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Let's bomb Mecca

Bomb Mecca and kill all of the innocent people who have come to pray? Would anyone dream of bombing Vatican City or the Wailing Wall? Reading that made me sick to my stomach. What is wrong with this guy?

ETA People are taking this seriously?! We're actually debating this?! I've never been so ashamed to be an American. You people have no humanity.
 
The Vatican has nuclear capabilities now?

It is fascinating to see how the believer mindset works.

Don't bother to read what has actually been said, or the context in which it was said...
Somebody, somewhere, said something bad about something holy, and now they and everyone like them must be responsible for an imaginary slight....
:rolleyes:
 
crimresearch said:
The Vatican has nuclear capabilities now?
Click to expand...
Muslim extremists blow up a nuclear device - Blow up Mecca
Christian extremists blow up a nuclear device - Blow up the Vatican

Hey, why not do it during the Hadj (sp?) to maximise the number of innocent victims ?
 
The Don said:
Muslim extremists blow up a nuclear device - Blow up Mecca
Christian extremists blow up a nuclear device - Blow up the Vatican

Hey, why not do it during the Hadj (sp?) to maximise the number of innocent victims ?
Click to expand...

And you have the link attributing that exact quote to Tancredo? Or someone else?

Or was that just another example of fundy logic?
 
Hugh Hewitt on Congressman Tancredo's remarks:
Let me be blunt: There is no strategic value to bombing Mecca even after a devastating attack on the U.S. In fact, such an action would be a strategic blunder without historical parallel, except perhaps Hitler's attack on Stalin. Anyone defending Tancredo's remarks has got to make a case for why such a bombing would be effective.Take down the Syrian regime? You bet. Replace the House of Saud? Fine. Bomb every nuclear facility in Tehran? Absolutely. The US would respond to a savage attack with fury --but purposeful fury. Bombing Mecca would be the opposite of purposeful fury...

I want to be very clear on this. No responsible American can endorse the idea that the U.S. is in a war with Islam. That is repugnant and wrong, and bloggers and writers and would-be bloggers and writers have to chose sides on this, especially if you are a center-right blogger. The idea that all of Islam is the problem is a fringe opinion. It cannot be welcomed into mainstream thought because it is factually wrong. If Tancredo's blunder does not offend you, then you do not understand the GWOT... We are not in a war with devout Muslims. We are in a war with Muslims who think that their faith compels them to kill non-believers and the nations that support those extremists.
Click to expand...
 
The Don said:
Muslim extremists blow up a nuclear device - Blow up Mecca
Christian extremists blow up a nuclear device - Blow up the Vatican
Click to expand...

Actually, I can think of quite a few Christian groups that would assist in that endeavor; your analogy was not well thought out.

Let's play with it however: if the Vatican were discovered to be a direct (even somewhat direct) source of the funding/material/influence that resulted in a terrorist detonation of a nuclear device in the United States (or its allies) then the Vatican would be vaporised as certainly as the pope is catholic.

IOW, it's a bad analogy.

But, you can damn well bet that if Muslim terrorists detonate a nuclear device in the United States (or its allies) then other nukes too will detonate in many locales throughout the middle east. We would retaliate quickly and decidedly and completely. Mecca may or may not vaporised and may or may not be a specific target. All political reason will be thrown out the window.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong, I'm saying how it would be.

In summary, Tancredo is probably exactly right but he should choose his words more carefully.
 
manny said:
Hugh Hewitt on Congressman Tancredo's remarks:
Click to expand...

That still equates the geogrpahic location of a large city with holiness, absolute untouchablility in wartime, etc.

And again, not being religious myself, that conflation makes no logical sense to me. I'm just not able to make that leap of faith.

Nothing in the OP seemed to say 'Let's go attack Mecca for fun'

It came across as a reporter asking 'set up' questions, and selectively editing the responses.
Had Tancredo said something to the effect of 'We would never, ever, consider attacking Mecca under any circumstances, not even if it were full of more nuclear missiles after a first strike against the US', does anyone doubt that would have sent a message?

Based on what is in the OP, it seems likely that Tancredo was asked if he would absolutely rule out ever attacking Mecca, even in the most extreme circumstances, and when he said that he could think of a hypothetical case wherein Mecca would be a retaliatory target ( including if it were turned into a military center), that got reported as 'Tancredo says bomb Mecca'.

If anyone has all of the exact words, I for one, would like to see them.
 
manny said:
Ask, and ye shall receive.11: Or, at your option, kick and choose the side of the field to defend.
Click to expand...


Thenk yew...thenk you vurrah musch...

OK..so when asked for a 'worst case scenario' of US response to a hypothetical nuke attack against the US, Tancredo 'threw some things out there'.

