Almost a week ago Rep. Tom Tancredo talked about bombing Mecca if several US citys were nuked.
"Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites," Tancredo answered.
"You're talking about bombing Mecca," Campbell said.
"Yeah," Tancredo responded.
His office has backtracked somewhat.
Instapundit only made one short comment. Some blogs thought the comment was stupid, some were glad that at least one congressman had a pair of nads.
I'm still not sure, but I tend more towards the "pair of nads" side. On the other hand, at least one site has made the argument that Al Queda has destroyed some of Islam's holy sites, so they might be happy to sacrifice Mecca in order to have more Muslims against the US. In which case, having a "nuke Mecca" MAD kind of plan would make us less safe, not more.
The I came across a post today on Cold Fury that puts it together:
...I think the failure of (the invisible “moderate”) Muslims to disassociate with and turn out the radicals in their midst means that they wish to enjoy the fruits of any jihadist victory, while being spared the consequences of defeat. And since the jihadists, at least, consider this a holy war, well then, we should respond in kind.
I don't think we should have a specific policy of "We will nuke Mecca if X number of our people are killed in a terrorist attack," but no responses should be unthinkable.
Posted by Owlish at July 21, 2005 10:03 AM | TrackBackI don't think we should have a specific policy of "We will nuke Mecca if X number of our people are killed in a terrorist attack," but no responses should be unthinkable.
Spot on.
Posted by: B.C. at July 23, 2005 09:26 PM