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the statements were incredibly stupid.  It is obvious to the vast majority of the population.  They give a very skewed view of our objective in our war on terror.  They certainly deserve to be denounced with an apology.  However, I hope this does not happen.

I hope the far left does not choose to make a big deal about this.  Perhaps asking to much when points are seemingly easy to come by on this one, but I think sensationalizing this like the Durbin comments or the Newsweek story because could cause a major backlash in the Muslim world.

It is the equivelent of a Chinese official suggesting to nuke Jerusalem or the Vatican if the US intervenes in Tiawan.   It will bring nothing but further resentment and misunderstanding of cultures.  If we are truly interested in engaging the Muslim populations as we say, this is the very last way we want to approach it and possibly a huge hinderance to such a vital effort.

I would really think it would be for the best to just leave this one alone in  hopes it will not be magnified and become the next Newsweek incident.

Look, if Tancredo was trying to put out there some sort of "threat" that might get the attention of moderate leaders who don't agree with terrorism, he did a poor job.

I'd say that the United States should make it clear that any country that is implicated in the training, arming, or support of a person who unleashes a nuclear attack on this country will be harshly dealt with in kind.  I doubt that the folks in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and other nations want to be nuked, and it would give them cause and reason to go out and work to insure that terrorist cells did not get their hands on those materials.

If Tancredo really meant to lump all of Islam together as guilty of terrorism then he's done more than stick his foot in his mouth, he's swallowed the damn thing whole.

What he said is not as bad as it looks. He was, with no time to think, asked a very, very difficult question: what do you do if the US suffers a major nuclear attack, possibly with multiple warheads?

I mean, do you understand what that would do to this country? It would be nothing like anything that has ever happened, in history, anywhere. It could cripple the country forever.

So faced with that doomsday scenario, "more funding for border security" isn't going to cut it, especially when you have no economy, unemployment is at least 15%, there's inflation, massive electronic failures from the EMP, etc.

At that point, if you think the US is just going to sit around and cry, I have news for you. Tancredo, while he should not have said what he did, both indicated the type of response people would demand and the problems in planning such a response.

The problem with terrorists has always been that they cannot be deterred through conventional means, as a group like Al-Qaeda is not tied to one nation-state. HOWEVER, Bin Laden still has interests that require certain things-- i.e. a Caliphate cannot exist without Muslims to populate it.

If there is no Arab world, Bin Laden can't lead it. That's simple fact. During the Cold War, we were prepared to more or less destroy the world if attacked-- maybe if just our allies were attacked with conventional weapons. IF deterrence worked then, it could theoretically work in this case.

He should not have said this.

I hope this keep anyone from taking the man seriously.  Tom Tancredo is an embarrassment to conservatives and to the Republican Party.

won't make a big deal out of it. The deal has been made and is done, especially with rovegate in full roil.

If there were no other news, however...

The reaction is/was this: See, the right, instead of trying to win the war on terror is busy fanning the flames, and widening the divide. they are unfit to lead.

It won't be magnified because they were stupid comments that he won't stand behind. And, most importantly, like you suggest, the left has no interest in making a big deal out of it either because even just discussin those stupid statements hurts the country.

I would think that Rep. Tancredo, as a member of the House International Relations Committee, would have thought about this "hard question" before and been able to deliver more than a ham-handed answer.

I think there is some value in pointing out to Islamists that we could, in fact, wipe out a major portion of their religion.  He's right that that is a pressure point.  But threatening to do so on national television doesn't seem the way to go.

[TW's Comments] I think that those of us who are serious about the war - pro and con alike -have taken great pains to distinguish who we are fighting whether we call them "terrorists," "Islamofacists," "Islamicists," et. al. we have always and consistently stated that this is not a war against Muslims.

One of these days, hopefully soon, more people who like to call themselves conservative are going to wake up to reality about this.  Many of us Conservatives, and we are legitimate-with-a-capital-"C" Conservatives, have concluded it is the epitome of insidious political correctness to "take great pains" to separate "'terrorists,' 'Islamofacists,' 'Islamicists,' et. al." from the source: Islam.

This culture clash, or, as Sam Huntington would put it, this civilizational clash, has been ongoing for centuries.  It was only set aside from broad discussion during the Cold War.  Now, as if history does not exist, we dance around the truth while they kill us.  Not calling this what it really is smacks of a deep level buy-in to multiculturalism and diversity of which many are consciously unaware. Our society has been so thoroughly duped for the last 40 years or so that even bona-fide Conservatives are minions to the multicult.

