Freedom of Philadelphia

I saw this article here (thanks to Merlyworm) and it got me thinking. Could our own humanity/kindness/civility be what cause us to lose the war against Islamic terrorism? The article is by Bernard Lewis and he raises some interesting points when he compares our handling of middle eastern issues versus the Soviet’s handling of them. He titled the article:

Was Osama Right?
Islamists always believed the U.S. was weak. Recent political trends won’t change their view.

Here is his main point of contention:

During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: “What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?”

There’s some wisdom in there, and if you think about the state of things even now after the Cold War both Russia and the US are still doing things the same way. Russia deals firmly even violently to Islamic terrorism and the US is still negotiating/talking/pleading. The media, the left, and even so many on the right all believe that we should not resort to the savagery of the Islamic terrorists in our fight against them. I’ve been thinking a lot, especially since Merlyworm sent this article to me…can we win without resorting to their level? If we have to resort to that level of barbarism in order to win, have we truly won?

I guess what it boils down to is this “Once we walk down the road of savagery can we as a country come back from that?”. What would the rest of the world think about it and should we care? I’ve heard it said, and even said at times that we could only achieve peace in the middle east by turning at least one of the countries into a glass parking lot. To do so unequivocally and without prolonged guilt might be the only way to prove to the rest of the Islamic countries that they truly need to weigh their desire for self preservation versus the promise of 72 virgins. I doubt that the use of standard military force could be applied to make the point we need to make. Diplomatic assassinations also would pose some issues. It was easier for the Soviets in the 70’s and 80’s because Islamic Jihad had not spread as bad as it is now. Something along the line of nuclear response would be needed, something we could have over fast and the act of implementing it would not cost an inherent amount of American lives.
We did that in WWII to the Japanese. Some would argue that we can not compare WWII to the current war against Islamic terrorism due to a lack of a principle cohesive nationality among the Islamics (I’ll get to that in a minute). From my studies it seems the use of atomic weapons during WWII was justified for 3 main reasons (at least here in the states).

1. It was a battle between good and evil
2. The dropping of the bombs saved countless American lives
3. We needed to prove our strength the burgeoning Soviet empire.

Could those same 3 reasons be applied to current day situations? If we could apply them all I’d have to say we need to give serious consideration to the use of nuclear weapons in this fight. Let’s take a look at them in the light of the current world situations.

1. Some have said (most notably Tony Blair, John Howard, and George W. Bush), that the current fight against Islamic terrorism is the ultimate battle of good vs. evil or civilization vs.barbarism.-Well that one seems to fall in line with WWII.
2. As I look at the above #2 I have to wonder if we could respond in a limited atomic way that would stop or mostly stop the terroristic onslaught or would such an attack on Islam cause an even larger desire to destroy Western civilization? This one would depend on the location of such an strike at Islam.
3. Do we need to prove our strength to Russia or even China now? What about proving our strength to Islam? Lewis makes this point: “The response to 9/11, so completely out of accord with previous American practice, came as a shock, and it is noteworthy that there has been no successful attack on American soil since then.” It seems to be a safe bet that we would at least prove our strength to someone and please remember, while no country doubts our military might they do doubt our willingness, our testicular fortitude if you will to use it.
   

So we’ve got 2 out of 3 reasons compared to WWII. Some would sing the Meatloaf song and say 2 out of 3 ain’t bad. I’d want to try to goto 3 for 3, so lets look at #2 a bit. Earlier I hypothesized that the location would make a real difference in whether or not we could save American lives with the use of the supreme force of nuclear weapons. I think we’d also have to contemplate the delivery methods. The first choice of a target that comes to mind is Mecca. Hit them where it hurts right? The religions capital! Well that poses some real negatives to criteria #2. First off the anger would overcome the fear and even “moderates” would turn against us. In addition, it’s important to remember that Pakistan has nukes so even if Musharaff wouldn’t use them against us, how long until he gets overthrown by the clerics and THEY use them against us? Not long at all I’d imagine. What about Tehran? Well that’s a good target against Shia Islam and they are a massive threat to the region. Pakistan is Sunni as is Saudi Arabia so they, while appropriately outraged might have their desire for self preservation overcome the anger. However, to be realistic that’s a lot of oil that the world needs that would be unreachable for quite awhile. Sorry but the worlds SUV’s might come to life and revolt against us if we did that. What about Pakistan? Islamabad might not be a bad target, especially if we can get their nukes wiped out in the process! Oh wait, that’s pretty damn close to China and they might have a problem with the fallout, not to mention it’s next door to a nuclear India and the fallout would be an issue there also (not to mention Dell tech support would be down forever then).
So we need a country that is heavily Islamic, not sitting on a ton of oil/resources, doesn’t have nukes, and one where fallout won’t cause us issues with other countries. In addition it has to be one we can hit with a nuke without having to fire from a missile silos. To be blunt, every country with nukes would fire theirs off the minute ours hit the air even if we told them in advance where it was going. No one would take a chance that we lied. It seems to me that really leaves only a couple of options.

1. Africa
2. Indonesia

The problem here is that both areas are primarily Sunni so that could be a problem with both the Saudis and the Pakistanis. Both of those areas are oil deficient, we could make sure that where we hit doesn’t cause fallout into ally countries and we could easily deliver nukes via air power. Now if we could be sure that the Pakistanis wouldn’t respond with nukes and that the Saudis wouldn’t cut off the oil what other problems could we have? Iran would surely go apeshit, sending even more waves of terrorists out into the world. So perhaps we should rule those countries out. Wonder if we could hit Iran with a small scale nuke, one that wouldn’t incur fallout in China nor destroy the oil assets? Perhaps hit Iran with a small scale nuke and at the same time put forth a definitive promise to both India and Pakistan that if they even start to warm up their missiles they will start to glow? I’m not sure, I don’t think America has the stones to do something like that anymore. The shame of it is that we might not be able to ever win this war until we rediscover our cahones and strike back at islamic terrorism in such a way that they realize that they have more to lose by attacking us.

VikingPundit also comments on the Lewis piece here. Orthodoxy Today talks about it here. (that’s the only other blogs I’ve seen talking about it.)