FOOD FOR THOUGHT

The ultimate response to an Islamist terrorist attack:

Rep. Tom Tancredo refused Monday to back down from his statement Friday suggesting that the United States might respond to a radical Islamic terrorist attack by bombing Muslim holy sites.

Strangely, a similar option was long ago recommended by Australian Peter Layton:

Nuclear threats traditionally have been handled using deterrent strategies. In this case, a declaratory policy could be devised based on the threat of retaliation if an attack occurs in the West by nonstate actors using the Arab way of war. In such a circumstance, there could be a strategy of instant, graduated response: nuclear strikes against several of the capital cites of the Middle Eastern nations that long have demonstrated support for this method of war. The response's intensity and discrimination would vary based on the severity of the WMD attack. This approach would be a policy of deterrence through the threat of brutal and immediate punishment of particular societies.

Unfortunately, this would play right into bin Laden's hands.