The most spectacularly awful idea of this new millennium

WorldNetDaily: A threat to vaporize 100 Muslim cities:

"I propose that the U.S. immediately adopt and publish the following nuclear doctrine:

"In the event of a WMD attack by terrorists on the U.S. homeland or U.S. military facilities overseas, the U.S will immediately and without discussion use its immense nuclear weapons capabilities to destroy the 100 largest Islamic cities on earth, regardless of state, and destroy all of the military facilities of Islamic-dominated states. This will include all of the capitals and at least the 10 largest cities of all Islamic-dominated states and the 'holy' cities of Mecca and Medina. In addition, North Korean cities and military installations will be destroyed.

"Now suddenly everybody from Casablanca, Cairo, Damascus, Riyadh, Tehran, Islamabad, Pyongyang and Jakarta have skin in the game. The last thing they want would be a WMD attack on the U.S. It would mean certain destruction of their societies. They might even be motivated to actually and feverishly work against Islamic terrorism instead of the tepid lip service they currently give. Those 'freedom fighters' currently being cheered in the streets would be transformed to deadly threats in the very societies that spawned them."

So writes David C. Atkins, president of a telecom services firm, in a copyrighted article on WorldNetDaily.com. Surprisingly, perhaps, he justifies this bloody-minded proposal on the same grounds on which I condemn it whole-heartedly - that is the fact that support for the jihad against the West is a great deal more common throughout the Muslim world than is generally admitted in polite company. To quote Atkins:
"The popular support of the terrorists is much larger than it is politically correct to discuss in most forums in the West. But, does anyone doubt that bin Laden would be elected dictator-for-life in Saudi Arabia if that nation had free elections? Let's not allow political correctness to blind us or kill us. The terrorists are merely an extreme form of widespread corruption, totalitarianism and venality prevalent in Islamic states and societies worldwide."

What this says to me is that Atkins' proposal would accelerate the crisis he says he wishes to avert. Would not al Qaida or Hizbollah or Egypt's Islamic Brotherhood or Jemaat Islamiyah or Abu Sayyaf, or any of a dozen other groups, welcome the chance to purge the corrupt leadership of the Muslim ummah? They haven't the means yet to do so with conventional terrorism and guerilla war, but after the nuclear holocaust anyone with any substantial connection to the West would be thoroughly discredited. They, the pure, would seize the reins of what was left of their people.

And, our isolation from Europe and Latin America would be total. Not to mention allies like South Korea, Japan, and Australia who would have to deal with the fallout and the refugees and the other chaos that would result.

Or, suppose the Red Chinese figured out a way to set off a nuke delivered in a container to Long Beach. They could trick us into a massive strike on Islamic nations which would leave places like Malaysia and Indonesia ripe for the picking.

Atkins fundamentally misunderstands the MAD experience. Under MAD, the author of the first strike was considered to be known and the retaliation would be directed at the source. Here, Atkins proposes to destroy twenty or thirty nations to retaliate for the actions of one or more non-state actors which may not have been subject to their control in any way.

The mere announcement of such a policy would do incalculable harm to the US, alienating what allies we have in the Muslim world and convincing what other friends we have left that we are mad - stark raving mad.