Posted on 07/28/2005 2:12:17 PM PDT by Jean S
Why not nuke 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. Although many have attacked him for the wrong reasons, his suggestion is still wrong.
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.
Tancredo’s 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 today’s jihadists, and goes back to the Qur’an. Will men who glorify suicide bombing and praise their 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.
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 today’s 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 Qur’an 98:6), wouldn’t 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 Ka’aba 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.
Oh my!! Now there's a visual!!
Tell all muslims that there is a trigger already set to go off in the event we are hit by their fanantics.
If you take out one or two cities, it's like swatting a hornets nest. It's won't solve the problem, but it'll sure make your life miserable.
war is war. They certainly aren't going to give us any consideration. They had very specific targets on 9-11. I believe that if the President had not closed all points of entry, alot of other major cities would have been hit. It is a religious war with them, so hit them where it hurts. It's amazing how they can say and do anything and the politically correct liberals go off the deep end defending these people against ours.
Haven't I read this in the bible somewhere???
Oh come one. The Americans are almost all working in Riyadh or Jeddah. Mecca is open only to Muslims and is a closed city.
Yet another reason not to nuke the Muslims falls away.
I like the one that says that if we nuke them, the Middle East will be uninhabitable for 300 years or some such. Also NONSENSE!
Las Vegas is very near to the nuclear test sites where the USA tested some 1030 nuclear weapons. It's safe to live there. In fact, people live and prosper in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I say, let 'em rip! The sooner the better. It worked on the Japanese. Remember, they too were homocidal kamikaze bombers wreaking havoc througout Asia. Two nukes, and now they're the nicest folks in all of Asia. Make great electronic goodies too! Oh, and cars...
Tancredo’s 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 today’s jihadists, and goes back to the Qur’an. Will men who glorify suicide bombing and praise their 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.
This portion of the article may state Representative Tancredo's reasoning well (though I doubt it), but it does not capture mine. In the event the Jihadis succeed in launching a WMD attack on the US I do not call for proportional retaliation as a means to deter them from attacking.
I expect the elimination of all Muslims, everywhere if that were to happen. That is a bloodthirsty and brutal position. This author would fall back on his sacred notion that such an act "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." Well, you can't have many high principles if you're dead. If the Jihadis succeed in launching a WMD attack on the west it will become clear, even to this idiot, that their aim is our death.
That provides a real simple binary solution set.
They must die before they can kill us. All of them.
All of them.
I reject MAD as a useless approach, then and now.
I embrace immediate and total annihilation of THEM if THEY attack us.
Everywhere.
Without question or remorse.
Forever.
We are now in the position we were before the recent series of child murders by serial child molesters. In those cases we have reached a new consensus, as a society, that such people do not deserve the normal protections afforded to others who have broken the law. They are monsters, outside of normal human norms who must be treated accordingly.
If the Jihadis get their way they will become non-humans, vermin to be exterminated. We will not be able to distinguish between "good Muslims" and "bad Muslims." Therefore they will all be wiped out. And the world will change again.
Forever.
So much for the "end of history."
Please note: I am not calling for attacks on Muslims, per se, now. I am stating my reading of simple fact and human nature. I do not consider myself a violent person, nor our culture an evil culture. I know, however, that if someone were to threaten my children with a violent death I would not stop until they were dead, courts be damned. Likewise our society will react swiftly and mercilessly if Osama gets his way. He will get his war of civilizations he so dearly wants. And his so called civilization will cease to exist on this planet.
What was the line in Raiders of The Lost Ark?
"Wiped clean by the wroth of God."
Look, if they nuke us, we nuke them. To hit one or two cities is swatting a hornet's nest.
After MAD every country standing will rush to the ME and steal their oil, treat Arabs like dogs, and seek revenge.
The United States won't be there to enforce "fairness". And the UN will be impotent. We'll be hurt, but we'll come back. They never will.
The muslims will not stop attacking us ever.
The only way, is to make them so miserable, they BEG US to stop.
With Japan, it took just two nukes. With the Muslims it will take at least 20 or so. But then watch the terrorism and extremism stop.
It worked for the Ismaeli Muslims, the Mennonites, the Japanese and even the friggin' Carthaginians, it will work on the Muslims too.
Otherwise, prepare for a radioactive New York and Washington.
Then its time for them to get out
How absolutely silly of me to imagine that the Saudi government, the Saudi people, and Saudi terrorists may get upset at an atomic deice detonated on Saudi soil. After all, why would Saudis in Riyadh get upset about a nuclear blast in Mecca?
That's as silly as believing that people in Oklahoma would get upset about a nuclear bomb going off in Canton, Ohio.
Beauseant!
The threat to nuke Mecca needs to be out there. If Tancredo is forced out then that threat is off the table. That is, perhaps, the only threat that might influence the Moslems to back off from their own nuke/bio/chem threat.
We could be very creative and find alternatives to nuking mecca. We could move the kaabah to the US and bury it under a pig farm.
We took out two countries but since then, things have been fairly quiet here on the home front.
yes , so true....
America often suffers from collective and progressive forgetfulness and myopia .
Let this not be the case in these trying times.
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