Republicans just don’t get it, do they? The War on Terrah is a war for the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. Terrorists attack us because they hate and fear us. They believe that this is a war against Islam and our goal is to destroy their religion.
So, George Bush starts the war by calling it a “crusade”. Muslim hearts and minds recall the centuries-long Christian Crusades against their forefathers. He continues by initially dubbing it “Operation Infinite Justice”. Muslim hearts and minds believe that only Allah can dispense infinite justice. The bombs fall on Baghdad even though the attacks came from Afghanistan. Muslim hearts and minds see the deaths of so many of their civilian brothers and sisters. Twenty-eight months later they still see the tanks and soldiers in their streets. Muslim hearts and minds see the construction of permanent US bases set to control the politics and assets of Muslim lands.
The hate builds in the Muslim hearts and minds as they see the torture pictures coming out of Abu Ghraib. It builds as they hear of the desecration of the Koran in Guantánamo. Muslim kids who were twelve or thirteen on September 11th, 2001, are now turning sixteen or seventeen this year, growing up with reason after reason to build their hate for America, seeing no reason why strapping on a bomb in service to Allah wouldn’t be an honorable thing to do for their religion.
Anyway, to add more fuel to the fire, we get the recent remarks of Colorado’s US Rep. Tom Tancredo (Republican from Littleton, CO) on a recent Florida radio talk show:
Talk show host Pat Campbell asked the Littleton Republican how the country should respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons.
“Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites,” Tancredo answered.
“You’re talking about bombing Mecca,” Campbell said.
“Yeah,” Tancredo responded.
The congressman later said he was “just throwing out some ideas” and that an “ultimate threat” might have to be met with an “ultimate response.”
Hmm, so how does that work, Tom? Say al-Qaeda takes out Littleton, Colorado, with a suitcase nuke, killing thousands of innocent people. We respond by taking out Mecca with a tactical nuke, killing the millions of innocent Muslims (a few of whom might not even be terrorists!) who make the yearly hajj to Mecca. They respond by taking out Denver. We respond by taking out… what exactly? Seems like we’ve got a whole lot of cities and they’ve got one Mecca. I guess we could nuke some lesser shrines and mosques.
Gosh — Littleton, Colorado, hatred of those who are different, feelings of persecution, a response of blind unfocused rage against innocent people — gee, why does that sound so familiar?
