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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (152971)	11/30/2004 1:21:18 PM
From: michael97123	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Thats a good point regarding shiaa and non-arabs re: mecca. I am searching for a deterrence strategy because i am scared. I am looking to find something to prevent this from occurring. The left on this thread would have us exit the mideast even for some if it meant the elimination of israel and for that matter arab oil as well. Others are yelling about attacking iran today. I am looking to deter as we did with the soviets and whether it be iran or the non-state al quaeda. I guess your answer precludes any possibility that bin laden would not want to initiate events that destroyed mecca or that he even would welcome that outcome for the reasons you state re: shiaa and non arab moslems. So i am back to secret diplomacy as in pre red phone days with the soviets. 1963 was almost the end of the world. The disadvantage today is that bin laden is more reckless. The advantage is that we have cold war history to use as an example of how to deal with bin laden. No first use of wmds is a good first step to take albeit secretly by both parties. So what you get is world war with any and all weapons except nukes. Frankly i dont know if this is what bin laden wants in his assymetric war. If he breaks such an understanding what do we do then, annihilate that part of afganistan/pakistan he is in? I have never seen a situation which our situation is so precarious. Our only believable deterrent becomes the unthinkable in such a scenario. And that is to give them back their assymetric warfare right in their face and thats the destruction of all muslim resistance with carpet bombing and wmds of all types if nothing else works. IF this Doomsday scenario is to be employed it would have to be completely believable to al quaeda. Something in place that cant change when administrations change. This is just a horror to try to think this true because i thought destroying mecca was horrific enough, but now i am talking about threatening the unthinkable as a response to an al quaeda wmd attack on us. mike

To: one_less who wrote (152971)	11/30/2004 4:44:30 PM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Is he still going on about deterrence? He doesn't seem to understand that you can't "deter" terrorists like you can a nation state. He doesn't understand that some of the deterrents he was proposing would only serve to inflame the entire world population of Muslims, even those who normally are against terrorism. Maybe using an example that he can understand would be helpful. Q: Did excommunication threats by the Pope stop the IRA? No, they did not. Q: Would bombing (or threatening to) the Vatican as a "deterrent" against Catholic terrorism reduce such terrorism? No, it would simply up the ante.