Count me in on that. I have no particular love for Mecca and probably wouldn’t like the people who go there (I’m not allowed in, therefore the clubhouse sucks). So I think Mecca should be obliterated to atomic dust and a fireball. I want it caught on film so I can watch it again and again. Because there aren’t enough dramatic explosions in my daily life.
I think eveyone needs a daily minimum number of explosions.
That was cool, I didn’t know any of that.
What gets me is that despite my highfalutin words, a large part of me still sees the “logic” in returning a punishment greater than the original crime. “So you wanna hurt me and mine, huh? Then suffer tenfold harm! That’ll learn ya!” It just feels so… natural that punishments more severe than the original crimes are the criminals’ just deserts. But that just ain’t so.
Yeah, that’s true. The whole legal process is designed to judge things impartially, and not just create a circus of bloodlust.
One of the many problems with it, though, is that it reinforces the standard of blood-for-blood, even as we try to implement it as impartially as possible. With American acceptance of the death penalty, we accept in principle the idea that a life can justifiably be taken as a government-approved penalty for murder. Now I didn’t cry any tears for, say, Timothy McVeigh, but not every murder in the world can be examined in the cool, impartial chambers of the law.
When we have the general societal principle that death pays for death, but then suddenly have a terrible tragedy such as a terrorist attack that can’t be solved in a courtroom, then we seek to invoke that retributional principle in other ways, which sad to say is normally militarily. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Terror is not a military operation. There is no possible “war” against it. To stop such attacks requires good police work on an international level, not so-called “pre-emptive” invasions.
I can’t prove it, of course, but I think that if we all as a society moved away from this idea of retributional death in our courts, then it would help us to consider our options more dispassionately as we respond to terrible events like 9/11. As it happened, we lashed out violently against not only the country that attacked us, but also another totally unrelated evil country, and in so doing we’ve created a giant pool of resentment that will fuel terrorist recruiting for another generation at least.
So yeah, modern courts implement the penalty as best they can, but I still think the very existence of the penalty reinforces a potentially self-destructive principle.
Thanks–it’s sitting on the sideboard waiting for me.
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Why not just open a Hooters in Mecca instead of nuking it?
Marc
To quote PJ ORourke, " Nothing cures communism like a Big Mac."
I think it is applicable to this scenario as well.
Here’s a perfectly insane idea…
Let’s nuke one Middle Eastern city per day until we have achieved peace in the Middle East. Even if that peace is the peace of the radioactive dead…
Day 1: Mecca
Day 2: Jerusalem
Day 3: Gaza
And so forth, and so on.
As an added side benefit, there will be no more of these “Holy” cities for people to be fighting over and committing terrorist acts in the name of.
It only makes sense to do this, in a sort of completely insane, sociopathic and not entirely thought out sort of way…
:eek:
You ever see Sean Connery’s character in The Untouchables?
But it wasn’t. The bean-counters nailed Capone.
Well at least Mecca is in Saudi Arabia where, y’know, most of the 9/11 terrorists hailed from. :dubious:
Hey, take it up with Sean Connery.
I found the opinion piece The real lessons of 9/11 to be insightful (and it suits the turn this thread has taken; from salon.com, you need to go through an advert to get a site pass if you’re not a subscriber):
Dennis Miller’s Syndrome - a psychotic break with reality due to trauma induced by 9/11. There is no known cure.
From this article:
There’s a Cinnabon in the Al-Dhiyafah Mall in Mecca, as well as at the Mecca International Mall, just for completeness sake.
Will miracles never cease? A politician finally got something right.
Emphasis mine.
We obviously can’t let this type of escalating violence continue. It will only further destabilize the region.
I say we nuke Chicago.
If Tancredo is elected President, the Wrath of Allah will have been manifest.
Sure. What we need is a “deterrent” that will not harm those who want terror and bloodshed in the slightest, while convincing every Muslim everywhere on the planet that we deserve extermination.
This is an answer that appeals only to those who want to make genocide the only viable solution to our problems. Plenty of those around, of course, but they were around before, and will still be muttering to themselves on streetcorners after, the current troubles come and go. As far as I’m concerned, these lunatics can have their drugs and sympathy after they stop trying to kill us all. In the meantime, we must, for our own survival’s sake, ignore them.
Elucidator, I think Dennis Miller’s aberration was too early and too calculated to qualify as an illness, but I know what you mean: I call it Christopher Hitchens’ Syndrome. No need to argue, though: the malady is well-known.
Funny (or not so funny) I wouldn’t mind nuking holy sites at all. Don’t care whose. Yes, I am aware this is a wildly unwise course of action, for many reasons.
Who cares what Hitchens thinks? The Nation got rid of him years ago for his unreasonableness.
I remember seeing that people were cheering in some places. I wanted us to nuke all those people. I’m not proud of thinking that, but I did.
I got better, though.