IS Tom Tancredo the biggest Moron in Washington?

[Shi Huangdi]

Tancredo was talking about a situation in which AQ had nukes inside of our borders, in which case it would be incumbent to threaten anything neccesary to deter them.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
[q=Ninot]How does nuking a U.S. city make any sense?[/q]

It doesn't... are you saying that it'd be ok to respond to nonsense with nonsense?

Besides, I'm sure the terrorists would LOOOOOVE it if we nuked Mecca and Medina. They'd make their recruiting goals for the next 10 years in the week after the bombing.

More to the point it (namely the mere threat) reinforces the crusader meme of Bin Laden and Co. and squarely enhances the current today recruiting power of terrorists by pitting US vs. Islam in total.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I stated numerous times that I dont hold this stance, i just see why they think that.

I don't see how anyone could see why they think that way. I mean it's insanity.

How do you propose the U.S. respond to millions dead?

Not by nuking the Holiest sites in Islam FFS! I hope our leaders will be a bit more balanced!

[Ninot]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

How do you propose the U.S. respond to millions dead?

Not by nuking the Holiest sites in Islam FFS! I hope our leaders will be a bit more balanced!

Ok, so you wouldn't nuke holy cities. But if you are the President of the United States of America, and New York is nuked and millions are dead, what DO you do?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Ninot
Ok, so you wouldn't nuke holy cities. But if you are the President of the United States of America, and New York is nuked and millions are dead, what DO you do?

You go after the people RESPONSIBLE. Not just send nukes at random people for no reason! I wouldn't be sending nukes anywhere. Not unless we find Bin Laden (or Al Zarquai or whoever) in a bunker somewhere.

[Ninot]

See, my point is... even with the current U.S. government, there is not a record of solely going after the parties responsible. If there were, there wouldnt be troops in Iraq.

If the U.S. public will elect and re-elect a government that uses Iraq as a battleground for terrorism, I dont think its beyond them to elect a government that will be nuke-happy.

I agree with you tho, it would be insanity.

[Imran Siddiqui]

I dont think its beyond them to elect a government that will be nuke-happy.

I think they'd be smarter than that. The people who re-elected Bush DO think that Iraq was responsible for backing terrorists. No one would think Mecca and Medina is where the people who nuke an American city would be.

[Ramo]

Tancredo was talking about a situation in which AQ had nukes inside of our borders, in which case it would be incumbent to threaten anything neccesary to deter them.

Here's what Tancredo said:

Campbell: Worst case scenario, if they do have these nukes inside the borders and they were to use something like that — what would our response be?

Tancredo: What would be the response? You know, there are things that you could threaten to do before something like that happens and then you may have to do afterwards that are quite draconian.

Campbell: Such as...

Tancredo: 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, um, you know, you could take out their holy sites . . .

Campbell: You're talking about bombing Mecca.

Tancredo: Yeah. What if you said — what if you said that we recognize that this is the ultimate threat to the United States — therefore this is the ultimate threat, this is the ultimate response.

I mean, I don't know, I'm just throwing out there some ideas because it seems to me . . . at that point in time you would be talking about taking the most draconian measures you could possibly imagine and because other than that all you could do is once again tighten up internally.

Thus it's clear that he didn't mean an empty threat, but that he would in response, engage in what can only described as a monumentally idiotic act of mass-murder.

I don't know how this is supposed to be a deterrence, anyways, since AQ has made it clear that it isn't taking any special care to protect Muslim lives. We'd be purging Mecca of Saudis for them.

[Shi Huangdi]

So during the Cold War, should the USA have refused to have an official policy of using nuclear weapons on the USSR if they used them on us, due to the fact that we would have been killing innocent people as well as those responsible for making the decision to launch?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
So during the Cold War, should the USA have refused to have an official policy of using nuclear weapons on the USSR if they used them on us, due to the fact that we would have been killing innocent people as well as those responsible for making the decision to launch?

Because that is clearly what I was saying. Use your mind, Shi. The USSR, having control of the country, is a far different beast from Al Queda who isn't in control in any country, especially not Saudi Arabia.

[Ramo]

That question is irrelevent, since AQ are not state actors, and do not control Mecca or Medina.

[DanS]

Anyway, with regard to the OP, we have morons by the bushelfull in Washington, so I doubt this Tom Tancredo fellow -- whoever he is -- is the biggest moron.

[Ninot]

Originally posted by Ramo
That question is irrelevent, since AQ are not state actors, and do not control Mecca or Medina.

But in the same way, common folk living in St. Petersburg would not be the ruling class of a Soviet Era Russia. Why would nuking them be a propper response to a U.S.S.R. attack?

It wouldnt be really. The propper response would be to overthrow the Communist regime. But if thats not possible (which at the time I suppose it wasnt), then they had the M.A.D. policy.

[Ramo]

Anyway, with regard to the OP, we have morons by the bushelfull in Washington, so I doubt this Tom Tancredo fellow -- whoever he is -- is the biggest moron.

True, there is the whole Defense Dept. after all.

[Shi Huangdi]

To Deter you don't need to destroy something they control. If someone threatened to kill my family if I did something, I would be dettered from doing it because my family is of value to me.

The USSR was of value to the USSR leadership because their control of the country was the key to their power. Mecca and the Kaba are things presumably of great value to them.

There could be non-violent ways of detterance as well, perhaps convincing the Israelis to demolish the Dome of the Rock.