I understand that Rep. Tom Tancredo recently said that in the case of a WMD attack against the US by al Qaeda forces we should respond by nuking mecca. Since I have not been watching much TV or reading any blogs on my vacation, let me just respond to a couple of things Hugh Hewitt said on his show today and which I just did not have time to tell him on the air. He points us to this screed by one of my heroes, Lileks, on his blog today.

He also mentioned this post by DafyDD over at Captain's Quarters. It's really a silly post. Seriously. What his post really comes down to is he thinks the case for nuking Mecca is based on hatred of Muslims, what he calls "Moslem Derangement Syndrome."

I guess those that called for nuking Moscow in case they nuked us were really victims of "Russian Derangement Syndrome"??

He makes a good point that there are many who want to see Muslims dead. This is sick, just as he suggests. But trying to argue against the MAD strategy by trying to associate it with a bunch of racists is a straw man--something I see was noticed by Pierre LeGrand. It's like arguing that the war in Iraq is wrong because it is motivated by racism. Sure, there are some racists cheering for us in Iraq, but so what? Do not ascribe others sick motives to those wishing to deter the unthinkable from happening on our soil.

The second part of his post is equally silly. Nuking Mecca would not kill 1 billion Muslims. Last time I checked Mecca was little more than a medium sized tourist town. It would kill a lot of people. But so would taking out Moscow. Yes, very vary bad thing.

Nobody advocating the MAD strategy wishes to see any one dead. That's kinda the whole point of Mutual Assured Destruction. It deters.

The case for nuking Mecca, then, is very similar to the case for nuking Moscow. It is based on the notion that rational people would not dare start a nuclear Armageddon.

The only potential flaw in the case for nuking Mecca is the underlying premise of rationality. If Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda are rational, threatening to nuke Mecca would deter them from using WMD against the United States. If Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda are not rational, then the threat would have no deterrent effect.

That is a very debatable point, and one on which honest discussions are made.

As I pointed out in my original post on nuking mecca:

Let me make a couple of points first. One: I do not advocate using nuclear weapons. Two: I do not advocate killing Muslims or any other follower of any religion. Three: I do not imagine in any way possible the US government actually doing this--or even thinking it. Four: These are rudimentary thoughts. This post is used as a sounding board only. Much of what I say may be wrong and all is subject to revision. The purpose of this post is to start a conversation.

First point: Bill's major argument about deterring terrorists is well taken and mostly on the money. I think he's right, for the most part: you cannot deter these guys, only defeat them. And if incinerating Damascus were the only threat we could use to deter terrorists then certainly a MAD scheme would not work in this new Cold War we find ourselves in.

However, Mecca is not Damascus. It plays a central role in Muslim worship. Five times a day Muslims pray toward it. All Muslims who have the means are expected to make the Hajj--a pilgrimage to Mecca which revolves around the Kaaba stone. The Kaaba stone is really the reason Mecca is considered holy. Muslims believe the site was used for worship as far back as Adam and that the shrine around the stone was first placed there by Abraham (Ibrahim). There is a 12 mile zone around the stone that infidels are restricted from entering. It's that holy. No non-Muslims near it. In fact, without Mecca and the Kaaba stone, Islam would be very different.

Mecca, then, is quite unlike any other place in the world for Muslims. It is an entire city dedicated to Muslim worship. A place set apart. A holy place. It is an entire city that is thought to be the Temple of God.

Islamist terrorists also consider Mecca the holiest place in the world. It is central to their mode of worship. They face it when they pray. They too believe they must make the hajj. If we take them at their word, then the reason they commit terrorist acts is because they take their religious convictions so seriously. When they kill us, it is because they believe that this is what their God wants them to do.

So, ask yourself the question again: Can terrorists be deterred from using WMD against American targets?

Maybe they can. If Islamic extremists really love their religious institutions in the way that they claim they do, then pointing an ICBM at Mecca may not be the most irrational thing to do. They may not care if the rest of the world goes up in a nuclear mushroom cloud, as Bill points out, but Mecca is not the rest of the world. Would they really risk blowing up New York City if they believed the consequences of such an action would be a 30 kiloton nuclear explosion over the Kaaba stone? After all, the nuclear destruction of Mecca would end Islamic forms of worship as they presently exist.

If I might misquote Sting for a moment, "Is it such a crazy thing to do, if the Terrorists love their Mecca too?"

have numerous problems with the specifics of Atkins proposal--starting with the inhumanity of killing millions of innocent people because a handful of states support Islamic terrorists--but agree that MAD could be used to deter Islamic terrorism. It seems to me that a much more reasonable form of MAD would be to limit the target list to one city, Mecca. The terrorists really don't care if we nuke the capitals of Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Syria.

UPDATE: Rob at Say Anything responds here. Let me just make a couple of observations.

Is al Qaeda full of a bunch of madmen? No. No more than, say, the Kremlin was. The ideology of the Kremlin was mad, and the worldview shaped by that ideology was mad, but it was not irrational. It had a coherent internal logic. The MAD logic does not need sanity to work, what it needs is rationality.
Al Qaeda does not want to kill Americans because they hate us. They want to kill Americans and Brittons because we stand in the way of their political goals. Terrorism is a method used by them because they believe it is effective. They do terrorism because they believe it works in furthering their goals.

