A threat to vaporize 100 Muslim cities

Back in the days of the Cold War, the U.S. had a nuclear-weapons doctrine called Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD for short. This doctrine held that if the U.S. were attacked with weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, we would immediately and without debate counter-attack the homeland of the perpetrator in such a way and with such overwhelming nuclear force as to make the cost of the initial attack too much to bear.

For instance, if the Soviet Union or the Chinese would have attacked us with WMD in the Cold War, we would have counter-attacked at the very least by destroying their 100 largest cities. The theory was that once you have destroyed the 100 largest cities of any society, even an evil empire, that society effectively ceases to exist, perhaps for several generations, thus deterring any WMD attack. Variations of this same nuclear doctrine were held by our Cold War allies and advisories, including the evil empire.

Although gruesome sounding, the beauty of MAD is that it worked. Even though both the U.S. and the Soviet Union were armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, none was ever used. In fact, both sides went to great lengths to establish hardened and redundant command, communication and control systems to prevent the accidental or unauthorized launch of nuclear weapons, fearing the dire consequences.

The primary reason MAD worked is because it was simple and unambiguous. Both sides let the other side know in no uncertain terms that a nuclear first strike would be followed immediately by an overwhelming nuclear counter-strike destroying the heartland, culture and society of the attacker. This was a price even the most evil 20th century dictators would not even contemplate.

We now have a new enemy, Islamic terrorism, hellbent to either enslave or destroy us. This enemy is in many ways much harder to cope with than an evil empire. It does not have an army, an economy, an infrastructure, a capital or a state to attack. This enemy refuses to show itself on the field of battle so we can destroy it with our superior weapons and tactics.

However, Islamic terrorism could not exist if it did not enjoy comfort, support and succor from the Islamic societies from which its members are recruited. Besides the overt state support from Syria, Iran, pre-invasion Iraq, Libya, Sudan, North Korea, etc., this enemy also enjoys popular support in Islamic states. The popular support of the terrorists is much larger than it is politically correct to discuss in most forums in the West. But, does anyone doubt that bin Laden would be elected dictator-for-life in Saudi Arabia if that nation had free elections? Let's not allow political correctness to blind us or kill us. The terrorists are merely an extreme form of widespread corruption, totalitarianism and venality prevalent in Islamic states and societies worldwide.

Now, here is the urgent problem. The Islamic terrorists are seeking nuclear weapons to destroy us. If and when they acquire a nuclear weapon with the help of their state sponsors, they will use it in the U.S. homeland without warning. Can you imagine the effect of just one nuclear weapon being detonated in New York or Washington? In addition to the initial horrific destruction and casualties, the U.S. economy and perhaps the world economy would go into a depression that would make the Great Depression seem like Sunday school. Investment would stop for fear of further nuclear attacks. If they have one, maybe they have more? Our wealth would be dramatically reduced, and the economy would be in chaos for at least a generation. The American way of life would be dramatically altered, perhaps permanently. In short, the Islamic terrorists would win.

The stakes are as high as can be, and our current strategy of planting democracy in the Middle East may work too slowly or not work at all. How do we prevent that first nuclear attack and mobilize the world, even the Islamic societies, against the terrorists' nuclear ambitions? We need a new nuclear doctrine that puts everybody's skin in the game. We need a new nuclear doctrine that places the American people, the American society, the American economy and the American way of life far above politeness and political correctness.

I propose that the U.S. immediately adopt and publish the following nuclear doctrine:

In the event of a WMD attack by terrorists on the U.S. homeland or U.S. military facilities overseas, the U.S will immediately and without discussion use its immense nuclear weapons capabilities to destroy the 100 largest Islamic cities on earth, regardless of state, and destroy all of the military facilities of Islamic-dominated states. This will include all of the capitals and at least the 10 largest cities of all Islamic-dominated states and the "holy" cities of Mecca and Medina. In addition, North Korean cities and military installations will be destroyed. Now suddenly everybody from Casablanca, Cairo, Damascus, Riyadh, Tehran, Islamabad, Pyongyang and Jakarta have skin in the game. The last thing they want would be a WMD attack on the U.S. It would mean certain destruction of their societies. They might even be motivated to actually and feverishly work against Islamic terrorism instead of the tepid lip service they currently give. Those "freedom fighters" currently being cheered in the streets would be transformed to deadly threats in the very societies that spawned them.

