Posted on 01/08/2007 7:49:15 PM PST by neverdem
DO WE need a nuclear deterrent to terrorism?
Nelson DeMille makes the suggestion in his new book, "Wild Fire," whose sales are spreading like, well, its title. It debuted at No. 2 on the Times bestseller list, No. 1 at the Wall Street Journal and No. 1 at Publishers Weekly.
It's another work of fiction by the man who already has more than 30 million books in print. But this one has people talking about a very real subject: How to stop Islamic extremists from attacking American cities.
"It sounds radical, but what
we're trying to do is keep Washington, D.C., and midtown Manhattan from being nuked. We're not trying to obliterate another part of world because we don't like them. But we have between 10-20,000 nuclear weapons, we're the most powerful nation on the planet, and, in the history of mankind, and we're being bogged down by guys with AK-47s and plastic explosives. We've got to rattle nuclear sabers. Not because we're bad guys, but because we're good guys," DeMille told me.
Remember MAD? Mutually assured destruction was the cold war policy that if either the United States or the Soviets launched a nuclear strike, the other would respond in kind. That secured the peace.
Wild Fire, the plan that the book is named for, is a version of MAD for the new millennium.
Like MAD, Wild Fire eliminates a president's need for moral choices. If there were to be a nuclear strike against an American city, it would prompt an automatic response. The weapons once trained on the USSR would thunder down on the Arab world.
"Wild Fire is a pro-active response. It is a gun to the heads of Islamic countries - a gun that will go off if they fail to keep their terrorist friends from going nuclear," DeMille writes.
"This is a great deterrent because nobody wants to end the world as we know it," he told me.
"In 'Wild Fire,' I pose that we have something very similar to MAD. Meaning, that if a nuclear bomb went off in America, the presumption of guilt against Islamic terrorists would be very strong; we wouldn't need the proof, we'd never have the proof.
"We would automatically launch against the nation of Islam, specifically against the cities of Mecca and Medina, and other places like Damascus where we don't care for the government, and this would be a deterrent against a nuclear bomb going off in America."
Under what circumstances?
"It would almost have to be nuclear. Chemical and biological attacks are scary and will kill a lot of people but don't rise to the level of nuclear. It's the 800,000-pound gorilla that would obliterate midtown Manhattan or Washington, D.C., even a small suitcase nuke.
"In the book, I mention that there are 67 Soviet suitcase nukes missing from Soviet arsenals... What happened to them, we don't know. Maybe it was just bad record-keeping by the Soviets."
In the book, DeMille explores the possibility that suitcase nukes end up in hands of Islamic terrorists, and if they do, why wouldn't they use them? Well, maybe because Wild Fire threatens to blow up their holy shrines.
"Even the most radical Islamic terrorist would not want to see the revered holy city of Medina go up. It would be like losing the Vatican in Rome," he told me.
As he says in his author's note, "As for the secret government plan called Wild Fire, this is based on some information I've come across, mostly online, and can be taken as rumor, fact, pure fiction, or some blend thereof. I personally believe that some variation of Wild Fire (by another code name) actually exists, and if it doesn't, it should."
I told him that sounds like the stuff of his alter ego, former NYPD detective John Corey.
"I was there on 9/11. Every New Yorker was there in a sense. My suburban town lost 11 people, and I was in Manhattan the first time, in February of 1993, when the towers were attacked.
"As a citizen of this country and the world, we are trying to keep it from happening, and the only way is to say, 'If it happens, we will retaliate in a nuclear way.' What else can we do, say we will launch an investigation and find out who blew up midtown Manhattan?
"That is a game we have played for too long. We never played that with the Russians, why play the same silly game with Islamic terrorists? Some say they don't have a country, but that is not true, they know where their homeland is and so do we."
Michael Smerconish can be heard weekdays 5:30-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Contact him via the Web at www.mastalk.com.
Wrong. I've seen ALOHA simulations which show that a bio attack could have several times more casualties than a small nuke would as well as a larger hot zone.
L
Not in my book. Islamic countries should be obliterated because they are islamic. Period.
Islam is the # 1 threat to our freedom.
Yep. A bio attack could cause hundreds of times the deaths of a nuke attack.
And five years later the Dems would be asking us to cut and run.
Wow at least someone is thinking... When we go back on Defense we are going to get smacked good next time... Is America that ignorant to believe that every enemy of ours didn't take notice of what UBL was able to accomplish on 911. 50-60k dead on the next one that is my prediction.. America may really wake up then... but who knows maybe we really have become neutered.
to the world's freedom...them sob's are everywhere
Like ducks in an arcade. But we haven't paid our dime yet..
'MAD' only works when our adversary is at least relatively sane (as in the case with the Soviet Union). Islamists are anything but sane, obviously.
That said, I agree with the author's contention that Mecca, Medina, and a few other select sites in the Islamic world should be immediately vaporized if the U.S. is ever hit with Islamist nukes.
at least 7 times I added in a post that soon a re-loader will be our best friends.Second will be those able to use one and third will be like minded neighbors.
It seems like more and more people are coming to my "radical" conclusion, along with others here sometimes dismissed as yahoos.
Iran has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Isreal and the U.S. I have no doubt he would sell technology to committed terrorists who would willingly set off diry bomb nukes in various U.S. cities.
If you take Iran at their word, they deserve either the biggest aerial bombing in the history of war, or a bunch of well placed tactical nukes.
If we dismiss him as a wacky leader, we are playing Russian Roulette, as a matter of fact those crazy Russians are siding with Islam more and more, this would be a nice wake up call to them too. If they keep calling us a paper tiger and we keep acting like a paper tiger, they will keep treating us like a paper tiger, and we will be a paper tiger.
I'm all for nuking the middle east!
I'm sick and tired of these half assed wars in which we ask our troops to go in and fight....but not really.
I think it is the worst thing we can do , to declare a war and then not let our troops really show what they can do. I think this is THE reason why the world views us as weak and willing to take all their crap. Korea, vietnam, and both middle eastern wars only make us look stupid and weak.
WWII is the last time america and its fighting men looked like real winners to the world and that is because they were allowed and encouraged to kill everything that moved! whatever it took to get the frickin job done!
The Muslim terrorists have to come to believe that we're as bizarre and unstable as they are to have a deterrent effect. A good start would be an enormous response to a run-of-the-mill attack in the Iraqi theater. Shock & awe should be an understatement. If terrorists unwisely choose to attack our country, pick cities for bombing based on a "lottery" approach. If the ticket is drawn, residents are given forty-eight hours to vacate and then the city is nuked.
The next occasion they'll only be given twenty-four hours. If they still don't get the point, they'll only be given twelve hours notice before the third historic city is vaporized. They'll eventually get a clue.
~ Blue Jays ~
A nuke on Tehran may get people mad.... but the world would never be the same (for the better!)
Works for me.
It would be like testing the old theory about whether cockroaches can survive a nuclear blast.
I've been banned from the Sean Hannity forum for even suggesting Islam is not peaceful. THAT SCARES THE HELL OUT OF ME.
Or don't want to die. Islamists want to die - that's why it won't work with them.
I've been banned from the Sean Hannity forum for even suggesting Islam is not peaceful. THAT SCARES THE HELL OUT OF ME.
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I wonder if Hannity knows who's moderating his forum.
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