MSimon - What I'm saying is that regardless of policy, the here and now reality is that popping Mecca as some symbolic gesture does nothing but add fuel to their fire.
I agree. It is going to really piss them off for a while. And then once the anger dies down they will see that Allah couldn't protect Allah's holy of holies.
You know the once in a lifetime (minimum) pilgrimage is off. It will be Janet Pilgrim and not the Kaaba.
Then belief starts to fade.
That's not how religion works as I've seen it and somewhat understand it myself (strictly agnostic). E.G. they might just say that this is some challenge to/from Allah that invites believers to kick more unbeliever ass or that heralds some judgement day for the whole world. You can't bottle up religious faith and fervor in any rational constraints. You can smoke it out of people's heads with sufficiently airtight, fundamental rhetoric. The same way Socrates transparently stamped out faulty assumptions, with the same rigor to the point of undeniability as e.g. S.Homes' "When you have eliminated the impossible [...]" maxim. The best way to do this isn't nuking Mecca but taking their arguments and breaking them down in a way that they understand and can't deny - back to what I said above: you can't do this till you see things thru their eyes. I think this is a basic warfare notion, so I don't think it's a strange strategy.
Looking at the logistics (overlap with what I said about cultural disconnects), the problem is that there's not much reason for the dialogue that'd serve as substrate for such antisepticization (can't think of the right word) of the wrongs of extremist muslim thought. The same way e.g. common people in Europe have no idea (can't overstate this one) that Americans are so "inconsiderate" of many European sensibilities simply because they don't have to - they can completely disregard the rest of the world from craddle to grave, usually with no tangible cost to their well being (pursuit of happiness etc).
I personally abhor much of the rhetoric of muslim culture and religion. I was marooned in the middle of it for a while and I got absolutely sick of it. But it's no reason for (it's got nothing to do with) "nuking" anything when there's much more productive alternatives. In brief and from a very wide POV, all those people ought (IMO) to be converted to the technocratic worldview, as far as concrete reality. They're potential brain (technical/scientific labor, basically) resources that must be harnessed. Nuking that huge pool of resources is a huge waste.
If there was a united alliance of Arabs amassing warplanes to bomb america I could at least understand the logic of bombing Mecca. But this simply isn't the case.
You've got a few highly publicised acts of terrorism by a couple of muslims on your home soil and a lot of muslims all around the world that talk the talk in terms of hateful rants but in practise get on with their lives. The besides the world trade centre (which was simply a taking advantage of a hole in aircraft security that has since been filled in) most of the terrorism occured in areas where Americans were the occupying force.
Acts of terrorism on the U.S. homeland fall under the category of crime, not war, their level is easily low enough to be tackled by the police and if muslims really do become an unbearable problem the simplest solution is just deportation. No muslim country has ever invaded the U.S. nor do I see this happening in the future. The only problem is hate indoctrinated home-grown muslims and randomly invading arab countries in an unprovoked manner will not solve this problem in any way shape or form. I am baffled at how so many people in this forum cannot see this.
Your making a mountain out of a molehill or at the very least you complaining about the wrong mountain (i.e. foreign arab countries rather than radicalized homegrown childen of muslim immigrants ).
One real problem is that alot of mosques, certainly in the U.K. are funded by Saudi Arabia, which allows them to exert political influence over the attendees. This has to be stopped, it could be compared to allowing communist community centres to be built all over America at the height of the cold war.
Muslims should be held to the same stringent standards of political correctness as whites (either by easing those standards on whites or by strengthening them for muslims). Many muslims are the first to complain when someone "offends" their religion or sensibilities yet they openly express scorn on the principles we hold dear. Maybe the best thing is to allow everyone to say what's on their mind with a level playing field.
But if there is a problem its a cultural thing and randomly bombing cities and symbols right left and centre is the stupidest most inappropriate non-solution I have ever heard.
One real problem is that alot of mosques, certainly in the U.K. are funded by Saudi Arabia, which allows them to exert political influence over the attendees. This has to be stopped, it could be compared to allowing communist community centres to be built all over America at the height of the cold war.
Yes.
BTW nothing wrong with a little speculation.
