Foehammer’s Anvil

By now you’ve heard about this via CNN.com:

Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo’s campaign stood by his assertion that bombing holy Muslim sites would serve as a good “deterrent” to prevent Islamic fundamentalists from attacking the United States, his spokeswoman said Friday.

“This shows that we mean business,” said Bay Buchanan, a senior Tancredo adviser. “There’s no more effective deterrent than that. But he is open-minded and willing to embrace other options. This is just a means to deter them from attacking us.”

On Tuesday, Tancredo warned a group of Iowans that another terrorist attack would “cause a worldwide economic collapse.” IowaPolitics.com recorded his comments.

“If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina,” Tancredo said. “That is the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they would otherwise do. If I am wrong, fine, tell me, and I would be happy to do something else. But you had better find a deterrent, or you will find an attack.”

Tom Casey, a deputy spokesman for the State Department, told CNN’s Elise Labott that the congressman’s comments were “reprehensible” and “absolutely crazy.” Tancredo was widely criticized in 2005 for making a similar suggestion.

And if you look at the comments here and here, you will note that 85% of the respondents seem glued to the idea of a “waving flowers in the meadows” approach to Islam.

Yeah, right, like that’s ever worked.

I am a big fan of author Orson Scott Card. Card is one of the best writers that the United States has ever produced and he lives comfortably on the east coast. You might recognize the name of his best known book which has spawned a long series of sequels, Ender’s Game.

Well, it just so happens that the last time Tancredo made a similar suggestion as in the above news report, I made this comment on Jihad Watch on July 18, 2005:

Yada, yada, yada.

I can promise you — if even one WMD goes off in the United States, the bombing of Mecca would just be the start.

How much patience do you all really think the United States has as a people? It is great but finite.

A nuclear attack on American soil or any American possession would ignite a conflict that hasn’t been seen on this planet since WW2 — and Islam has been asking for a reckoning for too long. I say if they are truly barbaric enough to strike at the one Superpower with such ferocity, then we will be well within our rights to exact a punishment that should be sufficient enough to make them wish they’d never been born.

(Warning Spoiler Ahead for those who might want to read Orson Scott Card’s writings) There’s a book called ‘Ender’s Game’ — in that book the hero, Ender, is confronted by a vicious bully that just simply will never give the hero peace or a sense of security. This bully sadly underestimates the hero, thinking him weak-willed and cowardly. Ultimately the hero strikes out brutally and swiftly, killing his enemy. And the reasoning is simple — you don’t just maim a deadly enemy. You destroy it so it can never seek you out again or go after your friends or loved ones. You cut out the cancer, basically.

Surely not by coincidence, a few months back I completed reading another part of the Ender Series published in 2005, ‘Shadow of the Giant’, and wouldn’t you know it, when I thought I was sitting down to get away from the drudgery and evil of Islam in my spare time, I was confronted inside the covers of that book by Islam! Chapter Twelve is even titled ‘Allahu Akbar’.

Without giving away the plot of any part of the Ender Series, I can say this much, and get to what I have been leading up to in a long-winded fashion. In the future of our Earth that is the setting for the geo-political science fiction of the Ender Universe, Mecca and Medina have long ago been reduced to nuclear-radiated slag heaps and this epiphany is unveiled for the reader in ‘Shadow of the Giant’ without fanfare or comment; simply matter-of-fact.

Tancredo is not crazy or stupid. He is brave and wise, and we would do well to stop allowing members of the State Department to toss derisive remarks at him as if he is some childish lunatic, especially while they are under the sway of a President George W. Bush, who apparently doesn’t have the sense, courage or brains enough to launch the overdue series of attacks upon Iran’s nuclear ambitions to prevent any such need for retaliation such as Tancredo describes or author Card predicts.

Frankly, to everyone that believes it insane and wrong to warn the Islamic world that we would indeed strike back at Medina and Mecca in the event of a WMD attack upon the United States of America, I have but this to say: you are spineless and stupid and you should also return your paychecks if you are on the U.S. government’s payroll.

I’m sorry, but did you expect me to be nice about this and just fall in line? You know me better than that by now.

And yes, I do happen to cast a long shadow. I love that bit of irony this evening.