Deterent to Islamic Extremist Terrorist Nuke Attack?

[IntrepidIsMe]

As I said, if we were attacked with nuclear means, the whole Western world would be behind us, including the UN. If nearly the entire world was threatening war with one country, they'd stop.

[Theresa]

[Founder]

[Hitchhiker]

If an attack occurred, then the reaction would be very similar to the aftermath of September 11, 2001, or to the terrorist bombings in London. The public would be in shock. People would be dead, dying, or wounded. Buildings would be damaged, an economy would be damaged, and there would be people who want to take credit.

There is no viable solution to an aftermath of any sort. It makes no sense to go searching for retaliation where one cannot find any. If a terrorist organization used another country's arsenal, that country would come under scrutiny. The United Nations would become involved. In the case of a country that hasn't signed the non-proliferation treaty, things would indeed become very sticky. But the short story is that the country would now have almost no international clout of any sort. Someone may want to stand up to the United States, but no nation wants to try and be defiant after such an attack. No, they would indubitably apologize profusely and try to absolve themselves of responsibility.

The only solution is, like any crime, one of prevention. Build better anti-ballistics technology with faster reaction times. Better intelligence agencies (that actually communicate with one another) to track the movement of anything terrorist related. Make it worth a nation's while to suck up to the United States instead of treating with terrorists.

Right now, those nations that are funding terrorists are doing it because they are confident the United States cannot do anything to stop them. Bombing them won't help, however, because negative reinforcement introduces a feud into the equation. Instead, make the nations realize that they cannot survive economically if they continue to promote the wellbeing of terrorists. The global economy is where wars are being fought every day.

With nations realizing that funding terrorists is economic suicide, they will stop. Perhaps this won't be an effective solution for long, but it may help. It is certainly better than bombing, which will not only anger the target nation but the nation of those around it (who wants refugees, really?) and other nations, as well as the United Nations. The invasion of Iraq caused a lot of controversy, and I wonder how many times a controversy could be repeated before it becomes habit.

To conclude, I will now postulate a question. What if, like in 9/11, the attack comes from within? What if terrorists use the United States' nuclear arsenal against the United States? Obviously one would not bomb the United States (we call that 'absurdism' and it can lead to reality television). Yet the outcome would be the same.

[Republican_Man]

[Hitchhiker]

[Theresa]

[IntrepidIsMe]

I doubt any appeasment would take place if the US was attacked on a nuclear scale.

We all understand what you're trying to say, but the price of what you're suggesting is too high. Can you imagine how much the rest of the world would detest the US? Here we are, claiming to not be willing to give in to terrorists, that we're better than them. But, we go off and attack them like they attacked us on September 11th. Rather hypocritical.

[Theresa]

Exactly. Go Aaron.

Let's reduce to a scale where you can still think about the person.


Person A, unbeknownst to, or in spite of the wishes of his family, murders seven members of Person B's family. For Person B to kill Person A in retaliation, he must first kill seven innocent members of Person A's family. Yeah, that's just the best thing I've ever heard.

[Republican_Man]

[Puck]

[Superman]

One thing that annoys me about the media sometimes (here in England) is the way they try to use WWII principals to deal with the problem. Terrorists are a problem and I believe they should face justice. What is the answer? I wish I knew.

During WWI and II, we knew who we were fighting - they wore uniforms. We knew what they wanted and we had a pretty good idea of what they intended to do to achieve their goals. Now, it's different. Whatever worked in WWII will probably not work now.

[Republican_Man]

[Lord Borg]

To bomb Mecca would be a mistake. It would simply just make the point the terrorst are saying about the usa. I dont know what we would do in retaliation to a nuclear attack, to be honest I dont think anyone does. but, bombing innocents is not the answer, and you coulndt warn anyone, as the terrorest would also have the warning, and attack us from their new location

[Jeremy]

RM, you said that Saudi Arabia doesn't fund them as much as Iran and so on. Actually, that is false. They support more terrorists and so on that most of the other countries. It's just that they support our governments by suppling us oil. So we won't go after them, as we cannot afford to. If they stopped our oil, our nations would be screwed, and the economy with them. It's a lot of our own money funding them, as we buy the oil, and some of that cash goes into funding terrorist networks.

And that's why we couldn't go around bombing the middle east, if not for any other reasons. They cut our oil, and we fall to bits. But if we get rid of our oil dependance, then we could have a lot more leeway to put pressure on them.

As for suggestions, I would recommend keeping known terrorists under survalence, and using them to locate others, and if it's a very important person, kill them by sniping them or something similar.

[webtaz99]

1. The "terrorists" will never stop, unless we uttlerly wipe out the very concept of Islam, as in destroying every copy of the Q'oran and killing everyone who's ever read it. Obviously not possible or desirable.

2. The "terrorists" do not need huge amounts of funding, nor elaborate suicide plans. Stifling their funding may help a little, and is worth the effort, but as long as they have the will to attack, they will have the means.

3. Because the "terrorists" will never stop, we must protect ourselves. This will mean going to what many people will call "extremes". Too bad. Maybe the softies need to go live somewhere else.

4. Sadly, the only way to fight "terrorists" abroad is send troops there. The ones who fight us are "terrorists". They ones who don't, aren't. The problem is, that only throws fuel on the fire.

5. Even the Prez realizes we will not have homeland security without "energy independence". If it weren't for our need for oil, we could happily ignore the Middle East and let them go on killing each other, like they have for centuries. If we had "put our foot down" as a nation back in the seventies "oil crisis", we could be running on fusion by now. Islamic extremist terrorism is a by-product of the oil industry.

[Republican_Man]

[Jeremy]

Taking out terrorists by killing them with snipers would result in far less colateral damage. There would be the few that were claimed not to be terrorists after (look at the Israeli attacks when they use missile strikes) but it would be better than bombing locations when people had left as they were warned.

[Republican_Man]

[webtaz99]

That goes right to the root of the problem. We are fighting an ideological war. And until we come up with some kind of "ideology detector", we can only identify our opponents when they act against us. And sadly, killing extremeists pro-actively just creates more extremeists.

And as far as "funding": I
f a single person decides to do so they can go to the US, get a job, save some money, and blow something up or go postal with an automatic weapon. It doesn't take millions.

I think our only reasonable option is to develop the technologies and techniques which will allow us to stop the actual attacks, and then share these with any government wishing to fight their own "terrorists".

There are two ways to win a war:
Remove the enemies' ability to fight.
Remove the enemies' will to fight.

We will NEVER be able to remove their will to fight.

[Republican_Man]

Funding for WMDs in the hands of terrorists If they were to set off a nuclear weapon, then they'd have to have had a SIGNIFICANT amount of funding
And we CAN win the WOT...It'll just take decades. Sure, ideology is the key, but you can beat it through other means--by getting RID of the terrorists. And doing that can significantly damage their ideoloical power as well.

[Pah-Wraith]

Guys,

you come up with suggestions like Bomb Tehran in Iran etc, but you fail to realise then you will probably be doing al-Qaeda and half of the other so-called Islamic Terrorist Groups a favour, in case you yet have failed to realise the Wahabis that tend to be the main Islamic extremists consider Iran to be a nation of Hypocrites and Non-Muslims, and you would be doing them a favour by wiping out the only country which is anti-Wahabi/Salafi. It's like wiping out the Vatican City when dealing with Protestants.

[Republican_Man]

[Pah-Wraith]

It supports the groups Hizbullah who oppose attacks on Civilians.

[Republican_Man]