You said -- "However, I'm not interested in deterrence, if this were to happen. This is a declaration of principle to the whole world so that they will understand what we do when we do it, under those specific set of circumstances. I'm not arguing for "deterring" anything after they've used nukes. I'm eliminating all possibility of anyone from there ever having the capability of setting it up again. If they're all dead, innocent and guilty, then there's no one left to make it happen."
Well, I've advocated all along a "war on Islam" -- in order to totally eliminate it from the world and make it illegal everywhere you find it. If we can't do that -- then we are going to be cursed with Islamic terrorist until "Kingdom come". And that won't be too much longer anyway...
Regards,
Star Traveler
I maintain that the Bush/Powell/Rice foreign policy doctrine post 911 has been to try to find a way to defeat the Jihadists without declaring war on Islam.
I believe that they have failed.
I believe that they have failed because John Kerry and Dan Rather and Chirac and Putin and the UN and a million others who hate America and western civilization as we understand it (meaning "not socialism") would rather ally with Bin Laden than with George Bush, under any circumstances.
And there are consequences to that sort of failure. And the logical outcome is all out war. They are already waging it against us. As this thread makes clear there are those among us who are not willing to do so against them, declaration or not.
In the age of nukes, once nukes are used, all out war is all out war. No quarter. No civilians cordoned off from harm. No prisoners or Supreme Court hearings over rights of combatants. They've got no rights if they're dead. If we don't kill them then we're dead. Simple, binary equation.
Well, I've advocated all along a "war on Islam" -- in order to totally eliminate it from the world and make it illegal everywhere you find it. If we can't do that -- then we are going to be cursed with Islamic terrorist until "Kingdom come". And that won't be too much longer anyway...
Ah, the perfect segway into the prescient mind of a precocious 24 year old Winston Churchill commenting on Islam in his 1899 master work, The River War.
Take it away, Winston
“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity.
The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property, either as a child, a wife, or a concubine, must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceasedto be a great power among men. Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities – but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.”
-Sir Winston Churchill (The River War, first edition, Vol. II, pages248-50 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1899).