Since some people like to say that Donald Trump's speeches are perfect recruiting tools for the self-styled Islamic State -- I've heard that again today -- turnabout is fair play: the IS attacks on Brussels today make perfect campaign ads for Trump. In fact, while I don't really buy the argument that Trump will radicalize anybody, I have a stronger suspicion that each Daesh attack this year will radicalize more Americans, if you think voting for Trump is a radical act. The next thing you know, someone here will predict that IS will step up the attacks this year in order to get Trump elected, on the assumption that his words and policies will radicalize more Muslims, prove the IS point about a war on Islam, etc. etc. This would be a really narcissist stance for Americans to take, though I suppose it's inevitable when you think of terrorism as violence intended to change victims' minds. But it's easy to get tangled up analyzing the motivations of terrorists, especially when you throw in the whole notion of "propaganda of the deed." Are those people perpetrating terrorist acts in order to terrorize us into complying with their geopolitical or religious demands? Or are they doing it in order to provoke the enemy into showing its true, evil face, and thus drive more people to the terrorist side, as the "propaganda of the deed" concept suggests? I think it's a lot simpler than some people make it, and I don't think it's about us as much as other people make it. Muslim terrorists do their thing because they're convinced that they have a duty to do so. A generation or so ago Arab terrorists may have been reacting to specific acts of oppression, but by now terror is an end unto itself, a religious duty imposed not so much by the persistence of oppression as by the persistence of jahiliyyah, the state or pre-Islamic "ignorance" now identified by Islamists with wherever sharia doesn't prevail -- including many Muslim-majority countries. For those who've bought into that idea of Islam, there's nothing we can do short of submission to stop them from taking the fight to us. With the proclamation of their would-be caliphate, they're the aggressors now, and I don't think they care at all who gets elected President this year -- they're getting bombed now, after all, and that's unlikely to stop next January. Nor should we care what they think of whom we might elect. None of that means they can't have an influence on the election, as I suspect they inevitably will; it just means they don't do it in order to influence the election. In any event, why should it benefit Trump in particular? Senator Cruz is as belligerent on Islamism as Trump, after all. But somehow Cruz doesn't project power and resolution the way going-on-70 Trump does. Cruz has not stood in the squared circle the way Trump has. He has not taken the Stone Cold Stunner and survived, like Trump did. Obviously if Trump can do that he has nothing to fear from the headcutters of Raqaa.
Well, maybe that's not how all Trump's supporters see it, but what they all probably like about him, and what many others abhor, is Trump's indifference to consequences, or more specifically his indifference to what some will think of him doing what he thinks has to be done. Fortunately, what Americans think of him can have a consequence in November. But what we do about Trump should have nothing to do with whether the terrorists want him as President or not.
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I don't know if tRump doesn't care about consequences. But it is certain that sometimes action must be taken, regardless of the consequences, but not acting will lead to consequences even worse. This whole war on terror could have been nipped in the bud 15 years ago by simply pointing our two biggest, dirtiest nukes at Mecca and Medina and calling for either an end to terrorism or an end the the hajj. And if they attacked one more target, follow through by turning their two holiest cities into glowing, radioactive ruins for the next 10,000 years or so.
I doubt whether that would have cowed all Muslims into submission, but on the other hand it would seriously have diminished Saudi Arabia's ability to finance and otherwise promote terrorism and Wahhabi extremism in general. It probably would have pissed off a lot of non-Muslims worldwide, or at least a lot of people would have made a great public show of deploring such an atrocity without really giving a damn.
Well, I suppose someone willing to wipe out a few million muslims with their holy cities wouldn't much care about what the rest of the world thought, as long as the intended effect was induced. I would hope that wiping out Mecca and Medina would cause a majority of them to rethink their religious affiliations. A god that can't defend his holiest of holies isn't very powerful and a weak god isn't worth worshipping.
Monotheists who believe in an omnipotent God are always able to blame people rather than God for that sort of misfortune; hence the persistence of monotheism. Some group managed to take the Black Stone from Mecca back in the 10th century but Islam survived. Problem was the enemy leader wanted to keep the thing so he could make his city a pilgrimage site instead of destroying it.
Big difference between removing the stone and making it poisonous enough to kill anyone who comes near it.
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