Tom Tancredo: Presidential Candidate/Nutjob Extrordinaire

[Big Pimpin]

Just for arguments sake, and correct me if I've missed something, but when did he say he wanted to slaughter all these civilians? Seems to me you're blowing this way out of proportion. Are most places packed with civilians in the middle of the night? I don't think so, as long as you're not going after Mecca during the annual pilgrimage or something like that. I know if you bombed my church in the middle of the night you wouldn't get any civilians.

First of all Mecca is in Saudi Arabia. If I am not mistaken SA is one of the few allies that the US has in the Middle East. This man is suggesting bombing one of your few allies. What would this do to Israel? What would this do to the supply of oil?

The important part of Mecca is the stone in the Great Mosque that is the most important religious artifact to all Muslims - so I'm assuming that this guy is suggesting bombing the Kaba. I've only ever seen one National Geographic piece on the Kaba and I was under the impression that the mosque is packed round the clock and that Muslims line up for hours to get close.

The Kaba is the Vatican City, the Statue of Liberty, the Louvre all rolled into one. It is the most holy place in the world for over a billion people. As much as some people don't want to admit it only a very small fraction of those billion people are terrorists. As far as the terrorists are concerned these guys die to carry out their agendas, I don't think that attacking their holiest relic will get them to back off. All that it would do is get them more recruits, more money and more support.

I don't disagree... It would pretty much mark the end of the US-SA relationship, and destroy Israel, and seriously mess up the oil supply. As far as the Kaaba, I've only seen a couple of things but I was under the impression that it's only crazy busy during the pilgrimages and maybe Ramadan. But my point was simply that if you're going to take it out, there would be times where you could do it to minimize civilian damages (such as when it's closed for cleaning). And I think your last paragraph is exactly what I said in my first post. If one were to actually take out the holy sites, you'd piss off everyone (including the US loving Muslims who live here!). The war is with the extremists, who are very much in the minority, and pissing off the others wouldn't end well.

Furthermore, I'm of the mind that in a war, civilians are going to die. Heck on 9/11 it was mostly civilians that died. There is bound to be some collateral damage. Expecting anything less is just an unreasonable standard, and one that I think harms us in places like Iraq (whether you believe in the war or not, and I personally do not so let's not get into that argument).

But in any case, I don't think that's what he was getting at. I'm of the mind that this is simply out-of-the-box thinking, and there's nothing wrong with that at all IMO. I don't see how it's ignorant, or bigoted, or anything of the like. It's just an idea, and there's no such thing as a bad idea. I don't think it would be a solid plan or pay dividends were it to come to fruition, but I see absolutely nothing wrong with him talking about the idea. But that's just me.

I think that the idea is bigoted, ignorant and stupid. No such thing as a bad idea?? Next thing he will suggest getting into get involved in a land war in Asia or going up against a Sicilian when death is on the line. Sure think outside the box but you've got to develop a stupid filter, this guy just looks like a complete numbskull.[/quote][/quote]

I even said I didn't think it would work well, and I sure as hell hope it wouldn't come to pass. So maybe it is stupid once you stop to think about the ramifications, but the idea at first blush is an interesting one. (Although if he did say it in 2005 and after two years still doesn't get the ramifications then maybe he is stupid. ) Anyway, I'm not going to defend the guy because I don't know anything about him (heck I'd never even heard of him before this thread), and I certainly wouldn't vote for him, but I think it's ridiculous that people are pissed off because he had the balls to give an idea about how to fight against radical Islam. I mean everything that we've tried so far has worked so well we might as well just stick with it, right?

[CheeseBeger]

Mecca at night :

[CheeseBeger]

"Rep. Tancredo has refused to make any apologies, saying "When we bombed Hiroshima, when we bombed Dresden, we punished a lot of people who were not necessarily (guilty). Not every German was a member of the Nazi Party. You do things in war that are ugly."

The thing is he sees absolutely no difference between these situations of the past and our current situation. Germany and Japan were countries that we had declared war against. We are apparantly in a "War on Terror" right now, but what Tancredo seems to think is that the United States is in a "War on Islam" so anything goes.

That is where the bigotry comes from. From this and many other comments that he has made it is clear he is entirely intollerant of the views of others. He wants to "punish not necessarily guilty" people, a majority of which HAVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH TERRORISM.

[JTWood]

Sadly, he's on the right track, but he's gone too far. He would be better off suggesting that we simply take the body parts of any dead terrorist and bury them with a dead pig. That would do so much more to deter suicide bombings than any occupying force or retaliatory strike ever would, but we won't do it because it's not PC.

[josebach]

Mecca at night :

There ain't no party like a Mecca party!!!

[brewcrew4you]

Next thing he will suggest getting into get involved in a land war in Asia or going up against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

Tancredo has fallen victim to one of the classic blunders!

[josebach]

Next thing he will suggest getting into get involved in a land war in Asia or going up against a Sicilian when death is on the line.

Tancredo has fallen victim to one of the classic blunders!

Yeah, I know. Inconceivable, isn't it?

[Coppermine]

Where does this guy Tancredo stand in the polls anyway?

USA Today/Gallup Poll. Aug. 3-5, 2007

Giuliani -- 30%
Thompson -- 19%
McCain -- 14%
Gingrich -- 10%
Romney -- 6%
Huckabee -- 2%
Paul -- 2%
Brownback -- 1%
Hagel -- 1%
Hunter -- 1%
Tancredo -- 1%
Tommy Thompson -- 1%
Someone Else -- 2%
None/Unsure -- 9%

http://www.pollingreport.com/wh08rep.htm

Obviously its early and people are just responding to names they know. McCain took a huge drop in the polls over the past several weeks, and Thompson isn't even officially running but the Fox News pundits talk about him every 10 seconds like he's the most awesome person ever. But Tancredo's obviously in the list with the Dennis Kucinich's of the Democratic nomination, so it's not like he really has a shot.

[CheeseBeger]

I thought Romney was much higher Romney is the one I least want to win out of all the candidates.

[PlayingWithFire]

Well some politicians are just crazy, it's just the nature of being a politician

I think anything with an eye for an eye approach is a bad idea with terrorist. Because...

1)Let's admit it, American lives(including non-Americans living in America, like me ) ARE in OUR opinion MORE valuable than any other shape or form of life. That's my opinion anyway, fire away at will

2)Thus it's really not smart to go back and forth with terrorists, we could kill 10 Muslims(terrorist and non-terrorist) for every American lives lost but at the end of the day, our purpose is to save American lives, not to kill Arabic lives? no? And to think that the war will last long enough to ever completely conquer the place so that there's little to no more terrorist left is pretty ridiculous. It's either going to take a huge war(and the international backlashes) against all of the Muslim world(and will, in the process, create new enemies) or it's going to take my life time at the current pace.

Suggestion: How about we just tight up the border like we are doing now and slowly get out of that mess? I mean there hasn't been another 9/11? So I mean the tightened airport security(no matter how annoying that is) must be doing something(and I'd argue much more than the war on Iraq and Afghanistan even) to prevent terrorists? No? And of course terrorists might eventually find a big enough hole(take them 10 years?) to do some damage, but then we could just filled up that hole easily too.

The thinking that we can mentally conquer those countries that house the terrorist is just plain not that practical in my mind.