Raising the Stakes for the Terrorists

Representative Tom Tancredo made a reckless comment today that should terrorists succeed in hitting the US with nuclear weapons, a possible avenue for retribution could be destroying Mecca, Islam's holiest site. While this is an incredibly stupid and ignorant comment - true Muslims abhor terrorism as much as we do; by his logic, Britain should have considered bombing the Vatican in response to IRA bombings; etc. - he does hit upon an important point.

One of the reasons terrorists are so difficult to stop is they have no country, no army, no substantial assets of any kind against which to retaliate for attacks. The United States can prevent other countries from attacking with serious threats of in-kind retribution. Any country daring to hit the US with a nuclear weapon would face immediate vaporization. Any dictator stupid enough to blow up an American airliner will be undoubtedly bombed and subjected to sanctions until the perpetrators were dead or in custody. Any government bold enough to crash commercial aircraft into American skyscrapers would soon find US Marines at their doorstep and their country occupied.

Not only does our current enemy not have a substantial infrastructure against which to retaliate, he welcomes death, emasculating virtually all of our deterrents against carrying out a suicide attack. Carrying out an attack carries no cost to a suicide bomber. While we are slowly but surely winning the war on terror, dismantling terrorist networks, mowing down their brainwashed conscripts, removing their safe havens, and drying up their funding, we freely admit to the morbid fact that suicide attacks will continue occurring and taking innocent civilian lives.

This does not have to be so. Just because our current traditional deterrents do not apply, that does not mean none exist.

To deter suicide attackers we must make these so-called 'martyrs' pay a dear price for their actions and look to other countries who have faced this problem for inspiration. Israel used to have a standing policy that the homes, and sometimes neighborhoods, of suicide bombers would be immediate razed by army bulldozers.

While this clearly was not enough, these are the kinds of policies about which we should be having a national debate. Would the American people be willing to support a policy whereby the families of any suicide attacker would be detained, or worse? Can we live with our conscience doing something that atrocious? Can we live with our conscience knowing that if we do not resort to these kinds of tactics, more innocent Westerners will be slaughtered?

In this most unconventional war, we must ask ourselves: what honor are we paying to the memories and sacrifices of all the men and women who fought and died to establish and protect the freedom and safety of the Western world if we voluntarily choose to let a dishonorable band of thugs single-handedly chip away at their accomplishments because we are too timid to do what it takes to stop them?