The beauty of this doctrine is that it encourages the 1.2 billion Muslims to actually prove that they are adherents to a "religion of peace," and it holds all Islamic states and North Korea accountable for their behavior. If you don't want your cities on the target list, you have to earn your way off the list. Give us the head of bin Laden on a stick, and you may get a pass. Shut down your nuclear programs in an open and verifiable way, and you can earn your way off the target list.

Another advantage of this doctrine is that it doesn't cost a nickel. We have the necessary weapons and delivery systems in place. This would only require a fraction of our existing nuclear warheads. I presume the platform of choice would be Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines patrolling the Indian Ocean.

Of course, the hand wringers, peaceniks and leftist elites would shout and scream bloody murder about how aggressive, unfair and politically incorrect this doctrine appears. However, I believe it would accomplish the same thing as MAD – namely, the successful deterrence of nuclear holocaust. All we need is the will to declare it.

"Can you imagine the effect of just one nuclear weapon being detonated in New York or Washington?"

Yes, readily. So can the enemy. The writer can't. His brain stops. So he looks around for silly expedients to make the possibility go away without actually having to do anything. He seeks to exorcise the thought by publishing a stern leading editorial. The means are comically unsuited to the end.

"the U.S. economy and perhaps the world economy would go into a depression that would make the Great Depression seem like Sunday school. Investment would stop for fear"

Unlikely, and easily remedied should it come to that. Certainly there would be large changes in our policies etc. But no, the terrorists would not "win". We would be fighting a much more serious war. The immediate difficulty would be to prevent appeasement types from neutering effective responses. But we would fight and would eventually prevail. The costs would be astronomically higher, that is all.

There is in fact no prospect of actual victory for the Islamic terrorists, except in our political surrender. To see this, imagine they have succeeded in destroying western civilization and re-establishing a new caliphate that controls the entire Muslim part of the world, and half again more if you like. Would this result in victory for them? No, merely in destruction. The means they are employing would be just as readily used against them. We have far greater technical abilities with such tactics than they do. Their civilization would just be destroyed by the same means.

Nothing can be built by the tactics of weakness the terrorists are employing. The level everyone is on can be reduced, costs can be ramped, and existing societies forever altered. But they can't win. They can't put two stones on top of each other, unless we let them. So forget all the fantasies about the terrorists "winning" - only our capitulation can cause that. We've probably had our narrowest scrape on that score, in the election just past. Though it would certainly be a new test.

Second there are misconceptions in the article about what kept peace in the cold war. Early, though the late 60s in fact, the US had an overwhelming dominance in nuclear weapons. If Stalin had the same, there would have been a nuclear war and he would have won it. US restraint from its position of strength caused the peace of the first half of the cold war, not MAD. That restraint was based on confidence that we could prevail in the end without nuclear war.

As for the later portions of the cold peace, it depended on the altered nature of the Soviet regime and leadership. It Hitler had Brezhnev's arsenal, there would have been a civilization destroying nuclear war. Anyone who doubts it is invited to acquaint himself with Hitler's orders in the last days of the Third Reich. Saving Germany from destruction was the last thing on his mind.

In fact he thought if the German people failed to win the war they deserved to be exterminated. He was by that point stark raving mad. His chief amusement was watching movies he had made of the grisly torture and execution of disloyal generals; he was also on drugs continually. He ordered all infrastructure in Germany destroyed - an order Speer managed to sabotage.

Bin Laden has no stake in the continued existence of the existing regimes of the Muslim world. They are in fact his mortal enemies. He would love to see them nuked. If he had enough nukes, he would nuke their capitals himself - though he would do us and Israel first. The writer of this piece is simply handing Bin Laden the keys to our nukes.

Bin Laden honestly believes in a vindictive avenging God who will smite all the unbelievers and reward fanatical devotion to literalist Islam. He also knows he is dying. He does not want the good of all Muslims everywhere, he wants to radicalize a core "elect" to fight the enemies of Satan before Judgment Day. He believes that Islam will survive, if only in caves, because God promised it to him. You might as well try reasoning with a psychotic.

As for existing Muslim governments, their reactions to such a leading editorial can also be predicted. They wouldn't believe a word of it. They see our left bouncing off the ceiling because of a few underwear photographs. They aren't exactly convinced we would readily incinerate entire cities. And they are almost certainly right. The writer wants a threat to do the job for him, but it won't do anything if nobody believes it, and there is no reason why anybody would. The cold war threat from the US first because we'd just win, and later because it was plausible that a US that had been hit by an entire Soviet first strike would not have much left to lose.

