Saturday, August 04, 2007

Tom Tancredo and the Mecca Option

Little known Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo kicked up a bit of a firestorm recently when he told a small crowd of people in an Iowan restaurant that taking out the Islamic holy sites of Mecca and Medina should be an option if Islamic terrorists set off a nuclear bomb in the United States. He had floated the same idea a couple of years ago when he was a guest on a talk radio program.

Evidently, Tancredo seems to believe that the mere suggestion that Mecca and Medina could be destroyed in a retaliatory attack will serve as a deterrent to terrorists from engaging in such an attack. Personally, I think that Tancredo has lost all sense of reality.

The message that Osama bin Laden has repeatedly preached to the people of the Muslim world is that the United States is at war with Islam. If al-Qaida or some other Islamist terror group were to set off a nuclear bomb or other device to cause a mass casualty incident in the United States, a retaliatory strike on Mecca and Medina would play right into their hands.

If Islam's holiest sites disappeared under a couple of mushroom clouds, does anybody really believe that hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world will meekly abandoned their faith because Allah did not stop the attack? I believe the more likely response is that the world will experience a paroxysm of violence like it has never experienced before. Westerners in Muslim countries will be hunted down and killed by angry mobs. European cities with large Muslim populations will be engulfed by riots on a scale that would dwarf the riots that swept Paris almost two years ago. The Arab oil states would cut off their oil supply and sabotage their oil sites to prevent their take over by American military forces.

Of course, not everybody shares my opinion of Tancredo's remarks. LaShawn Barber, the African-American version of Michelle Malkin, supports Tancredo "100 percent". The majority of the comments to her post are from her troglodyte fans in agreement with her and Tancredo. They remind me of a student I had when I was a student teacher at West Hempstead High School back in 1992. His solution to everything was "why can't we just bomb them?"

It seems lost on many people that many problems do not have quick solutions. Unfortunately, we live in an era where a segment of the world's Muslim population embraces an interpretation of their religion that sanctions terrorist attacks on civilian populations. They are like a cancer that must be rooted out. It will be a problem that will be with us for many years, perhaps decades, and it will only end when the message and tactics of fiends like Osama bin Laden are decisively rejected by Muslims. How we get to that point is a different topic.

11 comments:

Krystalline Apostate said...

Yaggh! Tancredo is psychotic.
Like we need to add more extremists to the list of folks who'd like to eradicate us.
If a Roman Catholic cadre of terrorists nuke us, do we get to turn the Vatican into a glass ashtray?
This is where mad dog patriotism gets us. A religion is NOT a country.
Besides which, all the folks that fall under the mushroom umbrella get declared martyrs.
Talk about putting out a fire w/gasoline.
Fucktards.

bedrocktruth said...

Politicians on the fringe of things feel they need to say outrageous things to get attention, and some press.

I remember in the 50's when one candidate-last name Savage, first name Carl I believe-was campaigning in Georgia on a platform of striking Moscow first in a nuclear deterrent war with Russia,

People like that marginalize themselves early on in the process, but they always pick up some rabid supporters to spend some bucks and plaster their campaign posters all over their neighborhoods.

Then they pass on into political oblivion.

Stardust said...

Yes, Tancredo is indeed psychotic and good thing he doesn't have a snowball's chance in a fiery furnace of becoming president. How these kooks get this far in government is beyond me.

To attack Mecca and Medina would bring about such retaliation never seen or imagined.

Both Xian and Muslim extremists would probably welcome such a thing to happen in order to bring about the beginning of the end-of-times that they are eagerly waiting and praying for.

Tommykey said...

If memory serves, Tancredo was one of the three Republican presidential candidates at that debate who raised their hands to indicate they did not believe in the theory of evolution. Tancredo was the last of the three to raise his hand, almost as if he wanted to make sure he wouldn't be the only one.

The problem with Tancredo's remarks, even though he is a fringe candidate, is that he is seen as saying what many others are thinking. And even though he hasn't a chance at getting the Republican nomination, as an elected member of the House of Representatives, he is a government official. The radical Islamists are really going to try to get this broadcast throughout the Middle East.

bedrocktruth said...

Tommy how do you post a link on your blog format?

Thanks...

Trissa + Joel said...

I agree that Tancredo is crazy; however, I think his views are not all that removed from those of Rudy Giuliani, who is not a fringe candidate. Giuliani is running his campaign on fear tactics, making it clear that he believes that the "war on terror" is the most important thing facing the U.S. In fact all of the individuals who are running in the presidential primaries (democrat and republican) have stated that if another attack occurred on American soil they would retaliate quickly. The only one who said that he would first make sure appropriate emergency services were in place was Obama.

Tommykey said...

Bedrock, I don't know how to post links in the comments forum here either. I bet Blubonnet would know though! ;-)

Hey Trissa! Thanks for stopping by again. Not too long now before the wedding day, right?

Right now, my prediction is that Mitt Romney will get the nomination. Rudy has too many skeletons in his closet. And while Evangelicals may bristle at Romney's Mormonism, he does appeal to some voters as a guy who knows how to get things done.

vjack said...

Great, another Republican itching to nuke somebody. This end-times theology of theirs is going to be the death of us all.

Anonymous said...

That's just plain moronic.

Doesn't he realize that if he does that, he'd have to be prepared to kill every man, woman and child in every Islamic country, and every Muslim in every western country to boot.

Actually, if Shrub was running for President today, that is exactly what I would expect him to say. It shows a certain cessation of brain activity. The impulse to say the right thing starts out somewhere in the cerebral cortex, then simply stops. Probably distracted by the donuts.

bedrocktruth said...

Why don't you invite blu over here Tommy?

I really miss her "One couldn't fly over the Cuckoo's Nest" approach to political dialogue.

Of course John P is trying hard to fill the gap.

Tommykey said...

I will pass on that Bedrock.

Let her keep her 9/11 was an inside job hysterics someplace else.