HOW TO RESPOND TO NUCLEAR TERRORISM

Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo's preferred response to nuclear terrorism:

"If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina," the GOP presidential candidate said. "That is the only thing I can think of that might deter somebody from doing what they would otherwise do. If I am wrong fine, tell me, and I would be happy to do something else. But you had better find a deterrent or you will find an attack. There is no other way around it. There have to be negative consequences for the actions they take. That's the most negative I can think of."

This is a variation on a 2003 proposal by RAAF Captain 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.

All that dust in the atmosphere might just cool things down and prevent millions of sea level rise deaths. Seems like a fair trade off.