This is a sure sign of rationality if I have ever seen one.

As for Lileks' screed, the same thing could be said---and was said by the peace movement over and over again during the Cold War---about any MAD deterent. It's not the Russians fault that the Kremlin just nuked Washington! Why kill millions of innocent Russians for what the Communists are doing?!!

Further, members of al Qaeda do believe that they are part of a nation. The nation of Islam--the umma. One of the reasons the Islamist movement is so dangerous is because it challenges the nation-state system. Islamists reject national identity as currently constructed in favor of nationalism based on religion. It is a supra-state nationalism of a type that few in the West are even vaguely aware exists.

The Salafists', of which al Qaeda are only a small branch, demands are clear, concise, and a logical outgrowth of a mainstream interpretation of Islam in the same way that Bolshevism was the inevetable extension of Karl Marx. Our enemies are not only al Qaeda, but with all Muslims who wish to see the restoration of the Caliphate and the imposition of Islamic Law.

Since we cannot possibly police the entire Muslim world, maybe we should give them an incentive to police themselves? Threatening the destruction of nation-state regimes has given them some incentive to cooperate. Witnessing the Pakistani regime's 180 shows that such regimes can be induced to cooperate when threatened with annhialation.

But the recent attacks on London show that we need more than the cooperation of despotic regimes, we need the cooperation of the cultures that produce murderous suicide-bombers and who praise them in martyrdom. Very few people in Pakistan would be sad if Musharraf were to be removed, but I have a feeling quite a bit of them would be saddened to learn that one of the Five Pillars of Islam was removed.

We do not need the friendship of the Muslim people. Nations do not need friends at all. In fact, nations do not have friends. Instead, nations have allies. Allies are built on mutual interests.

Could the threat of destroying Mecca induce Islamists to see that it is in their own interests to give up the dream that is the Caliphate-state? Possibly. So far, I've heard few if any good arguments against the MAD-Mecca proposition. That does not mean that my position is right or that there aren't any good arguments against it, I just haven't heard any articulated very well.

Indeed, most of the arguments against MAD are so emotionally filled that there seems to be little coherence to them. I'm thinking of several good arguments right now. I'd tell you them, but that wouldn't be any fun. Would it?

Anyway, this is one of those positions that I'm not 100% sure of. A part of me screams that the MAD-Mecca policy could not work under present conditions of denial that we are in a much larger battle against not only extremist Islam but also the mainstream of Islam as well (granting that there is a sizable plurality of practicing liberal Muslims who are secularist in orientation). Unfortunately, the part of me that believes the MAD-Mecca policy could work is also the part of me that has constructed the most logical arguments.

So, go ahead and show me why I'm wrong. The part of me that's on your side is just waiting for the right argument to come along.

Posted by: Rusty at 08:37 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
Post contains 1857 words, total size 11 kb.

1 >>>"I guess those that called for nuking Moscow in case they nuked us were really victims of "Russian Derangement Syndrome"??" Exactly. Tancredo is right. Targeting Mecca for destruction isn't about killing muslims-- it's about saving New York. We don't want to nuke Mecca anymore than we wanted to nuke Moscow, but MADD kept both parties from doing anything stupid. There's only one thing islamic terrorists really care about and that's their holy sites. Targeting Mecca will guarantee New York's safety. This whole "moslem derangement syndrome" just shows how stupid and illogical these wannabe intellectual Libs are. We did the exact same thing to the Soviets, but these braniac Libs have already forgotten. They're OBSESSED with race.

Posted by: Carlos at July 21, 2005 08:44 PM (8e/V4)

2 Ok, back to lounging around the pool. If you're at the pool with either a double-double or a carnitas burrito at hand, I will nuke the nine-oh-nine.

Posted by: Leopold Stotch at July 21, 2005 09:10 PM (l9XSL)

3 Got news for you, an ICBM contains 10 warheads and each one is 300 Megatons a far cry from a single warhead of 30 Kilotons. And that information is all that is de-classified. For example, no one really knows how much of a punch a Trident missile fired from a US Boomer submarine can carry. I think we should put together some tests and film the thing, then broadcast it all over the Muslim world in their own language. They simply have no idea just how destructive a single warhead can be and we have thousands upon thousands of these warheads and if need be can produce as many as we want. Basically, there would a crater many miles across and perhaps as deep as 500 feet. There would be nothing left. When we stopped testing atomic weapons above ground, we continued testing for decades underground and I am sure the explosions were increased in size and magnitude. Apparently, we learned all we really needed to learn from those tests and super computers can now be effectively used to simulate atomic explosions. BTW, I heard that the US has either just started up warhead production or is planning to do so very soon. Smaller tactical nukes could prove to be rather useful to avoid killing millions in a single strike. But I don't see the point, every single time the enemy is amassed in a large enough force to be confronted by the Army or Marines, they swiftly get their butts kicked and they end up scurrying away like cockroaches. We still need to maintain MAD (mutually assured destruction) because of the Chinese and soon the North Koreans and perhaps the Iranians. Russia still has nukes and what happens if there is another collapse of government and a psychopath takes over Russia? It happened in Germany, Hitler rose up politically and simply eliminated the competition and took over.

