The suffering of the troops in foxholes and muddy ditches was horrific but local. In World War II, the air battle further developed. The war ended after atomic bombs destroyed two cities in seconds. In the war that Bush is preparing for now, intelligence, surveillance and special forces play a vital role. However it goes, it will look and be different from the World Wars.
Nobody wants a mushroom cloud either.
As the Australian commission vividly describes, more energy can be released in one micro-second from a single nuclear weapon than all the energy released by all the conventional weapons used in all the wars throughout history. The ability of the planet and its people to recover from such a thing is questionable. The United States is not doing nothing. It is instead working toward a just planet - one that has a future.