Posted on 07/28/2005 9:39:56 AM PDT by rdb3
Why not bomb Mecca? Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO) has brought the issue to the table. The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) has demanded that he apologize to Muslims, and commentators left and right have subjected him to vociferous criticism. At the same time, however, he seems to have tapped into the frustration that many Americans feel about official Washingtons politically correct insistence, in the face of ever-mounting evidence to the contrary, that Islam is a religion of peace that has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists.
Although Tancredos presidential hopes and possibly even his seat in Congress may go up in the mushroom cloud created by the furor over his remarks, the idea of destroying Islamic holy sites in response to a devastating terror attack on American soil is not going to go away particularly as long as elected officials rush after every Islamic terror attack to repeat the well-worn mantras about how they know that the overwhelming majority of Muslims abhor violence and reject extremism, and are our faithful and reliable allies against terrorism in all its forms.
However, although the resentment Tancredo has tapped is real and has legitimate causes, his suggestion that among the many things we might do to prevent such an attack on America would be to lay out there as a possibility the destruction of Islamic holy sites is still wrong but not generally for the reasons that most analysts have advanced.
Primarily, of course, it contravenes Western principles of justice which, if discarded willy-nilly, would remove a key reason why we fight at all: to preserve Western ideas of justice and human rights that are denied by the Islamic Sharia law so beloved of jihad terrorists. But even aside from moral questions, which are increasingly thorny in this post-Hiroshima, post-Dresden world, there are practical reasons to reject what Tancredo has suggested.
Tancredos idea, of course, is based on the old Cold War principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). Both sides threatened each other with nuclear annihilation, and the threats canceled each other out. The Soviets would no more risk Moscow being wiped out than we would Washington.
But applying this principle to present-day Islamic jihad is not so easy. The Soviets did not inculcate into their cadres the idea enunciated by Maulana Inyadullah of al-Qaeda shortly after 9/11: The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death. This lust for death runs through the rhetoric of todays jihadists, and goes all the way back in Islamic history to the Quran, in which Allah instructs Muhammad: Say (O Muhammad): O ye who are Jews! If ye claim that ye are favoured of Allah apart from (all) mankind, then long for death if ye are truthful (62:6). Will men who love death, who glorify suicide bombing and praise God for beheadings and massacres, fear the destruction of holy sites? It seems unlikely in the extreme and that fact nullifies all the value this thread may have had as a deterrent. Nuke Mecca? Why bother? It wouldnt work.
Others have argued, however, that the deterrent value of destroying Islamic holy sites would lie not in giving jihad terrorists pause, but in showing Islam itself to be false and thus removing the primary motivation of todays jihad terrorists. If Allah is all-powerful and rewards those who believe in him while hating and punishing the disbelievers (the vilest of creatures, according to Quran 98:6), wouldnt he protect his holy sites from these disbelievers?
However, Muslims have weathered such shocks to their system in the past. In 1924, the secular government of Turkey abolished the caliphate; the caliph was considered the successor of the Prophet Muhammad as the religious and political leader of the Islamic community. By abolishing the office, Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk hoped to strike at the heart of political Islam and create a context in which Islam could develop something akin to the Western idea of the separation of religion and state. Instead, his act provided the impetus for the establishment of the Muslim Brotherhood, the first modern Islamic terrorist organization, in Egypt in 1928. The Brotherhood and its offshoots (which include Hamas and Al-Qaeda), and indeed virtually all jihadist groups in the world today, date the misery of the Islamic world to the abolition of the caliphate. The ultimate goal of such groups is the restoration of this office, the reunification of the Islamic world under the caliph, and the establishment of the Sharia as the sole law in Muslim countries. Then the caliph would presumably take up one of his principal duties as stipulated by Islamic law: to wage offensive jihad against non-Muslim states in order to extend Sharia rule to them also.
