system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Call of Duty: Modern Warfare] Why did the United States do absolutely nothing when 30,000 troops were nuked? Why didn't they retaliate?
gpt
Al-Asad, the man who set off the nuke, was the ruler of the country the United States was already invading, and had more or less occupied at that point. To the vast majority of the US population, the nuclear detonation was just a suicide bombing on a mass scale; a last, defiant act of a mad warlord willing to sacrifice his own people. Who's there left to retaliate against? The people who did it are already dead, in custody, or living in US occupation.

Within the inner echelons of US and UK intelligence, they likely know of Al-Asad's connection to Imran Zakhaev, the Russian Ultranationalists, and the fact that the warhead was Russian in nature. But hey, what can you do? Zakhaev and Al-Asad are both confirmed KIA, and what else are you going to do? Invade Russia? That's a bad idea in the real world, and in Modern Warfare world, Russia was able to launch a surprise attack on the whole of the continental US, get beaten, then launch right into an attack on the whole of continental Europe (literally from Poland to Portugal) in under a year. For those select few who knew about Russia's involvement, they would also know the utter impossibility of any kind of retaliatory strike against Russia.

Of course, some people did try to retaliate. That was Shepard's whole plan; he realized, like Zakhaev, that the people needed to rally against a common foe to regain their strength, and just as the Russians had rallied under the Ultranationalists, he would rally the Americans under... well, himself, and a mutual desire to punish the Russians for their actions in the invasion of America.