Their other reaction to the threat is equally predictable. They would all instantly seek nuclear weapons by any means possible, to deter the threatened attack. They can't stop Bin Laden and company from getting off a nuke against us by wishing it were so. They can therefore only protect themselves, if this were our policy, by getting an independent nuclear deterrent. In the meantime they would seek alliances with Russia and China, to borrow deterrent force. They would not increase cooperation with us.

There are plenty of additional things we can do that actually address the real problem. The writer doesn't even try to think them through because he is too scared and they seem too hard, and he wants a magic bullet to make it all go away. It isn't going to all go away.

Indeed, this problem - proliferation to stateless nutjobs against whom retaliatory threats are useless - is only going to get worse in the long term future. And will not remain restricted to the nuke issue. Nukes are 60 years old. Technology continues to gallop. 200 years from now, the things that will have been out of the bottle for decades will dwarf nuclear energy.

In the short run, we need to stop them from getting their hands on nukes. A leading editorial will not get it done. It requires true historic seriousness and responsibility, about issues like Iran. Right now, the rest of the world is as deep in fantasies of easy deliverance as the writer of this article, and only the US leadership - supported by only half the US people - are remotely sensible on the subject. And even we are going slow about it, vastly increasing the long run risk, hoping for more help dealing with it as the reality of our situation sinks in. It hasn't sunk in very far, to judge by the headlines.

Beyond that, truly unjust governments are no longer supportable on this earth. Easy access to the fruits of modern technology cannot be dispensed to all on the presumption that all will use it to further civilization. Mankind is currently engaged in an experiment, whether it is ready for knowledge - technical, scientific knowledge of where the buttons are that make the physical universe dance. And there is no assurance we are, or ever will be. Enlightenment may very well destroy civilization. We dare it anyway.

Another experiment is also being conducted - whether mankind is ready for self government. The division of the world into nations, committing leadership of those nations to whoever the people of each one choose, representing only those under them - might not be compatible with the continued existence of civilization. Monarchy and empire are human perennials for a reason.

It might be possible to combine self government and knowledge of nature in a world wide civilization that respects national differences. To get it to work will take resolute leadership from us, and much more responsible conduct from other leading states than they are presently showing, or have generally shown in the past.

Nations that act even as bad as the Russians did during the cold war are not going to be acceptable in the coming century or two. Nations that proliferate to irresponsible proxy states, or to even less responsible stateless rogues, are incompatible with the continued existence of human civilization. Either they stop or we stop them, or civilization stops. If free governments can stop them we can keep free governments. Otherwise we will get monarchy and empire. If even that can't stop irresponsible rogues, we get a new dark age.

All of which is entirely up to us, to our collective conduct. Nothing about it is fated. The spectrum of choices is not entirely up to us, only certain things will fit, and they do not include the fantasy that a strident leading editorial will allow us to pretend none of it is happening for another fifty years. If we pretend it isn't happening, we go straight to the end options above.

The popular support of the terrorists is much larger than it is politically correct to discuss in most forums in the West.

Actually I've seen it discussed in some surprising forums. 60 Minutes did a segment on Pakistan a couple years ago where "the Mohammad on the street" (and in the schools) expressed both their sympathy and their love for OBL and his cause. The vast majority expressed this view, and there are over 150 million Pakistanis. (And Pakistan has "the Islamic bomb" - nukes - as well).

But, does anyone doubt that bin Laden would be elected dictator-for-life in Saudi Arabia if that nation had free elections?

Yup, and that's precisely why "free elections" - democracy - is about the most overrated idea in modern history. .....especially when concerning backward, violent societies like Islam.

Can you imagine the effect of just one nuclear weapon being detonated in New York or Washington? In addition to the initial horrific destruction and casualties, the U.S. economy and perhaps the world economy would go into a depression that would make the Great Depression seem like Sunday school. ......In short, the Islamic terrorists would win.

All too true. .....which makes our govts' unwillingness to deport every last Muslim "student" and other questionable character back to their sandpit of origin and then slam the borders shut to the best of our ability all the more unfathomable. .....and infuriating. But political correctness, vote-trolling, and payback to illegal-alien employing companies that keep the GOP's coffers filled to the brim is evidently more important than our national survival.

I wholeheartedly agree with this author's plan to deal with a WMD attack by terrorists on the U.S. homeland.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.