MAD-Cap Congress-Critter?

Ahhh, as a former potential nuclear warrior, a student of International Relations, a plain-speaker, and a Coloradan, it did my black heart good to hear Colorado Congress-Critter Tom Tancredo suggest that maybe some mutually assured destruction might be strategically sound in the War on Islamic Terror. Of course, the whiners, the hand-wringers and the “it’s our fault” crowd are all now vilifying poor ol’ Tom. Take a look at what he said: Deterrence an Option?

Let’s consider the option. We know for certain that the jihadists would really, really, really like Santa to bring them some WMD for Christmas or Ramadan. They’re sick and tired of making do with used airliners full of innocents and borrowed Mercedes sedans packed with C-4 as tools to make their point. They want the big bang for the buck in a small, man-portable package. They’d really love to have some sort of gadget that could kill us infidels by the millions instead of the paltry thousand or so at a time. Yep, you’d have to be pretty ignorant to deny that they’d wipe out New York, Washington, Chicago, or San Francisco in a camel’s heartbeat if they could.

So, the question that you’ve got to be asking yourself is, “do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do ya?” What can convince these fanatics to desist? What is the equivalent of Dirty Harry’s Smith & Wesson Model 29? What’s the “world’s most powerful handgun” equivalent in the War on Terror? How about the classic “Silver Bullet” in about a 345 kiloton range?

The question is where do you apply this convincer to get the job done? If they live in caves, hide in spider-holes, and don’t really care much for the goodies of this world, how can you give them an outcome to contemplate which would actually deter? What’s the thing they supposedly revere more than any other? Why, ostensibly, it is their faith, their Q’uran, their holy cities.

So then, if they understand that should they acquire weapons of mass destruction and use them against our population centers then we would respond by total destruction of Mecca, Medina and any other holy sites that we determine it is conceivable that they might be deterred.

Classic strategic deterrence which worked so well in the fifty-eight years since the nuclear balance of Western-vs-Soviet Union powers was created in 1947 requires a couple of things. First, there has got to be a credible second-strike capability. Both sides must understand that a pre-emptive strike will not take out the ability to respond. OK, the terrorists can probably figure that out pretty readily.

Second, the concept depends upon recognition that the retaliating nation possesses the will to respond and carry out the threat. This gets a bit tougher, since we so regularly demonstrate the shriveling of cojones that comes from generations of liberal media and university indoctrination. (Can you picture Ted Kennedy, Charlie Rangel, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Nancy Pelosi or Howard Dean going to any kind of war?)

And, third, strategic deterrence requires rational leadership on both sides. Now, that looks like the shakiest requirement of the package. But, I’ll offer that although the rationality of a suicide bomber might be questionable, the sanity of the leadership which out-sources the task is much more credible. And, the rationality of the majority of the Muslim world, the Maoist ocean in which the terrorist swims, will certainly come to the fore and become a significant restraining force against the jihad.

I kind of like the whole idea. Heads up, Osama. You’ve got incoming. And, the good news is that you’ll be able to find plenty of parking for your Mercedes on the green glass parking lot we’ll be installing.