and or the goals of the country deploying forces.
The tactical nuke situation already put up on the thread and discarded by you, is the use of a smaller device to stop an already strategic move by a hostile force. This is to influence the cessation of the strategic operation by the country using sizable military assets to achieve a global influential goal. Hence it is already a strategic situation and certainly political a the start of the hostilities, nuke or not.
A strategic nuke would be used against a larger theater target such as the means to continue to wage war, ie military production, mobility assets and the general population of the enemy country, a military and political asset to the beligerant country.
Easy way to think of tactical vs strategic is the immediate goals or targets. Strategic is small influence on a specific area or battlefield. Strategic means the influence of a much larger area or possibly the ability to cause a cessation of an entire country's military effort. This is not to say a tactical operation can't have a strategic influence, it just wasn't intended to do so.
War and the use of the military is by definition a political operation. it is only deployed by a country in an attempt to influence the POLITICAL goals of the country deploying it, hence a military operation is already politically motivated.
Political considerations always drive the use of the military and in this country the civilian politicians are the point of direction for the military, sometimes with less than desirable results from their lack of military abilities. LBJ comes to mind.
The presence of a uniform does not impart military expertise. The lack of any experiance certainly does not lend credence to having any military expertise at all. The lack of ever having served, lack of ability to serve and or lack of inclination to serve the country, community hardly gives anyone the right to volunteer others to do that which they won't do themselves.
In other words, before you invite others to do something, you should first have placed yourself in position to have done that same act. That is a basic tenet of leadership and integrity. Don't tell others to do what you yourself will not do. It's also insulting to deride others who have served because they acted on their beliefs if you are not willing to do the same.
I would say the "101 fighting keyboardist" term fits one who has not or would not serve quite nicely.
BTW Viet Nam and Korea were not divided by the cold war per se. They were divided at the end of WW2.
