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.
With respect to your #465, please cite your references for your fantastic comment that OBL would like to nuke Islamic cities himself? Much of what you wrote, it seems to me is without reference in fact and is fantasy of your mind. But you do write well.