Our very own representative TomTancredo (R-CO) has outlined conditions under which he would retaliate against the Muslim shrines of Mecca and Medina. A terrorist nuclear explosion in the US would be grounds for President Tancredo to authorize release of nuclear weapons against these two Holy Sites.

Now, it stands to reason that if a nuclear explosion occurs in the US, the president has to do something. According to Iowapolitics.com, Tancredo said

“If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina,” the GOP presidential candidate said. “That is the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they would otherwise do. If I am wrong fine, tell me, and I would be happy to do something else. But you had better find a deterrent or you will find an attack. There is no other way around it. There have to be negative consequences for the actions they take. That’s the most negative I can think of.”  

To Tancredo’s credit he did come up with an actual idea – on his own – that if we get nuked by terrorists, we should do something.  The problem with his solution of nuking Muslim shrines is that it would be a localized attack on a delocalized problem. Muslim antipathy towards the US is a political viewpoint; it is a philosophy that justifies their indulgence in one of mankinds most sensuous of opiate pleasures. 

That pleasure is the near universal impulse to throw oneself down prostrate and grovel before the deity.  Muslims of a certain bent (not all of them, mind you) have refined the notion of extreme groveling through the use of explosives. They enthusiastically celebrate this peculiar form of reverence with the pious formalism of martyrdom. For millions of young angry men with no viable economic future, it has an irresistable appeal.

Ascetic leaders like bin Laden are not motivated by the physical plane. Bin Laden is very much a charismatic hero figure who has cast off attachment to the material world. This is a kind of archetype. To the satisfaction of his followers, he lives in caves and walks the covetless path. Bin Laden’s goal is an Islamic Caliphate. A nuclear retalliation against any Muslim state, much less a shrine, will polarize many millions to bin Laden’s cause of Muslim hegemony for centuries to come.   

There is some need deep within the human brain to assume an inferior posture before the deity. It cuts across all societies and religions.  It is seems somehow discordant that the diety who set the spin of galaxies and the organization of DNA in motion curiously requires that humans proclaim their regret for those very attributes that make them simply human.  It is a most peculiar and, I think, biological, proclivity.

It seems to me that the optimal response to an Islamic terrorist nuclear attack on the US can only be this- No nuclear response in kind.  We absorb it and we express our regret that this heinous act was perpetrated on us.  It would be our nuclear restraint that would cause the terrorist movement to stand out before the world as the focus of savagery.

Realistically, could a US president actually do this? It seems doubtful.  The pressure on a sitting president to release a nuclear weapon in response to nuclear attack at home would be enormous.  Our restraint and the cessation of one-sided middle eastern policies would do more to undermine bin Laden and his kind than any fancy weapons system or occupation force. It would be the one weapon that they could not counter.  Consider the examples of Christ, Ghandi, and King.

The extinction of Muslim extremism must come from internal collapse. Muslims themselves must conclude that vile and murderous behaviour is unacceptable and that the religious justification for murder is a misread of their covenant with the deity.  

Extremists amplify their effect with chemical energy- they use explosives.  A small number of terrorists become Robin Hood characters and receive encouragement and recruits from their more passive background of countrymen. You can’t destroy this with airpower and mobile infantry. 

A nuclear retalliation by the US would vitrify a few sandy locations, but it would also politically unify Muslims behind the extremist cause, irrespective of the damage done to the US in the first place. We cannot win by nuclear retalliation. We only facilitate further use of nuclear force.  The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is not valid in the conflict with suicidal terrorists. MAD is a doctrine that is only valid between nation states with armies and the desire to survive.

All of this is not to say that we wouldn’t be pursuing the perpetrators.  But nuclear demolition of Mecca would be counterproductive. Terrorism is a kind of franchise operation.  How do you nuke the 50 or 5000 scattered, clandestine operatives who did the deed? It’s a bug hunt. The destruction of Mecca would only validate core suspicions about us- that we are metaphysically corrupt and maybe bin Laden was right.

A state can’t successfully wage a military shooting war against an idea promulgated by clandestine operators with little to lose. But police investigation over 20 years in concert with intelligent and fair international policies could render the bin Laden characters obsolete.