The Tancredo Option and Other Counterstrike Scenarios

Listening to my benefactor Hugh Hewitt the other day, I heard him attempting to do damage control on Tom Tancredo’s behalf for suggesting that the US might want to target Mecca in response to a large scale WMD attack in the continental United States. Hugh was quite certain that this was not only a strategic error if carried out, but also useless and unconstructive as a threat to prevent terrorists from carrying out a WMD attack on the US.

I’m not sure that it matters at all. The way I see it, if the US experiences a nuclear detonation in a population center resulting in massive casualties and environmental destruction at the hands of islamofascist terrorists, then virtually no action in response could be considered overblown. The US would be under no obligation to use restraint during the counter-strike, and it would be imperative that we change the geography and geology of the middle east permanently. I would expect to see that the entire nations of Syria and Pakistan would be wiped clean from the face of the earth. Leadership targets and WMD sites in Iran should be mercilessly destroyed without concern for collateral damage. The Saudi Royal Family and leadership apparatus should be immediately taken out and the oilfields of Saudi Arabia seized by US forces. Obviously, Iraq would be on its own at this point as our troops would be needed to take control of the Arabian Peninsula and conduct Direct Action in Iran. North Korea would be on a very short leash at this point, and if they so much as flinched, we would be wise to launch on them with our submarine based ICBMs.

The destruction of Mecca would really not serve a strategic purpose, but in light of the new circumstances that we would have to impose on the region, I don’t think too many people would be in a position to visit in any case. I am not convinced that Tancredo’s remarks will prove especially harmful to our efforts in the GWOT. When you consider that MSM outlets in the region already “report” that Israelis use the blood of Palestinian babies to make bread, I would be surprised if claims of the US targeting Mecca were not already in circulation. At the same time, if the US did officially announce this policy of targeting Mecca in retaliation for a WMD attack on the US mainland, it would have no preventative effect on the terrorists plotting to do just that.

At the end of the day, Hugh is right that targeting Mecca would be of no strategic benefit, but it hardly matters what we do or say about islam because the paranoia and backwardness of most of the islamic world precludes our “message” from getting through to them anyway. The best way to get our message “heard” is to be victorious on the GWOT battlefield.

Juliette agrees