The abolition of the caliphate, then, accomplished precisely the opposite of what Ataturk hoped it would: it gave the adherents of political Islam a cause around which to rally, recruit, and mobilize. In essence, it gave birth to the crisis that engulfs the world today. It is likely that a destruction of the Kaaba or the Al-Aqsa Mosque would have the same effect: it would become source of spirit, not of dispirit. The jihadists would have yet another injury to add to their litany of grievances, which up to now have so effectively confused American leftists into thinking that the West is at fault in this present conflict. But the grievances always shift; the only constant is the jihad imperative. Let us not give that imperative even greater energy in the modern world by supplying such pretexts needlessly.
I don't think so. Think of whatever place/symbol means the most to you, and then consider your response if it should be destroyed by a nuke.
Are you going to be "shaken," or are you gonna go looking for blood?
My money is on the latter. And so is bin Laden's.
If you like it, click on it. There's nothing stopping you.
Your question is so imprecise as to defy any rational attempt to answer it. Please clarify what you mean by "Muslims nuking Washington DC...." Which Muslims?
I find his refutation of the proving-Islam-wrong-by-destroying-Mecca argument to be insufficient. The caliph, and the caliphate, are restorable; no permanent damage was done to their beliefs by its abolition. The destruction of Mecca would be a one-way trip and not reversible.
Pig fat dipped bullets for the leaders and resisters would also be a finishing nice touch. I'm sure we could wrap the task into the Agricultural price-support budget and share the line item expense with the military.
A reasoned argument. However, it might not hold up so well should an 'American Hiroshima' were to ever happen as ol' Uncle Binny has threatened.
The worst thing we can do is to take any option off the table.
Perhaps nuking the Afghan/Pakistan border area where Bin Laden is hiding. Of course there are 2 problems with this:
1. We'd be relying on our famously unreliable intellegence community and more importantly
2. Pakistan has the bomb too.
There are no easy solutions.
I feel bad for Tancredo putting himself in the position he did, if he has stayed away from Paul Williams, the kooky moonbat who wrote "Inside the Vatican" he'd never have got the now infamous question as he would not have been on that call in show.
They're already "looking for blood." The more innocent, the better.
Besides all this, what wrong with Holy payback for blowing up the giant Buddhas in Afghanistan? In Judeo-Christian belief, this kind of attachment to physical objects borders on idol worship.
The cuddly kind that live in the gumdrop woods near the chocolate river of love.....OH AND THEY HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS! What does it matter? If you have a family of rats living in your attic, do you discern the good rats from the bad rats or kill them all?
No way does this convince me. Nuking Mecca should be the first order of business if Muhammad worshiping lunatics detonate a nuke or two here or somehow unleash some terrible bio/chem agents on us. Mecca Medina Qom is how you do it right. Just effin' waste them if the Jihadist mutants push it too far.
Ping
I don't, because he starts his position with a false premise, to wit:
"Tancredos idea, of course, is based on the old Cold War principle of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)."
Not true. The Muslims, for the time being, do not have the capability and Tancrdo's hiding behind this statement is backpedaling. The essence of a USA nuclear retaliation for any further terrorists attacks is simply:
"YOU DO THAT AGAIN, MOHAMMED, AND WE'LL KICK YOUR NUTS OFF!"
It's nothing more than a simple masculine threat that conveys to the thuggish mind that we mean business. Nothing more. It's ridiculous that anyone would perceive it otherwise. It's not worth the controversy that its attracted.
The Muslem "community" must start to police their own or risk their holy site.
We need to cut the conventional nonsense and cut the throat (no pun intended) of Islam itself so that it bleeds to death. Whether it be peaceful or militarily, we all know the violence will continue so long as Islam is a major religion.
Way off the mark. Spencer accuses Tancredo of suggesting a pre-emptive strike. An absolute falsehood. You call that a "fair take?"
"But for the anti-Tancrado crowd: What is the proper response to Muslims nuking Washington DC or even the Vatican?"
Well you know how it would go......"it's only the fantatical few who have done this; Islam is a religion of peace and this does not reflect on all muslims......"
I swear it would be exactly that way......
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