HOW TO STOP BIN LADIN
Crime and its consequences – punishment - has been the fountainhead of the social contract, of all laws and religions. Punishment is preventative because it is guided by the idea of deterrence.
Specific deterrence punishes the offenders to prevent them from repeating the crime.
General deterrence is achieved by punishing the criminal as an example to other potential perpetrators and to society as a whole.
To act as a deterrent both the public and the potential criminals must have clear and certain knowledge of the punishment associated with the crime. Most importantly, punishment must fit the crime so that potential criminals can evaluate the potential rewards of the crime with the retribution of punishment.
Without punishment as deterrence, law enforcement could not function.
When a fanatic believes that death, while committing a crime, is not a punishment but a heavenly reward, our entire concept of crime and consequences disappears.
It is an open secret that Houston is a prime target for attack by religious terrorists. A nuclear bomb hidden in a container aboard a vessel entering the Ship Channel is a high probability. The death of hundreds of thousands, the destruction of our chemical and refinery industry, the radiation poisoning of a million people are waiting to happen.
Is there a deterrent that we have announced that would stop these horrendous events? Is there a consequence to such an attack on the perpetrators or their backers?
My personal history may provide an answer this question. Sixty years ago I was a guerilla fighting in the streets of Budapest. On December 24, 1944 the Russian Army surrounded the city. While German and Hungarian soldiers were fighting a hopeless battle, Hungarian fanatical Arrow Cross fascist groups were roaming the streets torturing and killing Jews. Their single goal was killing as many Jews as they could before the city fell.
As the Russian lines neared the ghetto, where more than sixty thousand people were jammed into a small area, the Arrow Cross planned a final massacre with the help of German Waffen SS troops. They believed that Stalin would hold the troops back, as he did in Warsaw, Poland, to allow the destruction of the ghetto and its inhabitants.
Five hundred Arrow Cross thugs assembled for the final assault waiting for the German SS to join them. A horrendous final act of the Holocaust was about to occur. Resistance was not possible, and we watched helplessly as the SS conducted a mass search throughout the city to find Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat. We found out that Wallenberg threatened the commanding SS general, August Schmidthuber, and his general staff, stating that if the massacre took place, the general and his staff would be held responsible personally as war criminals and would be executed by the Russians. The Swede was the only remaining foreign diplomat in the surrounded city and his testimony would have been decisive in finding the SS general guilty if the massacre took place. The threat worked. The general cancelled the assault just as the Russians arrived at the edge of the ghetto. Wallenberg’s threat saved the ghetto and its 69,000 potential victims.
Threatening the Arrow Cross with death would have not worked because they were ready to die for the crimes and atrocities they have committed killing more than 100,000 during their 90-day regime from Oct. 15 1944 until the liberation in mid January 1945. It was the threat to the enablers, the SS general and his staff, that prevented the crime. The lesson of 60 years ago can be applied today.
Nearly all international terrorism today is basically religious violence by Islamic radicals. The cause of the terrorism is not poverty or politics, but the paranoia of Islamic clerics unable to deal with increasing social change. Islam is now in its Middle Ages as reflected not only by their calendar but by their behavior, which is similar to the actions of the Church of the Middle Ages. It is the Islamic clerics who are preaching and supporting the terrorists because they fear the inevitable coming reformation of Islam.
Threatening fanatic Islamic terrorists with death is not a deterrent to their planned action. We must find a punishment for their backers and enablers that will force them to stop the terrorists. According to CIA reports, many leading Muslim clergymen have issued a fatwa that authorizes and endorses the usage of nuclear weapons against the United States.
Ever since 9/11 the Internet and its thousands of blogs openly discusses the probability that if the Islamist terrorists attack the United States with nuclear or biological weapons we will eventually retaliate by destroying Mecca and Medina. Just like the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War II, they predict that similar twin bombs would end the threat of the religious fanatics.
Others predict that it would inflame all of Islam into a confrontation with the rest of the world that would last a millennium.
We do not know how many millions of Americans would have to die before such retaliatory action would be taken, if ever, but the possibility of such action may be a deterrent if it is disclosed in advance. It won’t deter the fanatics but perhaps it would encourage the large silent majority of Muslims to come out of hiding and expose the fanatics hiding amongst them. Perhaps it would speed up the reformation of Islam by changing the goal from killing the infidel, to co-existence with other religions.
If the destruction of Mecca and Medina as retaliation for nuclear attacks by Islamic terrorists is ever considered, then the announcement of it in advance should be used as a deterrent to prevent the attacks from happening. Then it will be up to the Muslim community and its clergy to make sure it never happens.
T.W.WESTON
©WESTON RESEARCH 2005