But if there is a problem its a cultural thing and randomly bombing cities and symbols right left and centre is the stupidest most inappropriate non-solution I have ever heard.
It cured the Germans and Japanese.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Some cultures want to be savage. Others adopt savagery as a temporary expedient. The expedience folks can be more savage than the savages. For a while.
The American experience is that 3 to 4 years is about the limit. Which is why we prefer short but VERY violent wars culturally. Bush almost lost Iraq due to that.
In WW2 the Japanese plan was to hold on until the Americans tired of fighting. The BOMBS came at a very fortunate time.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
I wouldn't have been a bit surprised if we got halfway across Honshu, not even to Tokyo, and then decided, "Hey, as long as Tojo retires, we can go home."
And as much as I really wish they'd have told Patton not to stop until he got to Sakhalin, I suspect Truman would have been impeached way before then.
But the next decades which are now our sadder history would have been better.
I hope we mature enough to know when is the time to plow salt into the ground, and leave not one stone on another.
molon labe
montani semper liberi
para fides paternae patria
We would in all likelyhood never have to nuke Mecca, same way we never had to nuke Moscow. Just the threat of it would be enough to make them change their thinking. Remember, the terrorist that causes Mecca's destruction by attacking the west shames his family and clan forever.
choff wrote:We would in all likelyhood never have to nuke Mecca, same way we never had to nuke Moscow. Just the threat of it would be enough to make them change their thinking. Remember, the terrorist that causes Mecca's destruction by attacking the west shames his family and clan forever.
We just need to announce an official policy, that there will always be at least one Minuteman missile on alert that is targeted for Mecca. If a terrorist nuke goes off in the US, Mecca will be vaporized within 30 minutes.
This uses terrorist tactics against the terrorists: We will effectively be holding Mecca hostage.
choff wrote:We would in all likelyhood never have to nuke Mecca, same way we never had to nuke Moscow. Just the threat of it would be enough to make them change their thinking. Remember, the terrorist that causes Mecca's destruction by attacking the west shames his family and clan forever.
We just need to announce an official policy, that there will always be at least one Minuteman missile on alert that is targeted for Mecca. If a terrorist nuke goes off in the US, Mecca will be vaporized within 30 minutes.
This uses terrorist tactics against the terrorists: We will effectively be holding Mecca hostage.
Unless someone who wanted to blow up both Mecca and Seattle comes along with only one nuke. In that case, their problem is solved.
What is the difference between ignorance and apathy? I don't know and I don't care.
But if there is a problem its a cultural thing and randomly bombing cities and symbols right left and centre is the stupidest most inappropriate non-solution I have ever heard.
It cured the Germans and Japanese.
That's a completely different situation. Japan and Germany were sovereign nations with top-down military structures which invaded other sovereign nations.
No Arab countries are talking about invading the USA. The only "threat" we're talking about is a slight elevation of crime from a few islamic nutcases that live in America and have American citizenship, the number of islamic terrorist attacks doesn't even outnumber the number of non-islamic terrorist attack, spree killings etc.,
Proposing to nuke Mecca as a solution to islamic terrorism is like proposing to construct a weather machine to stop all rain around the world as a solution to solving the leak in your roof.
choff wrote:We would in all likelyhood never have to nuke Mecca, same way we never had to nuke Moscow. Just the threat of it would be enough to make them change their thinking. Remember, the terrorist that causes Mecca's destruction by attacking the west shames his family and clan forever.
Completely different situation.
Stalin and the heads of the Russian state personally lived in Moscow, what's more because of the top down military structure they had the personal capacity to refrain from invading the U.S.
While the vast majority of Muslims who hate to have Mecca bombed I'm sure there are a few hardline radicalized wackos that would LOVE nothing more than the US to bomb Mecca. It would serve as a galvanising force to unite what is now a disparate collection of infinghting Arabs.
I'm glad the people who post on this forum are not in charge of the U.S. military.
It would serve as a galvanising force to unite what is now a disparate collection of infinghting Arabs.
True, one of the very few things that prevents the muslims of this world to go after each other is their common hate for Israel and the US due to their support for it.