Just give those folks we "liberated" some time.  They just haven't figured out how to properly hate us yet.

Find me a major conflict in the world today and it's better than a 50-50 bet that at least one of the participants kills in the name of Islam.  I don't care one whit for what horrors have been perpetrated in the name of Christianity in the past; yes, it is important to view history, but this is today.  Christianity just doesn't kill any more, except for the stray Eric Rudolph.  

I don't think anyone was killed over that NEA-Funded atrocity, "Piss Christ."  But splash a little wee-wee on a Koran, and look out!

As for what Tancredo said, I cannot believe we're even having this discussion.  Of course we'd nuke Mecca if we decided it became militarily advantageous to do so.  If it would make some of us feel better, we could, perhaps, call it "giving the House of Islam an x-ray."

Yeah, Thorley's always struck me as sooooo PC.

What color is the sky under your rock?

isn't interested in fannig the flames.  tancredo did it for us.  the left isn't interested letting this guy represent the US either.

speaking out against him is the best thing you can do b/c this WILL make it to the muslim world.  in an internet world where a guy in india can ebay his way to global markets, do we really think this is not going to make it to the Muslim world?

it will anger them & it will inflame them. & this time no one will be able to blame Newsweek for something the right is causing.

you guys have nutcases just as we do.  calling those nutcases out for their nonsense is the best we all can do.

i'm glad some of you are willing to call his stupidity for what it is.  but don't be timid about it.  if durbin was wrong, this guy went waaaaaay over the line.

this guy did embarrass the right & the US & made Bin Laden's job of recruiting a wee bit easier.

wow.   bomb mecca.  could you say something more horrific to muslims??  

my god.

I suppose you are uninterested in going over the various ridiculous comments Democratic Reps. have made over the last couple years? It's not as easy as it sounds to be on radio and asked a question where you have to respond immediately, and the situation presented you is almost unthinkable.

If you look at the entire discussion Tancredo actually showed good understanding of deterrence theory and international relations in general.

Also keep in mind that the US government's public policy during the Cold War was quite a bit more extreme than anything Tancredo said. If the Soviets invaded our European allies with conventional weapons, we would have first nuked their armies, and then if they nuked us back we would have basically blown up the world.

That was the policy of Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter in addition to GOP administrations.

So to say only "nutcases" would advocate striking civilian targets in retaliation is frankly erroneous. The US government ALREADY has that policy (ok, technically we did not target any Soviet civilians, but the "collateral" damage from our strike would have resulted in near 100% fatalities-- including such humane moves as nuking farms, as they could be "alternate landing fields").

The Left wants controversy, that's why this is a story. They sure don't want anything like real discussion... I have not seen a single leftist offer their OWN answer the question posed.

And the Monday-morning QBs even have time to think their answers out.

Remarks like this are never condonable, but they do serve a purpose: they remind some of the more sensible people in Islam that the United States does have the power to do things like that, and that they should be worried about the possibility of the US being sufficiently destabilized in the event of a massive terrorist attack that someone or some group could take control of the US government and actually launch such an attack.

"Look what happened when people claiming to represent Islam attacked the United States and destroyed a couple buildings and killed 3,000 people-- the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.  What would they do if people claiming to represent Islam destroyed a major city and killed 3,000,000 people?"

I can't understand what you wrote, or why you replied to my statement.

You think the best thing the left could do is make a huge deal out of his statements? Why?

Condemn, dismiss and be done. He's been taken to task by the right, what purpose could making this a big deal possibly serve? None.

of a "massive nuclear attack"? I can, unfortunatley, believe that terrorists could beg, steal or cobble together a small, low-yield atomic weapon, similar to what we used in WWII on Japan. Maybe they could even get a couple such devices*. So the US could suffer what Japan did in Aug 1945 (which would be quite ghastly of course). But for a "major nuclear attack" you'd need a major nuclear power: Russia or China (or Britain or France, but it's not conceivable that either of them are going to nuke us).

* Let's also remember that targets in Europe, Russia, India and Israel will be in the terrorist nuclear cross hairs too. They will use any nukes they get very quickly but carefully. NYC or DC might be target #1 but I would expect London, Rome, New Delhi, Tel Aviv or Moscow (depending on which terrorists are involved) would be target #2.

...it appears YOUR rock is a bit cloudy.

I'm not familiar with Thorley's writings, but I did sense a kindred Conservative was word-smithing.  I wanted to make it clear this PC stuff has been hammered into so many minds that it is almost ubiquitous.

That is why I wrote this:

Our society has been so thoroughly duped for the last 40 years or so that even bona-fide Conservatives are minions to the multicult.

