Shot In The Dark: Lost Me

July 20, 2005

Lost Me

LaShawn Barber has long been one of my favorite conservative bloggers.

But we're going to have to have a long talk here:

Most politicians are faint-hearted, weak, ineffectual, disconnected, and desensitized pencil-pushers, so when one comes along and says what should’ve been said eons ago, his own party wants to see his head on a platter because he dared “offend” someone. Numbskulls.

It's not so much the offense that bothers me. It's the immense strategic problem that accompanies putting that sort of perception out there.

LaShawn: It's a fact that the most dangerous thing in the world to be is a moderate Moslem. As we've seen in Israel for the past sixty years, and as we're seeing in Iraq today, nothing's changed.

Here's the problem with Tancredo's statement, in or out of context - and it has nothing to do with political correctness or relative degrees of conservatism:

If we create the perception that we don't distinguish between Wahabbist terrorists and, say, Indonesian free-market Moslems or Senegalese moslems who support a thriving liberal democracy, then we do the Wahabbi's work for them.
To the Wahabbi, Mecca is worth more as a pile of radioactive slag or (more likely) hostage to potential US retaliation than it is as a religious site. It creates a rallying point, a source of more martyrs, and once again, a wedge between moderate Islam and the rest of the 21st-century-dwelling world.
There are six million American Moslems. Many of them serve in the US military. Shall we destroy their religious symbol?
Mecca has no military significance.

There are many things we need to do; show the Moslem world that the faintest sniff of radiation in one of our cities would be answered with absolute decisiveness; national leaderships should disappear whether with a flash or a stab in the night; military units and bases should be hammered quickly and surely.

But bombing Mecca is of value only as the last possible resort:

It’s becoming painfully clear to me that I’m moving farther to the right than so-called conservatives, including bloggers. As they cave to PC pressure and become indistinguishable from liberals, I’ll take up the slack and remain as un-PC as I can get.

LaShawn? With all due respect, that's buncombe. I'm as conservative as you are, probably more so. But the downside of nuking Mecca dwarfs any spasmic upside; to abjure such a dumb piece of symbolism in anything other than extremis is smart, not liberal. The military benefits of attacking Mecca are vanishingly small; the political liability is overwhelming. As far as making Moslem governments choose sides and renounce terrorism, or wondering why they haven't yet; you know as well as I do that most Moslem governments are authoritarian dumps who have an interest in being soft on the subject. If they (or better yet, their people) see an upside in moving toward the US, they will, slowly and in such a way as to avoid having US planes wind up over their capitol. Nuking Mecca would, of course, removed that upside permanently.

As to why they haven't come across yet - this is a part of the world where not only do attitudes change slowly, but they've seen our policy change a couple of times within the living memory of most of their leadership. It's not "PC" to observe that there's a self-preservation motive at work here, both among the tinhorns that rule most of the world's Moslems as well as their people.

Speaking of attitudes that change slowly - their ritualistic hatred of the Jews (as we know it today) dates back over a hundred years. It's not going to change overnight, not that we shouldn't try - but again, nuking Mecca won't change that.

There's nothing PC or "Soft on terrorism" about about abjuring Tancredo's statement. For you to claim it is a cheap, lazy shot. I'd hoped for better.

Doug Williams is more emphatic:

LaShawn thinks the billion plus Muslims witnessing such an attack would kick their feet and convert to some more convenient religion once Mecca was nuked? Please. The only certainty is that they'd know who NOT to turn to for security. And that would be the nation that nuked Mecca on the basis of simple religious affiliation. The same religious affiliation they personally hold.

Posted by Mitch at July 20, 2005 06:17 AM | TrackBack

Comments

I'd be curious to find out what William F. Buckley Jr. thinks about bombing Mecca. But, maybe he's not authentically conservative enough for LaShawn....

Posted by: RBMN at July 20, 2005 12:35 AM

Mitch - You may have your reasons for not doing so, or maybe it's an oversight - but I think you should provide a link to LaShawn. I don't read her blog - but it would be nice to go check out the post you reference here.

Posted by: red at July 20, 2005 05:57 AM

Oops. It was late.

Posted by: mitch at July 20, 2005 05:59 AM

Aha. Now I see the link. Did I miss it before? I've only had TWO cups of coffee ... My brain doesn't kick in til the third cup. :)

Posted by: red at July 20, 2005 06:07 AM

I've yet to decide how I feel about the strategic advisability of Tancredo's statement; I don't see the situation as at all simple.

But when you said, "...to abjure such a dumb piece of symbolism in anything other than extremis is smart, not liberal", I think you harmed your case. We're talking about the aftermath of the destruction of an American city and the death of (to choose a figure that seems plausible) a million people. Perhaps I reach "extremis" sooner than you do, but that seems to surely fit my definition.

Posted by: Doug Sundseth at July 20, 2005 10:56 AM

If New York and LA were hit with suitcase nuclear bombs some day (God forbid,) why do people think that a majority of Muslims in the World would be cheering? Some will no doubt be dancing in the streets, but certainly not the majority. The majority will be heart sick. The majority will want to destroy the culprits. I honestly believe that. So, unnecessarily turning all these potential friends into enemies, by bombing Mecca, is smart HOW? I heard Tancredo on FOX Radio this morning. He's not backing down. What an idiot. It's sad, because he's good on border security, and was doing good work there.

Posted by: RBMN at July 20, 2005 11:30 AM

Doug,

I'm speaking more about using "nuking mecca" as a threat or potential element of policy, I think. It allows the Wahabbi to hold Mecca hostage, in effect.

It'd be like the IRA going to a group of Chilean catholics; "Seee? The Brits say they might destroy the Vatican! Who should you be supporting?

Posted by: mitch at July 20, 2005 11:34 AM

"It'd be like the IRA going to a group of Chilean catholics; "Seee? The Brits say they might destroy the Vatican! Who should you be supporting?"

I think this is too imprecise an analogy to be useful. The reason Tancredo mentioned Mecca was that it is in a country widely acknowledged to be a primary (the largest?) source of terrorists and terrorist funding directly threatening the US.

A better analogy would be threatening the Vatican to discourage avowedly religious Italians from releasing poison gas in NYC in 1945. As I say, I'm not sure where I stand on the strategic advisability of the comments, but the connections between Wahabbist terrorists and Mecca (and Medina, of course) are rather stronger than those between the IRA and the Vatican.

(For an example of the differences in wars, see the actions of the Germans at Monte Cassino -- they didn't occupy the abbey until after we destroyed it by airstrike. Yes, the Wahabbi have fewer scruples and a much poorer record of following international law than the Nazis did. Not that I think this is news to Mitch, but I expect it to reach a wider audience.)

Posted by: Doug Sundseth at July 20, 2005 12:22 PM

Seems to me that Tancredo and his apologists are giving our enemies exactly what they want.

Posted by: Peter at July 21, 2005 12:55 AM

Hmmm. When relatively few people were acknowledging the existence of extremist Muslims, we got 9/11 from our enemies. Whether Tancredo and his "apologists" are discussing the real nuclear option or the weather makes little difference to those who would see non-Muslims converted or dead.

Posted by: Juliette at July 21, 2005 08:49 PM

Juliette,

I know. Which is why I say that Mecca is worth more to the Islamofascists blown up (or with that threat hanging over its head) than it is otherwise.

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