There’s been quite a bit of commentary about the technological backwardness of the enemy. That is certainly a key distinction between this war and World War II and the Cold war, in which we were at war with technologically advanced industrial states (Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union), whereas the hirabis have virtually no industrial or weapons-making capability, short of nail bombs. I think that it was Rich Lowry who compared the two cultures by writing something like “…we build skyscrapers and jet airliners–that’s our idea. They hijack our airliners and fly them into the skyscrapers–that’s their idea.”
Anyway, there was some buzz recently that they had developed a computer graphic of a nuked Washington DC for one of their propaganda videos.
Nope. They had to lift it from a western video game. They’re not only incapable of carrying out our destruction, they’re not even capable of simulating it. But it does speak strongly to their intent if they ever get their hands on advanced weaponry, something that, with advancing technology, will become more and more of a problem in the future.
It’ll only be a problem briefly. Others may disagree, but I still think that once we lose a major city to a terrorist nuke Islam will be practiced only in Hell.
The idea that the afterlife is their reward for killing
the infidels IMHO makes them an existential threat.
These evil idiots might hit upon an idea that is of
much greater impact without even the need for nukes.
It’s not likely they’d ever have enough nukes to
really existentially threaten us. Even an EMP attack
would be of limited duration if not effect.
All they need is enough solders (hate to use that term
which has honor attached to it) disbursed in enough
communities, hitting the right target, with enough
chaotic followup.
I’m thinking water supply, but there are other
infrastructural things that could be simultaneously
targeted. Imagine if they weren’t such losers that
they could have flown hundreds of planes into buildings
across the country on 9/11?
Maybe there is a way to send a subtle message, and maybe they will even understand it.
Make a similar CGI picture of Mecca, with a half-melted Kaabah and a ruined Grand Mosque, and just put it out on the Net. Perhaps side by side with a picture of Hiroshima after the first nuke used in anger, to remind them that the West, despite its softness, has already done it twice.