It appears we all have been programmed to some extent, or we would not shrink from calling a serious problem by its proper name.  I'm as guilty as anyone...and I hope people would call me on it when I falter.

My friends do quite often.  I guess deprogramming from this cult takes a village.  

It is going to take a lot more practice for us to learn take off our blinders and shoot straight again as a nation, a society and a culture.  Right now, our aim is horrible.

"Islamists, terrorists and extremists," oh my! And Mohammed Atta was just an "undocumented disgruntled person."

is bait and fearmongering and does not deserve a responce other then to deflect to the idea of deterring such an attack.  Which I believe is certainly within our means and the ultimate goal in the first place.  The question may be valid for a general or commander, but certainly not a member of the House.  I would also say Soviet comparison doesn't apply since we are not fighting an army.  In fact, we are trying to avoid such a conflict by going after extremists.

To just throw out something like that to a widly extreme hypothetical question that he has no real business answering anyway is just plain old stupid.  It gives the impression that we are at war with Muslims.  Which we are not.  We are at war with terror.  Until it reaches the point of large scale sectarian war, that we pray it doesn't, fanning flames to that end is the last thing we want to do.

thing to say.

Sure he may have been asked a hard question, but bombing Mecca hardly qualifies as a good answer.

speaking out against him is the best thing you can do

There would be political points to be scroed by hammering on this, but it is something best left to die as quietly as possible for the sake of the war on terror.  We want to win people away form extremism.  Comments like this will push them towards it.  Giving them more attention anly gives more credibility to the idea that this is US policy.

Hopefully Rove and SCOTUS can just drown them out.

. . .would be like reacting to being stung by a bee by running around with a big stick and whacking every hive within a quarter mile:  you've done nothing to remove the capacity of the bees that did sting you to sting you further, and you've seriously ticked off a whole bunch of other bees that weren't inclined to sting you before.  Mecca is literally the last target that anyone would want to nuke unless they wanted to ignite total war between the US and the Islamic world--which is why I fear that if OBL gets a nuke, it's going straight to Mecca.

As for what Tancredo said, I cannot believe we're even having this discussion.  Of course we'd nuke Mecca if we decided it became militarily advantageous to do so.  If it would make some of us feel better, we could, perhaps, call it "giving the House of Islam an x-ray."

No, we wouldn't.  This is not a war against Islam, and we are not religious terrorists that target civilian targets for shock value.

it is the epitome of insidious political correctness to "take great pains" to separate "'terrorists,' 'Islamofacists,' 'Islamicists,' et. al." from the source: Islam.

This is simple religious bigotry.

It's also strategically stupid. You want to turn the War on Terror into a War on Islam? There are 1.2 billion Muslims and counting. Do you want to conquer every country from Senegal to Indonesia and forcibly convert them all? Or would you prefer to just exterminate them?

I'm too tired to parse, but let's stay away from going after one of the major monotheisms, hm? It's a friendly warning.

I'm pretty sure the rest of the world understands our "x-ray" powers. I'm not sure how destroying Mecca makes them afraid of us. Those who are in Mecca will be afraid, then they will die.

Those who are not there would just be pissed and join up in the cause against us. Don't underestimate the power of religion! Extremists quickly believe they can die for their cause, especially if they believe they will be floating on a cloud somewhere when they die.

And it wouldn't be a very civil thing to do, PC or not.

MSE, thats a scenario I hadnt considered at all - thanks, no sleep tonight. :P

it is brilliant though. OBL is as religious as a packet of mixed nuts. He has no reverence for Mecca apart from its value as a prop in his designs. It makes sense that hed get more strategic benefit from nuking Mecca than New York, since the former woudl demonstrably bring him closer to the Caliphate.

No we wouldn't

...but get back to me after they've set off nukes here, OK?  What part of "militarily advantageous" was unclear?

I'm wondering if being hypnotized by low-level PC causes selective reading disorders.

A lot of what I'm seeing here smacks of not realizing that this is not some new problem.  The West has been fighting and refighting some flavor of this war for what, 1400 years?  It only took 12 years for the US to have its first war with the Ottoman Empire.

It is just beyond me how today, with all of the information that is out there about history (that is just a Google search or two away for those who were indoctrinated by public education), we fantastically euphemize our problem.  Maybe we need a 12-step program or something.  

