C. "Nuke 'em Dan" vs. binLaden





Dear Friends, 

I write to you again out of concern that I might be misread 
as "nuke 'em Dan." While I indeed sought to bring us all to 
consider our REAL power, our nuclear power, as a factor in 
the equasion, delivered by our irresistable ICBMs, it was in 
the full expectation that the credible threat that we present 
to end our vulnerability to destruction by suicidal terror 
would bring the terror to an end. 

Medicine asks all physicians before acting to ask themselves: 
am I improving the situation with my intervention or might I 
be doing harm? As a medical student one gets the illusion that 
medicine is a great battle between doctor and disease. But the 
practice of medicine puts before the physician another dimension: 
the limitless suffering that is inflicted on man by disease. 

Most of the time, pathology is beyond our control; paliative 
treatment of suffering is all we can do. Once that is appreciated, 
one from then on forward invariable asks if his/her intervention 
will ameliorate or enhance that botomless suffering. Hence, the 
dictum: above all do no harm. This dictum puts the physician 
before a most vexing dilema, as often the prolongation of life is 
a tradeoff with enhancement of suffering. To avoid this disabling 
dilema, physicians follow standard process algorithms and leave 
the rest to the patient's will. 

President Bush would have been well served to consider that dilema. 
As the voice of the people, he must meet the common man's three 
post-Sept 11th demands: (a) get even; (b) end the insecurity; 
(c) return things to where they were on Sept. 10th. In essence, 
the President is asked by the people to "cure" them of this disease, 
of A SENSE OF TERROR, from which they suffer and under whose 
influence they cannot function. This means that he must act. 

My first correspondence to you came last Saturday when I was made
aware that the President had chosen to act. I felt that no action 
on his part could achieve his people's three demands. To these plebian 
considerations, he also had to integrate the demands of all the 
patrician interests that characterize the Republican Party. While 
the paralyzing impact of terror makes action necessary, the target 
is ultimately the lands from which eminates the bulk of the feul 
that runs the West. And, so the President must consider the three 
demands of the freightened and angered masses along with the 
limitations imposed by grander practical factors. Mr. Bush must 
also face the fact that none of our "allies" were hit as we were. 

Therefore, to join our coalition is to invite a threat that is not 
only unmanagable but would not exist for them if these nation broke 
with the Americans. Bin Laden has passsed the word that those Western 
states that keep clear of our Grand Alliance will be spared. How 
could a government, therefore, justify to its citizens that it has 
brought on them terrorism with which it cannot cope only in order 
to assist the only target of the terrorism, America. Then there are 
the Moslem states. Fragmented most skillfully by the European 
colonialists for about a century, so that they were powerless, 
subserviance to the West has now come to be seen as the greatest 
sin to illegitamizes a regime. Besides that, this terror campaign 
has been declared a "Jihad," a holy war. 

On would thus be betraying God and man by joining the Grand Alliance. 
As a result, Moslem states have followed a comical process of being in 
and out at the same time, actively assisting one side and then the other, 
so that, in sum, their contribution has to be counterproductive from 
our point of view, lest they be seen as-- more than traitors-- vile 
sinners. In sum then, the United States is alone. And-- until failure
mixes with the cost in treasure and blood-- united. But as costs 
rise-- Vietnam is an example-- the finger of guilt will point 
every-which-way and domestic squables will dictate military policy. 

One cannot help but wonder, in light of the forboding precedence 
of defeat, if Mr. Bush has considered the dictum: above all do no 
harm. In other words, has he weighed the advantages and disadvantages 
of action as opposed to inaction? Please consider as the essential 
element of my position the view that if we do NOTHING about Sept 11th; 
that, I believe, will enhance the credibility of our threat that 
should another major terrorist incident occur we will pulverize 
with nucleat-tipped ICBMs the locations where the Mullahs can be 
found. Our threat should be limited to incidents in the United States. 

All other acts against US instalations abroad should be met through 
the action of an international consortium whose objective it is to 
cut-off the Mullahs' "hands" with which they commit terror (such as 
bin Laden's organization-- one of several). Thus, bin Laden's fate is 
sealed, no matter what else happens. But there are better ways of 
getting this desert rat than with the top of the line of our forces. 
We cannot let others think that the best of what we have was needed to 
destroy the best of what they have. Better defence of our installations 
in coordination with our Grand Alliance would serve better the 
elimination of terrorism's "middle management." Failled efforts may 
school them well for the next time. 

But if we turn these into major embarassments as our superior covert 
operations achieve a high standard of competence under diplomatic 
support, success will be assured and the number of willing "martyrs" 
will decrease. But in such cases we must work slowly, steadily and 
quietly. Unfortunately, a very important secret is out. We can ONLY 
function as an open society and, therefore, cannot do for our 
instalations in-country what we can do for those abroad. Our 
vulnerability assures that dramatic assaults on our foreign 
instalations will serve as training tools rather than ultimate goals. 

