Jihad Watch board vice president, Hugh Fitzgerald, has published an important contribution about how the U.S. can assist the Islamic nations in coming to reality about Jihadist terrorism, i.e., by outlining the cost to them. He took off from Congressman Tancredo's suggestion that if the US is nuked by Al Qaeda, we should nuke Mecca. Fitzgerald suggests that threatening to obliterate Mecca might be, in the short run, counter-productive (Muslims would be angry with us!!), but we should instead lay out a series of escalating sanctions to bring the Islamic states to reality.
This is not an idle exercise. Remember that Iran is on the verge of obtaining atom bombs. High officials in Iran have said directly and explicitly that destroying Israel with a few nukes would be worth the cost to Iran. Israel and half the world's Jews would be exterminated with just two bombs. Iran would take a few bombs, too, in Israel's response, but Iran would survive and Israel would not. This message is repeated in one form or another in hundreds of mosques every week by insane Imams who wish to bring a second holocaust to the Jews.
How do we deal with such ideological fantasy and military nonsense? With a version of MAD--the same old MAD that held Stalin and his successors at bay. Bertrand Russell hated the idea; most peace Utopians of the Cold War hated the idea; most communists hated the idea, too, of course. But it worked. Attack us and you will be destroyed. Most of your population, all of your cities, and the existence of your state will be destroyed; even if it is the last act of the last breath we breathe. So we should tell Iran, all of your population will die either in blast or in radiation sickness; the sand of your rocky landscape will be turned to glass; every teeming city, every sacred shrine, every military installation will be vaporized. You shall cease to exist should you lob one god-damned nuke at Israel or the United States. And we should demonstrate that we mean it; guess how?
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Baldilocks was blogging this issue at the same time as I. Xlrq was appalled. Selected Pete thought Tancredo stupid. Captain's Quarters thinks of the issue narrowly in terms of terrorism and therefore bombing Mecca would be overkill. Tan Horizons thinks Tancredo's comment misdirected,too. CalBlog thinks Tancredo has stirred up an unnecessary controversy.
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Hugh Hewitt dismisses the notion that MAD is an appropriate policy to recall here. I disagree, though more focused on the issue of Iran. On the general issue of Islamic calls for war on Zionism, Jews, the United States, the West, and so on, I think Hewitt's view on this matter has been corrupted by the ideology of multiculturalism. International Communism was also an ideology that declared war on the United States. MAD was an appropriate general response, as an umbrella underneath which specific military actions and other interventions could be undertaken in various countries under threat of Communist inspired-Soviet allied revolutionaries or in the various proxy wars between the US and the Soviet Union (such as the Arab invasions of Israel). To the nuclear threat of Iran, and to the possible threat of a country like Pakistan, should the government of President Musharraf fall and radical Muslims then control the nuclear weaponry of the country, MAD is a realistic option.
It does not insult moderate Muslims who are US citizens to threaten MAD destruction of a Muslim nation dedicated to our destruction any more than it insulted progressive socialists in the United States to threaten MAD destruction of the revolutionary international Communists controlled by the Soviet Union.
See also, Donald Sensing, One Hand Clapping; updated, here.
I do not think the issue of a revised US foreign policy in the Middle East, due to Iranian possession of a nuclear bomb, can be ignored. And, short of forced disarmament of Iran, only MAD would have any possibility of preventing Egypt and Syria from getting nuclear weapons to balance the Persian Shiite madmen of Tehran, if Egypt and Syria are not already working on such weapons.
And what about Saudi Arabia? The main reason not to bomb Mecca, is that Mecca is in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is under our protection, in a large sense. If we were to bomb it, the regime would disintegrate under pressure from Islam in general, because it had failed to protect the holiest of Islamic shrines. But there is a connection here with Iran. If Iran gets the bomb, it's radical regime might well be interested in threatening Saudi Arabia. If we do not provide absolute guarantees of protection to Saudi Arabia in that situation, Saudi Arabia would be forced to militarize and develop its own bomb. It would cease to be an American ally. (I am not forgetting that Saudi citizens were on the 9/11 planes or that Saudi citizens are committing suicide/homicide in Iraq as bombers. These are not the actions directly of the Saudi government.) What form could guarantees to Saudi Arabia take? MAD is about the only one that would be convincing.
Finally, what shall we do to prevent destruction of Israel and half of the world's remaining Jews in a nuclear holocaust? Nothing short of threatening nuclear annihilation for Iran would be an adequate warning. This is the larger issue that Pancredo's remarks address, for surely Israel will receive a nuclear bomb from terrorists or from a terror regime before the US does.
(Revised, 7/18/05; 7/19/05.)
Updated. August 3, 2007. Congress Tancredo (R Colorado) has more to say on this subject, recommending that the US establish as a matter of policy that a nuclear bombing in the US would lead to the US nuking an Islamic shrine.
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