I'm a big fan of Sam Huntington (Clash of Civilizations and Who Are We?) Even he is somewhat politically correct in his commentary in this interview [http://www.digitalnpq.org/archive/2003_fall/giddens_huntington.html]:

The extent to which communal violence in today's world involves Muslims is striking: The Economist identified 32 major conflicts going on in the world in the year 2000, and if you look at those 32 conflicts more than two-thirds involve Muslims fighting other Muslims or Muslims fighting non-Muslims. Hence it seems to me a high priority for Europe and America is to recognize what they have in common and to try to work out a common strategy for dealing with the threats to their society and security from militant Islam.

I would add that a strategy which allows for preemptive war against urgent, immediate and serious threats is absolutely essential for the US and other Western powers in this period. Our enemies-primarily the militant Islam, but also other groups-cannot be deterred, that much is obvious, so it is essential-if they are preparing an attack against us-that we attack first.

"Militant Islam" is not separate from Islam's body politic. It continues to dwell within and "moderate" forces are apparently impotent to put a stop to it. When that bully down the street has his actions protected or ignored by his parents, whatever the reason, the whole family is "the problem."

So, a huge question militarily is who or what do you attack when there is no Caliphate and sending a cruise missile into an aspirin factory or "up a camel's butt" is far to wimpy a response or pre-emption.  And until we stop semantically boxing ourselves in, we're going to leave ourselves at a disadvantage.  I just hope the repurcussions are not as deadly as I fear.

The problem is not this:

The West has been fighting and refighting some flavor of this war for what, 1400 years?

Or this:

"Militant Islam" is not separate from Islam's body politic. It continues to dwell within and "moderate" forces are apparently impotent to put a stop to it. When that bully down the street has his actions protected or ignored by his parents, whatever the reason, the whole family is "the problem."

To my mind, these are perfectly tenable positions. I might argue or quibble, but it does not overly upset me to have this discussion here.

The problem is this: Calling for an attack on a civilian population center solely on the basis of its religious significance would be like calling for a tac nuke strike on Vatican City. There's no possible military advantage to it, and it's done purely as a form of religious warfare. Which we're not technically formally involved in.

It would appear that some Conservatives actually find nothing wrong with an elected official openly stating that we should consider nuking holy sites in response to the actions of a few extremists.  Sure there are a billion Muslims and only about 1/4 of 1% of them could be considered "militant"  but let's have an elected official suggest to the other 99% that if those extremists do something truly evil we'll respond by being EVEN MORE EVIL!

I don't want the Democrats to make political hay out of this.  I want Tancredo to completely retract these comments and I want the GOP leadership to make a official statement saying that such actions are simply beyond consideration by this government.  

THIS IS DAMAGING.  THIS is the stuff that extremists can use to convince people that they are fighting a religous war and that our government is at war with Islam.

as this really (REALLY) should not be a partisan issue.

Despite the fact that he was only placing a hypothetical that any reasonable person can see was a 'thinking out loud' that he probably regrets saying himself, the question is not how this plays in our domestic politics but how it plays on Al Jazeera ...

This is a U.S. Congressman speaking, not some 28 analyst speaking at some conference, asking a question, where multiple people react to his comments delving into the hypothetical and discussing what makes sense and doesn't in the thoughts.

It does not serve America well to provide such soundbites to Al Jazeera.  The President and other key leaders in the Administration frequently state how this is not a war with Islam ... that Islam is a "peaceful religion" being perverted by fanatics ... Do we reasonably expect that most of the world knows how to place into context the remarks of Tangredo in terms of their power (or lack of it) in the political direction of the nation?  In terms of public diplomacy, he's thrown a softball right down the center of the plate for those wishing to damage America.

It is sad that there was not an almost immediate bipartisan statement against the remarks with Tancredo standing there for the press conference with a contrite look on his face to follow the leadership's comments with a more intelligent statement than his off-the-cuff comments.

We should be looking at these comments in terms of how the nation's enemies can use them against America, not be so focused on internal ideological battles that this passes us by.

We are at war. A war in which words are critical weapons.  Tancredo gave the enemy ammunition ...

admit I have been more interested in the Supreme court nomination, but has the congressman backed off his statements, or made any kind of apology to date?

His statement was foolish and dumb, and I hope he has sense enough to realize that now.

Although given the hypothetical question he was asked, I rank this more up there with the dumb things said by politicians (for reference see most recently Biden and Santorum, and pretty much anything Teddy Kennedy has said over the course of his career).

I think he was simply allowing an extreme hypothetical to go to its logical conclusion.  However as a politician you have to be more circumspect with your words.

to say something incredibly stupid myself. I classify Mr. Tancredo's statement as over the top. Similar to the recent statement by a Chinese general, http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/07/14/china.taiwan.nuclear.reut/,
that was later retracted by 'official' government source.

