Congressman: Mecca a possible retaliation target

a very bitter and painful joke, but a joke nonetheless.

what guys like stockula don't realize is that there are actions we can take now to insure that such drastic extremes are never realized. just because it was acceptable foreign policy during the cold war to threaten with nuclear retaliation doesn't mean it is now. the global political climate changes all the time....

look at Spain. the socialist government did a lot to defuse the situation with Islamic terrorists and have succeded. the government relaxed immigration laws and made it easier for people coming from foriegn countries to start a new life there, causing a huge population boom among arabs. the government of Spain chose not to alighn themselves violently with the USA and now they live mostly in peace with Islam.

...now I know that it's not always the best to deal with violent extreamists the way Spain did. The Spanish government took alot of fallout from allegedly curtailing to the extreamists. I don't really think that Brittan or the US should just roll over when faced with a violent threat, but realisticly there are things that can be done that insure that lives are not lost in bloody wars or terrorist bombings. terrorism is the last resort of those who feel they have no voice or power of thier own. what I don't get is why it seems like such an alluring practice to many arab youths when diplomacy and non-violent change is an option.

[Edited on Jul 19, 2005 by cretinsa11]

Its not so much a joke as you think.
1) You see how much religion USA got after 9/11?
2) Have you seen the "war of the apocalypse" crap that is constantly played on christian channels?
Terrorism degrades civilization. Since 9/11 there has been all sorts of really bad ideas that have become acceptable. While I doubt a suitcase bomb would be enough to fire at Mecca, Jihadists gaining control of a nuke arsenal like Pakistans' would more then certainly put Mecca at risk. However I think the first target would be Israel and I have no doubt in my mind that Israel would fire back at Muslim holy cities. For them it is a war of religion.
If bombs went off here? Blue states would go red and the 700 club would probably have high positions in our government. At that point anything is possible.

Let's try a simple analogy.

Osama Bin Laden = Islam as Jerry Falwell = Christianity.

So if some psycho nuked Philadelphia in the name of Christ would you be clamoring to launch a counter attack against the Vatican?

We should just nuke heaven.

i dont think these comments are as shocking or deplorable as they might initially appear. like i said in the other thread, he is simply trying to superimpose cold war theory on what is unarguably a different conflict entirely.

You know, you're right. That God guy has been nothing since but a pain in the ass since he built this place. We should fuck up his shit for being such a bad creator.

that is an extremely ignorant analogy.
as much as I detest Falwell, I have never known him to initiate and fund murder in the name of Christ

You said it perfectly. Thank you.

Don't get me started on that Holy Ghost dude. Least scary ghost ever.

It's a bit outlandish I agree but not extremely ignorant. Falwell scapegoated the 9/11 attacks on gays, feminists, atheists and liberals. He has little power because of the relative advanced nature of American society. Put him in some third world Christian-dominated shithole and he might actually cause some damage.

Maybe. Like I said, the notion of a direct comparison is still somewhat outlandish.

...there are more innocent people living in these "Muslim cities" than terrorists. The problem here is that you are seeing things in black and white. to put it in perspective-
If you are going to go after all things Muslim (or, as you said, "every Muslim city bigger than 10,000 people") are you going to bomb Dearborn Michigan as well?
if you are sane (which I question) you would probably answer-
"of course I wouldn't! there are innocent people there! and even some non-Muslims!"
well, there are innocent people EVERYWHERE and (though it shouldn't matter) there are plenty of non-Muslims living in Islamic cities in the middle east and abroad.


[Edited on Jul 19, 2005 by GenghisKhan]

Maybe no one is actively trying right now but you're sure as hell advocating it.

You do realise that not every Muslim city supports this kind of shit right? In fact... few of them do. EXTREMISTS stockula. You know... the kind of people who like the idea of blowing up entire religious groups. For fuck's sake...

Put him in the 3rd world and he wouldn't exist.

I agree with you that a direct analogy doesn't work very well. The closest analogy to a Christian retaliating that extremely on a strictly religious level would be the Crusaders- but that's even stretching it, because that wasn't all about religion either- that was just the front.

come to think of it, neither is the terrorism that the west is facing right now. it is certainly not ALL ABOUT RELIGION. It goes back to what I was saying before about people seeing it in terms of black and white, christian and muslim, etc. etc. These militant arabic organizations did not spring up randomly because Allah told them to "kill whitey", they sprung up because people were sick of being tossed around, abused and being used as currency and playing pieces by countries more powerful than them (IE: the USSR and the USA), and their hatred blinded them into seeing things as black and white. They've done some horrible things, and have given us plenty of right to hate them, but why should we let our hatred blind us into seeing black and white?

Well, if one really wants to get into details, calling this struggle "A War on Terror" was stupid to begin with. We are not going after the IRA, the Tamil Tigers or the Basque Separatists. We are going after any Islamic Terrorists that might pose a threat to us. Hell, that means even some Islamic Terrorists are ignored if they just focus on Israel. (One major Islamic terrorist group, I think Hezbollah, actually denounced 9/11.)

My point here is blanket statements don't help us, be they from the right or the left. Nuking the Holy Cities of Islam will not stop the Islamic terrorists, not unless 100% of them are there praying at the time. All it will do is create many more Islamic terrorists, maybe nearly 100% of the 800 million Muslims currently living in countries all across the world.

I wish so badly that people would stop making WW2 comparisons. WW2 does not apply here! Back in 1945, when the US got to Main Street, Berlin or Main Street, Tokyo, the war was over. There is no main street here, at least not in Mecca or Medina.

I won't play the blame game, even though it's true. Yes, we wouldn't have had to deal with the Ayatollah in Iran if we didn't overthrow the democratically-elected President and put in a butcher like the Shah. If we didn't build up Saddam in Iraq to fight the Ayatollah, we wouldn't have had 9/11 and Bin Laden in the first place. But I love America, even "W"'s America. That's why I bother typing now. Not that I think I can actually make a difference.....


[Edited on Jul 19, 2005 by Willowmoon]

well said

But he sure does hate immigrants

Thank you. Everything I've learned, I've learned from my grad student husband.

I love the way Stockulas nuclear fallout is just going to stop at the borders of the nations he doesn't like - no nuclear winter, no mass migration as people leave areas that wont support them now. I would like to know where hge plans to house all the Europeans, Africans, Chinese, Asians who all of a sudden can't live in their homelands anymore? I assume its ok for us to all come and live in the Americas?Thats about the only part of the world that doesn't border any islamic nations.

Even if the idea wasn't incredibly evil its still incredibly stupid.

Nobody who had been to the Museum dedicated to the victims of the A-Bomb in Hiroshima would ever suggest using the A-Bomb again...ever.

Don't be so sure of that... some of the more gaping assholes in this world would celebrate any kind of mass killing of civilians, as long as they are on the side that gets to drop the bombs. Basic human empathy, the kind that normal people would be affected by when visiting such memorials, is utterly alien to such assholes. It's the same attitude that fuels Islamic suicide bombers, just wrapped in a different kind of "us or them" self-righteous nationalism and persecution complex, and enabled by a trillion dollar weapons budget.

I had forgotten about that.

some people just need to be ignored

oh, i see quite clearly the infection of fundamentalism that has occurred in america. but i still think of it as a bitter and painful joke, even if the punchline is holy war. it's more along the line of a joke played on us by god, or maybe just by ourselves.