It seems that the flap over Congressman Tom Tancredo's comments regarding taking revenge on Mecca for a hypothetical WMD attack on an American city. As stated, I tend to agree with Slublog, but only to a point. It is of no value to speak of “revenge” in this manner and the somewhat soft and mushy reasons have some emotional merit.

Tancredo and his supporters are defending the threat to bomb Mecca by using the analogy of Mutually Assured Destruction. In other words, the very threat to destroy Mecca may deter a nuclear attack against the United States, since no terrorist wants to see the center of his religion destroyed. The major problem with this argument is that it assumes terrorists will see the connection between their actions and the threat against Mecca instead of seeing Tancredo's comments as a general threat against Islam.

There is no profit in revenge, but there is progress in placing doubt in the Jihadis feeble little minds. There is also a great deal of profit to be made in putting real pressure on the so-called non-jihadi majority of Muslims. P-BS-Watcher makes many good points in this post.

The target of this threat is not the Islamofascist leadership itself, but rather the enablers who in one way or another give that leadership, its followers, and its activities a free pass. These folks are deemed to be open to reason. The purpose of the threat is extortion. The Islamic world would be asked on pain of death to deliver up the Islamofascist cadres. I would expect extreme soul searching among the enabling classes of Islam leading rapidly to the outing of terrorists and terrorist activities of all types.

Slublog comes close to endorsing this idea

A second argument against the threat to Mecca is that not all Muslims are terrorists, and using Mecca as a retalitory target would punish all Muslims, not just those who engage in or support acts of terrorism. I'm sympathetic to the argument that moderate Muslims have not done enough to condemn the terrorists in their midst, but think destroying the center of that religion is a poor response to terror overall.

But then he backs off the ledge

The third, and I think most important, reason not to threaten or destroy Mecca is because we're civilized and destroying religious symbols is an uncivlized act. Yes, it's nothing compared to destroying a city and killing millions of Americans. Such an act would require a swift and proportional response - to those responsible for the terrorism.

If the enablers in the Muslim world allow us to be attacked with WMD, they are responsible for the terrorism.

Where I depart from both sides is that I think that discussing what happens when one of our cities is attacked with WMD is not really worth the breath. We can make all kinds of contingency plans, but the real reaction will not be pretty for us as well as for the lands of Islam. Rational discussion about this sort of thing is nothing more than mental masturbation.

It is my opinion that we can be assured that Islam will cease to exist once the Jihadis unleash WMDs. The reaction of the people of the west will be worse for the world than anything the Jihadis or the US Military could dish out. If Western Muslims think that they are the targets of hate crimes now, just let the Jihadis do something really stupid. This sudden and wildly violent reaction will not stop in the west. The chain reaction will be a much more efficient destroyer of Islam than any bomb or dedicated military action.

Having dismissed the need to talk about what to do after the WMD attack, we can discuss what we should be saying to the Muslim world. We should be letting the enabler population know exactly what the consequences of continuing this behavior. I would hope that the leaders of that region would be highly motivated to do the right thing.