Nuking Mecca??

Last Monday (July 19) A Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo told radio show host, Pat Campbell of WFLA that the U.S. should "take out" Islamic holy sites if Muslim fundamentalist terrorists attacked the country with nuclear weapons.

Campbell said: "You're talking about bombing Mecca,"

"Yeah," Tancredo responded.

There has been a lot of discussion about this all over the blogosphere. Some people are mad a hell at Tancredo for being an idiot. Others are supporting him, reasoning that turn about is fair play.

Now I've been trying put my thoughts on this into words. I remember how mad I was on 9-11. My transition from "Oh My God" to "Some Bastards Gonna Pay For This" took about one hour.

So how do we respond to a nuke attack. With Nukes? But who do we nuke?

I think the only thing more useless than the threat to nuke Mecca would be the act of nuking Mecca.

Nukes were a deterent against centralized governements where the the "head of the snake" could be chopped off with one huge blast. But killing extremist Islamics with a nuke would be like trying to bring down the internet by blowing up a single router.

While I'm no expert on global politics, and I don't pretend to know how a foreign country will respond in any situation I can play the what if game....

So what should we do if one or more American cities get nuked?

Since I maintain that nuking Mecca would be futile. Then instead of destroying Mecca we don't we just take control of it and charge admission.

Ideally we would have warned certain nations hostile to the US about our intentions if we are nuked. Then when the nuke goes off in the USA we act. The governments of ALL hostile Islamic nations (Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc) would be Afghanistaned. Their Royal, Religious, or Dictitorial Governments would be forceably overthrown and eventaully replaced with a democratically elected constitutional government. But carrying the Afghanistan model a step farther we also overthrow the religous heirarchy. Any Iman, Cleric or teacher who has openly preached or advocated jihad would be replaced with a known moderate Muslim cleric. Even if we have to import American born moderate Clerics.

As long as they stay peaceful the citizens of these nations would be allowed to continue in their daily lives. No mosques would be closed, they would just have moderte clerics preaching in them. Mecca would be open and intact. Any media outlet that has opening supported Jihad would have it's leadership removed and replaced with moderate Muslim leadership.

Long term, the only weapon that can finally end this radical islamic jihad is freedom and control by moderate Muslims. Afghanistan was the first step and Iraq the second step to the spread of Democracy and Freedom in the middle east. If we are nuked we stop doing this step by step. We accelerate the program and stop worrying about upsetting political heirarchys of the other Islamic Nations. We institute freedom immidiately. Freedom from government oppression and freedom from radical islamic teachings. Sure they will have to put up with our military for a while, but eventually they will leave.

We have to let our enemies know that if they resort to the extreme methods of a nuke attack that our response will be just as extreme. We have replaced the governments in Iraq and Afghanistan with democratic governements. But we have left their religious leaders and their media outlets alone. That won't be the case if the nuke goes off.

There now you know why I'm not in charge and why they don't let me make national policy decisions.