Everyone goes over the top once in awhile. But officials of the US government should try to moderate their remarks, especially given the number of foreign organizations looking for evidence against us.

Here is a random link to show the results of Tancredo's impulsiveness:

Turkish Weekly

Do a search on google news for tancredo and see all the sparks he has unleashed.

To mix metaphors: once the horse is out of the barn it is too late to apologize.

This statement can be used by the Islamicists who hate us much more readily than Durbins comments (although I think Durbin was an idiot too).

It is also easily taken out of context to make it even more offensive (not that in context it is a good answer, but at least in context you know he was responding to a devastating hypothetical).

There really isn't a lot of defense for stupid remarks like this.

I wish we could figure out an innoculation for foot in mouth desease, and every congressman and government official could get it before assuming office.

Yowouldno,

I am not crazy about individual congressmen selecting military targets and I agree with posters above that our government has to be  circumspect when talking about potential military responses.  I don't want to see Tancredo marginalized by this (maybe he already is) since it is healthy to have at least one congressman actually naming the enemy--islamofascism.  And we are at war with radical islam, not all islam.

Still...it does occur to ask the question:  If the islamofascist, who are our enemy, really don't care if they die, in fact look at suicide in the proceess of killing the rest-of-us as desirable, and if they don't care that their own civilian populations are killed in the proccess of trying to kill all the rest-of-us, well if they don't care if "people"--them or us--are killed, do they care about a "place"?  The "place" being Mecca.  I don't know, does anyone know?  My guess would be that they don't care if Mecca is destroyed as a retaliatory attack. But if they do care, then it would be worth knowing that.

I think this is where Cong. Tancredo was going with these remarks.

I agree Bee, that it is not so simple as just saying that Tom Tancredo misspoke.  He should have been more circumspect.  But here is the problem.:

It is not always clear how to respond to smaller-scale attacks.  So how to respond to a massive nuclear attack on our homeland.  What was the Russian response to Belsan?  I don't think there was a response.  The Madrid bombings--no military response by Spain (other than to try to catch the perpetrators) and then quit Iraq.  Part of the problem here is that the Islamofascist enemy has probably concluded that other than finding the specific perpetrators of the plot and punishing them (if they haven't already killed themselves in the process) most of the time not much else will happen.  The US response to 911 of regime change in Afghanastan was remarkable.

Tancredo, I think, is searching for some kind of deterrent threat.  

 Re: If the islamofascist, who are our enemy, really don't care if they die, in fact look at suicide in the proceess of killing the rest-of-us as desirable

I do not believe this is the case at all. Yes, some specific individuals may be willing to die for their cause-- but is that really unusual? We expect such a willingness from our soldiers too, everyone does! But the leadership has certainly shown no evidence of suicidal tendencies. Osama Bin Laden has not rushed off to sacrifice his life for his cause. Nor have his lieutenants, whom we have, after all, taken alive.

we do not ask our soldiers to strap bombs on themselves and enter buildings/buses/places to blow themselves up along with the stated enemy.

However I do agree that they aren't all suicidal.  As a matter of fact there were intercepted letters indicating the fact that they were having trouble recruiting for suicide missions.

I also think the fact that some of the bombings they carry out are set bombs, and not suicide bombs.  The advantage of the suicide bomb is that you can in general get a bomb someplace where it can do a lot of damage without rousing much suspicion.

that there are major differences (morally too) between what we ask of our soldiers and what a suicide bomber is being asked to do. nevertheless there are occasionally military missions with so little chance of success that they may be properly termed "suicide missions"

My point however is that we should not assume that these people (and certainly not the leaders) have no will or desire to survive and are therefore not amenable to any other corrective than full scale genocide.

. . .that when I floated this scenario before, it was mostly dismissed by other posters who--from past observation--I suspect are looking at the problem from a distance and not from a deep understanding of the players involved:  I got a couple of answers that amounted to "I can't believe he'd be that much of a hypocrite."

I do, and I fear the possible outlets for that hypocrisy.

especially since I'm a bigger target of that hypocrisy than most. :P I was very relieved that the Battle for Najaf turned out teh way it did - and solely because of the wisdom of the allied forces. The defenders of Najaf, so to speak, would have welcomed a leveling of the shrine of Ali.

but what about his followers?  The rank and file Al Qaeda, do you think this would be an acceptable tactic to them?  Would they actually do it if he told them to?

I realize, of course, that you probably don't have direct insight into the minds of his followers.