Creating Effective
Incentives (What
should our response our cities?)
HUMAN EVENTS ^ | 05/22/2007 | Walter E. Williams
What should our response be if terrorists set off a
nuclear explosion, or some other weapon of mass
destruction, in one of our cities? I put this question
to Professor Victor Hanson, senior research fellow at
Stanford University's prestigious Hoover Institution,
who spoke on the Iraq war at the Wynnewood Institute
lecture series.
His answer to my question bore a slight resemblance
to a classroom practice of mine. At the beginning of
each semester, I tell my students that I'm getting old
and a cell phone ringing during my lecture could be
devastating to my train of thought. Therefore, the
penalty for a student's cell phone going off in class is
a five percent reduction in his total points for the
semester and a five percent reduction in the total
points of the students sitting on either side of him. Of
course, the students are shocked. The penalty might not
be fair, penalizing a person for the actions of another,
but I've not had trouble with cell phones going off in
class.
Professor Hanson's answer referenced his July 6,
2004, National Review article titled "Another 9/11? The
Awful Response That We Dare Not Speak About." He argues
that without the direct aid of countries like Iran,
Syria and rogue elements within the Saudi Arabian,
Jordanian and Pakistani governments, and millions of
ordinary Arabs, who know who terrorists are and where
they sleep and won't turn them in, a massive terrorist
attack on the United States would be nearly impossible.
That means terrorists have some kind of local support.
If there is an attack on our country, with weapons of
mass destruction, the first thing we can expect is for
country officials to deny any responsibility. Hanson
says that we should beforehand tell the leaders of
Middle East countries that if there's an attack on the
United States, we will hold them responsible if they're
proven to have aided or sheltered the terrorists.
Holding the country responsible would mean that in
response to an attack we'd totally destroy their
military bases, power plants, communication facilities
and, if necessary, totally destroy their major cities.
You say, "Williams, that's unthinkable!" Yes, while
unpleasant, it is thinkable. That's precisely how 50
years of peace were maintained between the Western
powers and the former Soviet Union. The leaders of the
USSR knew that any attack on the United States would
provoke an immediate massive nuclear retaliation. As
frightening as the policy of Mutually Assured
Destruction was, in the absence of a better strategy,
neither Americans nor Russians were incinerated.
Laying down such a gauntlet is nothing new; it simply
requires courageous leadership. In the wake of the 1962
Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy credibly
warned the leaders of the Soviet Union that: "It shall
be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear
missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the
Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on
the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response
upon the Soviet Union." There's little question that
President Kennedy's "full retaliatory response" would
have included nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately, today, there's neither the American
leadership nor the American character to protect
ourselves from people whose declared aim is to destroy
us. It's not just Americans, but the West in general,
who have lost the will to protect themselves from the
barbarism of the Middle East. Keep in mind that the
mighty Roman Empire fell to barbarians who ushered in
the Dark Ages.
Dr. Williams is a nationally syndicated columnist,
former chairman of the economics department at George
Mason University, and author of More Liberty Means Less
Government
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