Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Tancredo

Rep. Tancredo is in the news again for his comments about how we should apply the doctrine of MAD to the Muslim holy city of Mecca if the United States is ever attacked by Islamic extremists armed with a nuclear weapon. For those of you that don't know, MAD stands for Mutually Assured Destruction. It's a policy of deterrence put into place during the Cold War, the premise being that since everyone has enough nukes to blow the world apart many times over, war is impossible because no one wants to die that bad. Obviously, this premise falls up short when dealing with Islamists. They practice suicide bombing as a tactic, ergo they cannot be that afraid of death. So deterrence doesn't work with them. Even if it did, who is to say that they would really be discouraged by the destruction of Mecca? They already pervert many of the teachings of Islam, often making up the rules as they go, as in the rulings dealing with the killing of Muslims. After the rise of civilian deaths in suicide attacks, a ruling was issued by an extremist Imam decreeing that it was okay to kill Muslims, an 180 degree change from what their policy had been previously.

And of course, the most important reason why this is a horrible idea: we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with Islamists, those who wish to pervert a religion by dragging it into the 9th Century, Wahhabi style. An equivalent would be Fred Phelps gaining control of a small but well known faction of a Christian Church, say, the Catholic faith. This faction then launches a biological attack on a major American city because it has become morally degenerate, giving in to homosexuals. Would we be justified in attacking the Vatican based on the actions of a miniscule amount of Catholics?

All Tancredo's irresponsible talk does is provide further "proof" that the "Crusaders are waging war against the valiant mudjahadeen for control of the Holy Land."

H/T: Brad