Tancredo = moron
I know, I know...I'm late to the party. But, in case you missed it, Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado made some insane remarks early last week. Actually, insane at best, dangerous and irresponsible at worst:
A Colorado congressman told a radio show host that the U.S. could "take out" Islamic holy sites if Muslim fundamentalist terrorists attacked the country with nuclear weapons.Wow.
Rep. Tom Tancredo made his remarks Friday on WFLA-AM in Orlando, Fla. His spokesman stressed he was only speaking hypothetically. ...
"Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites," Tancredo answered.
"You're talking about bombing Mecca," Campbell said.
"Yeah," Tancredo responded.
The congressman later said he was "just throwing out some ideas" and that an "ultimate threat" might have to be met with an "ultimate response."
Has this been taken out of context? Are Tancredo's words being spun and distorted? Nope. Tancredo actually defended himself in the Denver Post:
Many critics of my statements have characterized them as "offensive," and indeed they may have offended some. But in this battle against fundamentalist Islam, I am hardly preoccupied with political correctness, or who may or may not be offended. Indeed, al-Qaeda cares little if the Western world is "offended" by televised images of hostages beheaded in Iraq, subway bombings in London, train attacks in Madrid, or Americans jumping to their death from the Twin Towers as they collapsed.The problems in these sentiments are so legion that I could write a whole essay on them and still not have covered everything. Three key things to note from this quoted passage of his op-ed. First, he tries to pass off his insanity as straight-talk, as not bowing to political correctness. Then he tries to demostrate that his remarks are no worse than Al-Qaeda's. Of course, any 10 year old with half-way decent parents knows that two wrongs don't make a right. But, even beyond that, he comments are offensive to ALL Muslims, moderate or otherwise, whereas Al-Qaeda speaks for a very, very small minority of extremist Muslims. Tancredo's willingness to justify his hateful rhetoric on the basis of similar rhetoric from extremists belies a disdain for all Muslims.
Few can argue that our current approach to this war has deterred fundamentalists from killing Westerners - nor has it prompted "moderate" Muslims and leaders of Muslim countries to do what is necessary to crack down on the extremists in their midst who perpetuate these grisly crimes.
That being the case, perhaps the civilized world must intensify its approach.
Does that mean the United States should be re-targeting its entire missile arsenal on Mecca today? Does it mean we ought to be sending Stealth bombers on runs over Medina? Clearly not.
But should we take any option or target off the table, regardless of the circumstances? Absolutely not, particularly if the mere discussion of an option or target may dissuade a fundamentalist Muslim extremist from strapping on a bomb-filled backpack, or if it might encourage "moderate" Muslims to do a better job cracking down on extremism in their ranks.
Second, he completely ignores the assistance we've received from our Islamic allies, as Hugh Hewitt points out:
But there are also governments like those in Eygpt, Jordan, and Pakistan that are providing us enormously valuable assistance in the war, governements which come under huge pressure from their fundamentalist Muslim populations to stop assisting the "crusaders."Lastly, the notion that threatening to bomb non-military, holy sites would dissuade potential terrorists is completely insane. Either they believe we will bomb those places and now they have a pretty valid reason for wanting to stop us via force, or they don't believe us and just get angry at us for being so hateful. The result in either case is that they are MORE motivated to attack us, not less. How Tancredo thinks his ideas are deterrents is beyond me.
Tancredo made all of their jobs more difficult, and ours as well, by sounding exactly like a Christian jihadist would sound, even though it is clearly contrary to Christian teachings to threaten retaliation against non-combatants even in a just war.
Think I'm being soft on terror? Think Tancredo's notions on getting tougher in our rhetoric on the war on terror is the right thing to do? Ok, find me some other leading, serious, and credible conservative who thinks so. As Hugh Hewitt points out, noted "hawks" like Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz have never used this kind of rhetoric. What about a Jonah Goldberg or William Kristol? A Victor Davis Hansen, Andrew Sullivan, or George Will? Nope, nope, nope, nope, and nope. Find me one. I don't think you can.
I've come across a range of opinions, though, on the right-side of the blogosphere. Captain Ed had a must-read post on the initial comments. Even Michelle Malkin thinks Tancredo should have retracted his inital remarks (though, as usual, she tries to spin it as not as bad as what libs have said). Baldilocks on the other hand tries to rationalize, rather poorly, that Tancredo's comments aren't what it sounds like. Then he tries to rationalize further, even more poorly:
Mr. Hewitt says also that nuking Mecca would hurt us in the War on Terror with peace-loving Muslims. That is, however, true.Wow...that's even worse reasoning than Tancredo uses. Baldilocks seems to be saying that in the event of a terrible attack on the U.S., that because we'd be hurt and thus we wouldn't care who we hurt in retaliation (which in itself is ludicrous) and because we have the most nukes in the world that it would be ok to nuke Mecca (or anywhere else, if I understand Baldilocks correctly). That's like saying if I get beat up on the way to work, I should go home and grab one of my guns and shoot the next guy on the street that I see who looks like the guy that beat me up. But that would be ok because I was hurt and have lots of guns. Good rationale. But I digress...
Problem is that, in such a situation, many Americans would be past the point of caring. And we have a lot more nukes than any entity on Earth, governmental or otherwise. And that is why a dirty nuke in DC, New York, here in LA, etc. would hurt Muslims far more than it would hurt Americans.
On the theme of analogies, what Tancredo is advocating is not ANY different than if a member of the British Parliment said, during their troubles with IRA bombings, that the UK should napalm the Vatican in retaliation for a particularly egregious attack. No different.
I hope that the majority of the millions and billions of Muslims in the world realize that despite Tancredo's position in our government that this fool does not remotely speak for Americans or this nation. Like Hewitt says, serious people in our government are interested in victory in the war on terror, not a war on Islam. On the other hand, "Congressman Tancredo is interested in, well, Congressman Tancredo."
posted by Q at 7/25/2005 12:43:00 AM
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