Although I have no idea what the military point of vaporizing Mecca might be, I thought we were several years into WW III already. The failure to recognize that strikes me as a greater danger than the enemy themselves.

Most wars we've been involved in had clear beginnings and endings with battle going on on a regular basis. Not all wars in history are this way and fifty years from now historians may be saying we're already in WWIII.
As to the efficacy of threatening Mecca, first you would have to be willing to carry through on the threat and also have your opponet believe that you will for the threat to possibly have value. Still you couldn't be sure of the response that the threat would provoke. Add to that the little issue of what would happen if you carried through on the threat, most scenarios I can come up with involve global chaos, and I come to the conclusion that a politician has nothing to gain and something to lose for saying much past "that is an insane idea."

"you couldn't be sure of the response that the threat would provoke"

Exactly - what if, in response to the vaporization of Mecca, NYC or Washington, D.C. was targeted? Oh, wait, that part already happened.....

Lawyerchik1, New York and Washington weren't targeted; symbolic buildings were. If the White House were successfully hit, would we suddenly cease having a president because somewhere it says you can't have one without the other? Of course not. The 9/11 attacks were designed to elicit fear and anger and helplessness in a way that Americans (at least our current generation) has never really had occasion to feel before. That New York and Washington were the cities in which one finds those symbols is incidental.

Mecca is different. It is a sacred space substantially, if not intrinsically, incorporated into most Muslim's faith practices; note that the Hajj, or pilgrimage, is one of five practices in which all Muslims are expected to participate, and has been for over 1400 years. While the effects (economic, political, and cultural) of 9/11 probably have had a significant impact on most Americans, most people simply weren't impacted by the destruction itself. The mere destruction of Mecca would touch over 1 billion people worldwide; the effects of the destruction are understandably unmeasurable. I'm not sure there are any other similarly sacred spaces in Christianity, and I'm not well enough versed in Jewish history and theology to tell if there would be an analogy to the destruction of the Temple.

I understand the implications for hitting Mecca - I just don't see the problem with it, considering that the point of building the mosque of Omar on the site of the former temple in Jerusalem was intended to prevent the Jewish people from being able to return to that sacred site. If you're going to start a holy war, better a quick blowout than a slow leak. I'm just sayin'.....

You're a stupid wretch, Lawyerchik. Sometimes you have to call slime what it is; in your response remember that it was not I who "resorted to namecalling" and therefore shutted down rational conversation - it was your engaging in the same type of delusional mania that the current president of Iran recently displayed in denying the Holocaust.

Chuck, meet kettle. It's not clear to me whether there would be any point in attacking or even threatening Mecca, but I've heard enough crying wolf over the years about how the "Arab Street" would react to any number of stimuli to be skeptical that "global chaos" (beyond that which exists now) would ensue.

Few of those stimuli are real; most indeed constitute crying wolf by the liberal press, Arab nationalists, and Muslim extremists. However, to destroy Mecca (via nuclear attack, no less) would truly lead to the breakup of the world order. To propose its destruction or
"have no problem" with such arguments really is tantamount to the forgivable megalomania of idiots, paranoid schizophrenics, and alcoholics, and the unforgivable authoritarianism and warmongering of real-life Nazi-types (they do exist; sometimes its not just an exercise in Orwellian name-calling).

The are hundreds of millions of Muslims in the world, and only a small fraction harbor any sort of actual homicidal thoughts about Americans. Besides, saying "nuke Mecca to get back at Muslim terrorists" is like saying "nuke Bethlehem to get back at Catholic terrorists." Your real target should be the Vatican, no? (as a Catholic and a human being, I should be homicidally cross with you if you nuked either--FYI)

Mecca is a symbol for the Islamists more than a training center. Sure, there are some nasty people in Mecca, but if you were to actually launch a retaliatory nuclear strike (and I'm not necessarily advocating such a thing), you would do much more to lessen the future threat to America by nuking Tehran, Damascus, Qom, or even Riyadh.

No offense to the omnipotent deity, but God isn't the one giving terrorists guns and money. In fact, He's been helping them very little of late, if you look at the destruction of the Taliban and something like 2/3 of Al Qaeda's ante bellum leadership. So, if we're feeling vengeful, why not go after the cities full of people who _are_ helping them?

Personally, I'm against nuclear retaliatory strikes in such a scenario. We have the means, so I think a much more effective method of deterring aggression is not to slaughter civilians (these people don't care about their civilian populations) but to wipe out the national government and the military of the target state. The civilians in many cases may prove willing to work with us, e.g. Iraqi Kurds and Shi'ites. This wouldn't work against a state with ICBMs or second strike capability, but otherwise I think would be great. Why trade city for city when you can trade for the entire state structure instead?

"I understand the implications for hitting Mecca - I just don't see the problem with it"

Lawyerchik is even stupider than I thought possible. Aside from the deaths of innocents, the evaporation of any claim the United States would have to moral legitimacy in the eyes of the world (and most of its own citizens), the virtual certainty that several American cities would be destroyed in the years--or weeks--following, and the fact that such an action would only embolden the terrorists, who would have irrefutable proof that the U.S. was engaged in a war against Islam instead of a war with Islamist terrorists--

aside from those problems, there would be no problem at all.

Chuck is right to describe the impulse behind such a suggestion as fascistic. It is the ultimate expression of the belief that might makes right--that might is right.

Guys, you're missing the point. The land currently fought over by Palestinians, Arabs and whatnot was given to the nation of Israel by God in a divine land grant that predates just about every other claim. Wars were waged to give them that land, and there will be no peace until they have it back. Read your Old Testament.

Frankly, if bombing Mecca would effect that result, I'd issue a directive to peacefuls to get out within a reasonable period of time and then bomb the whole thing into a crater.

And since when do we need to give a rat's rear end about what the rest of the world thinks about our morals? A) That ship has already left the harbor, and B) I don't want this country to cede anymore of its sovereignty to world opinion than has already happened. In case you missed it, people leave their own countries to come here, not the other way around. The worst thing that could happen to our country is that we would adopt the standards of the rest of the world!!

For anyone who either wasn't born or wasn't old enough to remember this broadcast, Gordon Sinclair's words bear repeating:

This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth.

Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.

When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When distant cities are hit by earthquakes, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped.

The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans. I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States Dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tristar, or the Douglas DC-10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American planes?

Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon — not once, but several times — and safely home again.

You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here.

When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the American who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke.

I can name you 5,000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake.

Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those.

**************

The liberalization of American society is directly responsible for our weakened defense and gradual deterioration. If radical Islam continues to pose a threat, then the United States needs to take whatever measures are necessary to eliminate it and its proponents. I'm tired of the lack of outcry from the "not radical" Muslims who are content to live and work in the U.S., vote in Iraq and refuse to speak against what they should be opposing if they are, in fact, peaceful.