Nuke Mecca? Is it on the table?

[DanBlather]

@litost

I have a better solution. Let’s level the entire world. We’ll have no enemies left! Hoo-ray!

*Boom goes London and boom Paree
More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it will be
We’ll set everybody free
You’ll wear a Japanese kimono
And there’ll be Italian shoes for me

They all hate us anyhow
So let’s drop the big one now
Let’s drop the big one now

Randy Newman - Drop The Big One
*

[Shodan]

@Aagramn

/feeble parody mode on

Osama Bin Laden - “If we bomb Disneyland, American morale will collapse and we will be victorious!”

/feeble parody mode off

Doesn’t strike me as a parody.

Substitute the words “World Trade Center, Pentagon, and whatever Flight 093 was aiming at” for “Disneyland”, and it sounds more like a description.

Of course, to be fair, nuking Mecca would be based on the same motives and thinking. Which is why it would be a dumb idea, IMO. Mecca is neither a tactical nor a strategic target, even in an all-out war, so why waste effort on it?

Regards,
Shodan

[sqweels]

Dunno, do you think the Jews would be a little irked if you nuked Jeruselum?

Heck, let’s nuke Mecca and Jerusalem, just to show we’re being even-handed

Seeing as how Jerusalem is holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, nuking it and rendering the area uninhabitable would solve the whole problem. But it would have to be done by someone with a Christian-Jewish-Muslim background, or the Tasaday tribe or something.

[Atticus_Finch]

@Alan Owes Bess

Any physical object that people of a particular religious cult are exhorted to bow towards in their prayers is an idol, whether it has the shape of a human, an animal, or the shape of a building is immaterial.

You’re wrong. The Black Stone isn’t an idol and isn’t particularly venerated. See this thread for a full discussion.

So is Rome worthless? New York? If all New York was bulldozed, yet noone died, would you say “I don’t care, they were worthless anyway”?

If you don’t have any particular beef with Islam, why does your handle appear to be a joke about Allah (Alan Owes Bess = “Allah knows best”).

[cornflakes]

For a quick and dirty analogy of how the world would respond to the US bombing Mecca, you might want to think about the world’s response when the Taliban blew up a couple of ancient Buddhist statues. I think that the statues helped show the world that the Taliban was a bunch of loonies and helped sway world opinion towards the US invading. Although these weren’t used as religious icons, the world opinion was that it was an act of colossal stupidity. Trust me, only madmen would nuke Mecca.

If you really want to be part of a country that holds religions for blackmail, then (ironically) all I can say is God help you.