Whenever I begin to think that Americans have similar views in general of our situation in the world, I hear a statement like the one made yesterday by GOP Presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo and the hair stands up on the back of my neck.
From Tancredo concerning defense of our country:
“If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina. That is the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they would otherwise do. If I am wrong fine, tell me, and I would be happy to do something else. But you had better find a deterrent or you will find an attack. There is no other way around it. There have to be negative consequences for the actions they take. That’s the most negative I can think of.”
Well, Tom, you ARE wrong. And I can only hope that the Republicans who vote in the presidential primaries think you are wrong, too.
Oddly enough, your call is for a cultural solution to the situation: that is to say, we destroy their culture to deter their aggression. The proof that this is a dangerous ploy goes back to Richard the Lionhearted and the Crusades… If we stamp out the Muslim’s in the Holy Land we preserve Christianity in the world.
And ten centuries later, they strike back at the World Trade Center. For some reason, the conflict of cultures does not end. They attack us… we attack them… you can watch three hours of Lawrence of Arabia (now restored and a great flick, btw) and see that it was the same problem in WWI.
If we don’t learn from the mistakes of history, we are doomed to forever repeat them. We know that the other side doesn’t learn either. Somebody has to set an example and get us out of this mess.
Tom Tancredo is not the guy.