So long as the Muslim War against the "Great Satan" continues, 
if we do nothing, America is the prime target. Our defencelessness 
insures that. It is almost comical how the sending of antrhax by mail 
can so disrupt American society. One can only imagine what awaits us 
when we are under viral attack. It takes many bacteria (which are 
living organisms and therefore tend to perish before they infect) 
to make people deathly sick. It only takes one virus (and since it 
is not a living organism it can survive under harsh circumstances) 
and for viruses there are no antibiotics. 

I also cringe in shame at how the turning of civilian aircraft into 
guided misilles is considered such a sohisticated operation-- just 
so as not to expose how wrecklessly unprepared were, AND ARE, the 
airlines. Stupid mistakes on the terrorists' part have been eiminated 
by on the job learning. We can only expect truly more sophisticated 
operations from here on in. 

This raises the question of whether Mr. Bushe's neither/nor response, 
above all, does no harm. We as a nation have suffered enough. If we 
deem whatever comes next to be terrorism's response to our air assault 
on Afghanistan, Mr. Bush will be held personally responsible. What 
then befalls him is nothing compared to the weakness that befalls 
the nation once this all becomes a political football. With mid-term 
elections one year away, one can easily forsee a terror-politics 
coordination to render America even more helpless than now, possibly 
pleading with the terrorists for "negotiations," as was done in 1968 
after a major offensive in Vietnam. Time is NOT on our side. 

So what can we do? Let us recall that some two decades ago Khomeini 
sought to unite the Moslem World in a religious purge of itself. 
From our point of view, that meant to learn to live not wanting the 
global modernity we were offering. Previously, secular Pan-Arabism 
had its heroes. And their demise did cause some aggitation. But 
secular nationalism suffered from a self-limitation that never 
created a problem in the Middle East which we could not manage. 

Our insurmountable troubles began when the Moslem Youth was sought 
after in a religious crusade. I strongly recommend reading Ofira 
Seliktar's FAILING THE CRYSTAL BALL TEST (2000) for an analysis 
of America's inability to confront the two steps assault of the 
Mullahs: redemtion of the faithful and attack on the Great Satan. 
Had any in our Government been less cynical, they would have seen 
the parallel between the moblization of Moslem youths, irrespective 
of sects or nationality, into a sort of Moslems sans frontieres, 
and the moblilization of Polish youth against the Soviets. Pope Paul, 
like Khomeini, called on them to sacrifice for faith instead of 
material things. Yet, we honored one and besmerched the other. 
In both cases secular states were helpless. The symbols of faith 
came to mean more than the sufffering inflicted by the state. 

Concequently, the resistance could not be quelled. As we go after 
bin Laden, we refuse to recall the Polish CP's lack of sucess 
killing by his Catholic counterparts. The more such priests died, 
the more youths came to sacrifice security and to face sufffering. 
The trouble with action is that if you undershoot, you lose miserably. 
It is very much like trying to kill a snake by stomping on its middle; 
you leave yourself vulnerable to its poisonous fangs. That is why I 
feel that we have no choise but to threaten the head. And, should our 
threat succeed, we have no choise but to co-exist with the Mullahs 
in the Muslim world. Just as JFK threatened the Soviets in the past 
(I thank Dolf Droge for the very interesting case-example)we must make 
clear that we hold them, the Mullahs, responsible should another major 
incident occur and will "nuke" them. In that way, we live under the 
threat of their irresistable power to terrorize the United States and 
they live under the threat of our irresistable power to wipe them and 
all their "holy sites" (I thank Mr. Phillip Karber for that 
consideration as an alternative to Teharan and Baggdad) off the 
face of the earth. We then live back in the MAD-- mutually assured 
destruction-- of the Cold War, as we did with the Soviets. And, we 
can hope that the Moslem peoples will, like the peoples of the Red 
Bloc, reverse this system, moving history backwards to Medieval times. 

The Taliban and the Mullahs are a Moslem World solution to Moslem 
World problems. It is their world and we must not interfere. Economic 
need on both sides will insure state-to-state accords and diplomacy. 
We have prevailed over Communism while dealing with them both in terms 
of cooperation and MAD; we must now prevail over the "martyrs for Allah" 
and the Mullahs; until then we must coexist in the same way. This can 
only be done, as in the Cold War, through credible deterrence. And yet, 
we cannot forget that our Cold War credibility would not have existed 
without our demonstrations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We might, 
therefore-- and by God I pray we don't-- be forced to demonstrate 
the power and feasability of our unique nuclear capablility. That 
may also serve to educate other potential threats. Our goal should 
be to insure the impenetrability of the continental United States. 
That's as much as we have been able to hope for since WWII. 

For the rest, it will continue to be a complex mix of diplomacy, 
trade and force for the forseable future. Above all we must recognize 
that in defending our shores we have no allies. We can only have allies 
on common interests. Our enemy is not drawable on organizational charts 
as was the Communist Bloc. The cells are loosesly bound and unbound and 
rebound based on the fascilitations of the Mullahs. We cannot change 
that now. That takes time and effort and lots of ups and downs.

All we can do now is deter by convincing that to AGAIN attack the US 
means death. The rest, well, that's what we've got generals and diplomats 
for. Daniel E. Teodoru