And one of the 'things' under the worst case 'ultimate repsonse' supposition, was the notion that going after holy sites "could" be an option.

In other words, a non-story puffed up into hype.

Sad how few people saw through it, given the frequency with which the media employs such tactics to mislead the gullible.
 
Rob Lister said:
Actually, I can think of quite a few Christian groups that would assist in that endeavor; your analogy was not well thought out.
Click to expand...

I can think of quite a few Muslim groups that would help us in the endevor to blow up Mecca. Iranian terrorists attacked the Ka'bah in 1989.

Do you not see the irony that it actually makes the analogy MORE relevant? The imaginary scenario is that one fanatical faction of a religion acts violently, and America just attacks the easiest symbolic target of the entire religion without thinking of the consequences.

This scenario would mean murdering thousands of people merely because of their religion. Where I come from, we have a word for that: genocide.
 
The real question that you girls seem to be missing is “is there a threat of retaliation that would make a terrorist rethink (not want to) touch of a nuke in New York?”

Would nuking the oil fields

Would taking out a couple of major Islamic Capitals

Perhaps here is a better question “is there a threat of retaliation that would make a COUNRTY that sponsors terrorists crack down on the nut jobs that would set off a nuke?”
 
Bombing Mecca comes down to punishing all Muslims for the acts of a few extremists. It would also indubitably lead to an escalation.
Hypothetically:
- Muslim extremists trigger a nuke in a major US city
- the US bombs Mecca.
- close to 1 billion Muslims are now your sworn enemies

What do you think happens next?
 
Rob Lister said:
Let's play with it however: if the Vatican were discovered to be a direct (even somewhat direct) source of the funding/material/influence that resulted in a terrorist detonation of a nuclear device in the United States (or its allies) then the Vatican would be vaporised as certainly as the pope is catholic.
Click to expand...
No matter what the Vatican did to the United States, it would never be the target of a nuclear counterstrike. How could it be? Think of where it's located. Would the United States retaliate for, say, a Chinese first strike by nuking the Chinese embassy in London?
 
ceo_esq said:
No matter what the Vatican did to the United States, it would never be the target of a nuclear counterstrike. How could it be? Think of where it's located. Would the United States retaliate for, say, a Chinese first strike by nuking the Chinese embassy in London?
Click to expand...

Well, a single gbu-43 would pretty much do the trick. No nukes needed to vaporize the vatican.

As to a chinese embassy? We do that for fun, remember?
 
Orwell said:
Bombing Mecca comes down to punishing all Muslims for the acts of a few extremists. It would also indubitably lead to an escalation.
Hypothetically:
- Muslim extremists trigger a nuke in a major US city
- the US bombs Mecca.
- close to 1 billion Muslims are now your sworn enemies

What do you think happens next?
Click to expand...

US-spokesman: "If any muslim as much as pisses in the direction of the West, ever again, bye-bye Medina."

After which, Pax Americana for a thousand years.


YMMV, of course.


Mosquito - too much caffeine, but it becomes an obsession...
 
Mosquito said:
US-spokesman: "If any muslim as much as pisses in the direction of the West, ever again, bye-bye Medina."

After which, Pax Americana for a thousand years.


YMMV, of course.


Mosquito - too much caffeine, but it becomes an obsession...
Click to expand...

I think you forgot the irony smiley... You forgot it, right? ;)
 
Orwell said:
I think you forgot the irony smiley... You forgot it, right? ;)
Click to expand...

:)

"Behave or we'll nuke Mecca/Medina/Your swimmingpool." is, I think, a reasonable thing to say. It worked against the Communists, it may work against the islamists.

Actually nuking anything, however, would probably not be too good an idea.

It's not like nukes are popular for anything other than scare-tactics. Not really a battlefield weapon. Could be used by terrorists, for sure, but unless isolationism is in your future plans for your country, you don't want to be one of those using them.

Unless deployed within minutes of the original attack, how do you actually defend using one? And to use one within minutes, you'll need to know where to send it. How do you know where? With the communists, that would be "easy", as you could see the missiles launch, if it is carried/driven into a city, where did it originate? Who do you punish?


Mosquito - sub-omniscient
 
It worked with the Soviets and it worked with the US (you were as afraid of them as they were of you).

But it probably won't work with Muslim extremists. They want to radicalise the conflict, I think that one of their main objectives is to provoke the west into butchering innocent Muslims in response to a terrorist attack, in the hopes of driving more people in their true target audience (the Muslim world) to their extremist ideology. It is quite probable that, from their point of view and in spite of their alleged religious convictions, the US bombing Mecca would be their dream scenario...
 
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