Nuke Mecca

Inventing "The Other" Islamophobia

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If you're looking for a "mecca" for all things nuclear, start with nuclear energy.

Nuke Mecca is a popular refrain among the far right, who seem to think that a "moral equation" resulting in justice and peace could look something like this: 6,852 American armed forces personnel lost in the global war on terror + 2,996 lives lost from 9/11 = murdering the 2,000,000 civilians who call Mecca home and turning a cultural megalopolis into a radioactive crater.

It certainly seems a surefire plan to defend America (and not the most insane act of genocide in history or something that would galvanize Muslims to demolish The Vatican/Washington D.C. or anything like that)!

Origins

The idea is briefly mentioned as a detail of the backstory in the 1985 Nebula award winning science fiction classic Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. A similarly inflammatory concept is the nuclear bombing of The Vatican explored in Zoltan Istvan's The Transhumanist Wager, while War in 2020 by Ralph Peters has the atomic bombing of Israel.

Though it's not Mecca, in 2009 Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also accused Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman of threatening to attack the Gaza Strip with a nuclear weapon, which Lieberman's media adviser called nonsense. In 2024 during the war between Israel and Hamas, Israel’s Heritage Minister Amihai Eliyahu, Baptist pastor/US Republican Congressman Tim Walberg, and Senator Lindsey Graham suggested dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip.

Republican use

Somebody needs to be kept as far away from explosive devices (especially nuclear explosive devices) as possible.

Talk show host Pat Campbell for WFLA-AM in Orlando, Florida asked the Colorado Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo how the country should respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons; he responded, "Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites." "You're talking about bombing Mecca," Campbell said. "Yeah," Tancredo responded. The Congressman later said he was "just throwing out some ideas" and that an "ultimate threat" might have to be met with an "ultimate response." "What is near and dear to them? They're willing to sacrifice everything in this world for the next one. What is the pressure point that would deter them from their murderous impulses?" the representative asked, his spokesman stressing he was only speaking hypothetically.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has demanded that Tancredo apologize to Muslims.

How come they didn't nuke Korea or Vietnam?

See the main articles on this topic: Korean War and Vietnam War

At a press conference on 30 November 1950, President Harry Truman was asked about the use of nuclear weapons:

“”Q. Mr. President, I wonder if we could retrace that reference to the atom bomb? Did we understand you clearly that the use of the atomic bomb is under active consideration? Truman: Always has been. It is one of our weapons. Q. Does that mean, Mr. President, use against military objectives, or civilian— Truman: It's a matter that the military people will have to decide. I'm not a military authority that passes on those things. Q. Mr. President, perhaps it would be better if we are allowed to quote your remarks on that directly? Truman: I don't think — I don't think that is necessary. Q. Mr. President, you said this depends on United Nations action. Does that mean that we wouldn't use the atomic bomb except on a United Nations authorization? Truman: No, it doesn't mean that at all. The action against Communist China depends on the action of the United Nations. The military commander in the field will have charge of the use of the weapons, as he always has.

The implication was that the authority to use atomic weapons now rested in the hands of General Douglas MacArthur. Truman's White House issued a clarification, noting that "only the President can authorize the use of the atom bomb, and no such authorization has been given", yet the comment still caused a domestic and international stir. Truman had touched upon one of the most sensitive issues in civilian-military relations in the post-World War II period: civilian control of nuclear weapons, which was enshrined in the Atomic Energy Act of 1946.

On 9 December 1950, MacArthur requested field commander's discretion to employ nuclear weapons; he testified that such an employment would only be used to prevent an ultimate fallback, not to recover the situation in Korea. On 24 December 1950, MacArthur submitted a list of "retardation targets" in Korea, Manchuria, and other parts of China, for which 34 atomic bombs would be required, though other sources say only 26. According to Major General Courtney Whitney, MacArthur considered a proposal by Louis Johnson to use radioactive wastes to seal off North Korea, but never submitted this to the Joint Chiefs. In January 1951, MacArthur refused to entertain proposals for the forward deployment of nuclear weapons. An increase in the atmospheric carbon dioxide that creates the greenhouse effect had only recently been quantified by Charles David Keeling's Keeling Curve, so the idea that climate change could disrupt the distribution of an uncontained nuclear wasteland through heavy rains contaminating the groundwater wasn't considered a foreseeable hazard for South Korea within the next six decades.

There has been debate whether MacArthur advocated the employment of nuclear weapons, including over whether his submission to the Joint Chiefs of Staff was tantamount to a recommendation. In his testimony before the Senate Inquiry, he stated that he had not recommended their use. In 1960, MacArthur challenged a statement by Truman that he had wanted to use nuclear weapons, saying that "atomic bombing in the Korean War was never discussed either by my headquarters or in any communication to or from Washington"; Truman, admitting that he did not have documentation of any such claim, said that he was merely providing his personal opinion. In an interview with Jim G. Lucas and Bob Considine on 25 January 1954, posthumously published in 1964, MacArthur said,

“”Of all the campaigns of my life, 20 major ones to be exact, [Korea was] the one I felt most sure of was the one I was deprived of waging. I could have won the war in Korea in a maximum of 10 days… I would have dropped between 30 and 50 atomic bombs on his air bases and other depots strung across the neck of Manchuria… It was my plan as our amphibious forces moved south to spread behind us — from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea — a belt of radioactive cobalt. It could have been spread from wagons, carts, trucks and planes… For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the north. The enemy could not have marched across that radiated belt."

In 1985, Richard Nixon recalled discussing the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with MacArthur:

“”MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy the bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants… MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off, which I think speaks well of him.

See also

• Alt-right glossary#Remove kebab
• Henry Kissinger#Madman Theory
• Nuclear war