Posted by: JBrickley at July 21, 2005 09:16 PM (OyXzs)

4 You do realise that Mecca has been destroyed before right? did it stop them then? The Koran contains a prophecy that identifies the destruction of Mecca in the final days, the days when they believe all will be converted or die. Yeah, radical Muslims believing America just started the prophecy, to kill all the none believers -- let's do that.

Posted by: dave at July 21, 2005 09:22 PM (DO6vD)

5 In his recent sequels to Enders Game (The Shadow of... Series) Orson Scott Card has as part of the background that in response to nuclear terrorism Mecca has been nuked. It seems that this did have the effect of mostly eliminating Islamic terrorism, but did not eliminate Islam - instead it was said that the blasts had vaporized the Kaaba, sending it's atoms into the atmosphere where they dispersed across the entire earth, spreading a blessing. Interestingly, he posits that in order for Islam to reform, the central tenet that must be challenged is that apostasy is punishable by death - that until there can be ex-muslims, all other changes are cosmetic.

Posted by: Eric J at July 21, 2005 09:42 PM (5PRM2)

6 Rusty: I have two commentaries on the issue of Mecca and nukes on my site as well as on Moonbat Central. I would not make Mecca's Grand Mosque the target per se, but there are a host of targets in Mecca that should be taken down with conventional weapons in the aftermath of an Islamist WMD strike on the USA. What we're witnessing here is a meltdown among pretend "conservatives" that are in reality moderates who yearn for MSM acceptance, salaries, and access to the "cool" crowd in Dc and NYC.

Posted by: Michael Calderon at July 21, 2005 10:03 PM (x6TjU)

7 You don't have to necessarily nuke Mecca to deface it. Just air-dropping a bunch of infidels, oh say a few thousand heavily armed infidels, should get the same effect. They would see it as poisoning the hallowed ground. That would sure get them in a snit. And Lileks certainly has a point here: But do we really want to incinerate Tehran? You'll probably find more people in Tehran who dearly love America than you'll find in Berkeley. How true!

Posted by: Oyster at July 22, 2005 06:49 AM (YudAC)

8 I think that the target of a MAD strategy is NOT Al Qeada. I may not work on them as planed, i.e. thay may actually welcome it. The target of a MAD strategy should be the root cause of the Islamofacist philosophy, namely The Magic Kingdom. A clear announcement that Saudi Arabia (including Meccah) would suffer the response would cause the Saudis to rethink that whole "incitment to terror" policy they have been following for many years.

Posted by: Sinner at July 22, 2005 08:17 AM (f3h4P)

9 Hmm. Here's an alternate retaliation strategy: Bomb the hell out of every military installation in Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and maybe Egypt. At the same time, explode a nuclear device somewhere in the middle of the Sahara. Message: We can do more damage with conventional weapons than you can do with nukes. And this is what we could do if we decided to use nukes.

Posted by: Eric J at July 22, 2005 08:28 AM (hrQvk)

10 MAD won't work because they aren't rational from a normal point of view. They probably think Mecca is untouchouble, magically protected by the holy mudmaster Alluhah himself. If they got over nukes no doubt they'd used them, but that time everybody in the US would be so pissed that nuking mecca and invading Saudi Arabia would make very much sence. Nobody would care what the Muslims would think, in fact they'd be persecuted indiscriminately. War would be proclaimed on Islam.

Posted by: Cognito at July 22, 2005 08:52 AM (a9tRx)

11 Thank you very much for the links Rusty and thanks for showing some much needed sense after all the hysterics. Pierre Legrand

Posted by: Pierre Legrand at July 22, 2005 12:57 PM (znRfy)

12 Islam is in the heart, it is preserved in the heart. It will stay there till the day a muslim dies. The day America or anyone else bombs Mecca is the day muslims go to war against them. You can't even handle one Bin Laden, how can you handle billions of muslims...

Posted by: Khan at August 05, 2005 06:59 PM (lujqP)

13 The argument is basically flawed. If you notice Muslims pray facing the Qibla, they dont actually see it! IF its nuked they'll still face the same qibla (its not like geographically the qibla location will change!). So nuking mecca will basically turn lots of muslims in america turn against america, and lots of moderate americans against the government. Oh not to mention, the communists chinese and other smaller countries. So lets see.. you dont get any oil, everyone's against everyone else. The entire economic system breaks down! There is a global war.. and well it'll be fought on ur streets.. one day ur kid goes out playing and someone kills him (coz ur army killed his kid!)... and the war will be in ur living room. I do not think its a geat idea to think what you are thinking. In fact it's based upon your own biased facts... did u go to college btw? to have any idea about world cultures, religions etc doesn't sound like it at all..

Posted by: MR E at October 20, 2005 07:12 AM (7YwPP)

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