Unless this threat is neutralized, we ain't seen nothin' yet.
Well, here we agree, only our strategy is vastly different. Now tell me, if Osama bin Laden had been capable of smuggling a 20-kiloton nuclear device into New York Harbor on September 11, do you think he would have hesitated? I don't think so.
There is only one way to deal with these kinds of people, only one message they understand and it is to give them such a pounding that they will remember it for 1,000 years.
I hear you when you speak of weapons proliferation. That is why we must immediately bring Russia and the other former Soviet Republics into NATO. The price? The nuclear arsenal and all chemical, biological and nuclear scientists fall under joint Russian-NATO supervision. That means NATO handles security. Whether they would ever agree, I don't know. Given enough incentive, maybe.
For the rest, nuclear weapons are not so easy to construct as many think. It costs a lot of money, a lot of time, and takes scientific brilliance to pull off. The key is going to be in the end keeping state power or private wealth out of the hands of terrorists. How do we do that? Well, we cut off their funds and destroy the states that would support them. Not simple, but your solution will never work. The terrorists will laugh and wait until they have acquired nuclear weapons. At that point, the holocaust in store would be far worse than what might happen now.
Incidentally, I think you are wrong. One of the chief reasons America is in this mess right now is allowing:
1. the November 4, storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, hostage crisis lasting 444 days until January 20, 1981: 52 hostages;
2. the October 23, 1983 truck bombing of the Beirut Marine barracks: 241 dead;
3. the March 1984 kidnapping and subsequent taped (sent to CIA) torture (skinning alive) and murder on June 3, 1985 of CIA Beirut Station Chief Lieutenant Colonel William F. Buckley;
4. the June 14, 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847: murder of Navy diver Robert Stethem;
5. the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro: murder of Leon Klinghoffer;
6. the December 21, 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland: 271 killed;
7. the February 26, 1993 World Trade Center bombing: 6 killed;
8. the June 25, 1996 bombing of the U.S. Air Force barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia: 19 killed;
9. the August 7, 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: 11 killed;
10. the August 7, 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya: 212 killed;
11. the October 10, 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole: 17 killed;
12. and also the December 24, 1994 failed hijacking of an Air Algeria jet, intended to be crashed into the Eiffel Tower: 4 killed and the terrorists -
...allowing all this to happen and not retaliating as we are now is how we got here. Your strategy has been tried and look where we are today. It will not work. Much as I personally loathe war - as I hope does everyone - we have no choice any longer. If we shirk this responsibility now the future is in greater danger than you can possibly imagine. |
