In a desperate effort to revive his floundering presidential campaign, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo has returned to his unhinged and wildly irresponsible discussion of punitive bombing of Muslim holy sites in Saudi Arabia.

On “This Week” on ABC, he suggested that such threats against Mecca and Medina could serve to deter Islamic terrorists from staging nuclear attacks on the United States. In the Republican debate of August 5th, Representative Tancredo portentously intoned: “I read the national intelligence estimate. I see what they are planning. And I’m telling you right now that anybody that would suggest that we should take anything like this off the table in order to deter that kind of event in the Untied States isn’t fit to be president of the United States.”

His declaration drew warm applause from the Iowa audience, and many conservatives across the country (including numerous callers to my radio show) feel instinctively sympathetic to any pledge to use decisive force against our Islamist adversaries.

Rational consideration of Tancredo’s proposal, however, leads inevitably, inescapably to one of two conclusions:

1) He wants the United States to make empty threats that no Commander-in-Chief would ever dare to implement, or

2) He honestly expects our government to respond to a devastating terrorist attack with a course of action guaranteed to increase, rather than reduce, the chance of future assaults, while pushing our economy into ruinous chaos.

In the case of the first alternative, all students of history and statecraft understand the terrible danger when a nation makes promises it can’t fulfill, or pledges retaliation that it has no real intention of delivering.

Osama bin Laden has already derided the United States as a “paper tiger” based on our shameful retreats from Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia and, potentially, Iraq. In the event that our government declared its intention to respond to terrorist devastation by bombing Mecca, he and his colleagues might well feel tempted to subject the West to the ultimate humiliation by calling our bluff. Indeed, any calculating terrorist leader would rightly dismiss the possibility that America would actually conduct a devastating bombing raid against our most powerful Arab ally, thereby severely disrupting the flow of oil on which all Western economies depend. After sustaining the incalculable economic damage of a terrorist nuclear attack on American soil, no sane President would want to insure further commercial devastation by dispatching a fleet of bombers against symbolic targets in the nation with the planet’s richest known oil reserves.

The possibility of following through with such an attack remains so remote, so obviously counterproductive, that any pledge to undertake this response would only encourage jihadists to expose the hollowness of our rhetoric and the limitations of our power. In this sense, far-fetched public warnings about obliterating sacred shrines in Mecca and Medina might actually make terrorist violence more likely than ever. Making threats we don’t mean to actualize weakens, rather than strengthens, our national security.

Meanwhile, even a candidate as illogical and immature as Tom Tancredo should be able to calculate the catastrophic impact of a president ordering the actual incineration of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and Mohammed’s tomb in Medina. Every American understands that Islamo-Nazi terror arises from an all-consuming, suicidal rage against the United States – a rage already so powerful that it’s led thousands of “holy warriors” to blow their own bodies into pieces for the sake of murdering innocent Americans.

Representative Tancredo should confront a simple, obvious question about our terrorist enemies: if we turned the holiest sites in all of Islam in smoldering rubble, would their rage against us increase, or decrease?

Even a two-bit demagogue like the Colorado Congressman must acknowledge that anti-American fury in the Muslim world would not only intensify among jihadists, but would spread quickly among those previously identified as moderate or indifferent. If we feel menaced and overwhelmed by Islamic hostility today, one can only imagine the implacable hatred we would produce by deliberately destroying their holy places.

The violent reaction to such destruction isn’t the subject of mere speculation; it’s actually a matter of record. In February, 2006, operatives for al-Qaeda in Iraq exploded bombs that severely damaged the beloved golden dome of the Al Askari Mosque in Samara—an ancient site sacred to all Shi’ites Muslims. As expected – and, apparently, as intended – the Shi’ite response involved a ferocious increase in sectarian violence, with retaliatory slaying of literally thousands of innocent Sunnis. In light of this reaction to the incomplete destruction of a sectarian shrine, why would anyone expect a less violent result from the total destruction of a far holier Mosque in Mecca that’s equally sacred to Shi’ite and Sunni alike?

Among other things, a strike against the sacred cities of Saudi Arabia would fatally undermine our beleaguered and erstwhile allies in the Islamic world. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, for instance, who visited the White House earlier this week, would face new and irresistible pressure to distance himself from the Mosque-destroying infidels, or else share the blame with them for an atrocity against all of Islam.

Al-Qaeda and allied groups try to recruit future holy warriors by claiming that the United States isn’t simply defending itself and its interests, but rather pursues the implacable purpose of destroying Islam itself. Nothing could substantiate and underscore this argument more effectively than U.S. bombing strikes on non-military targets in Mecca and Medina. Destroying sacred buildings never serves to undermine or disarm bloodthirsty hostility, but only helps to mobilize such rage.

In October of 2000, howling Palestinian mobs opted for a Tancredo-like “retaliation” by ransacking one of the holiest sites of Judaism as part of the second Intifida. Without interference from Yassir Arafat’s security forces, these radicals destroyed and ultimately bulldozed to rubble the venerated tomb of the Biblical patriarch, Joseph. Rather than discouraging the Israelis, this wanton destruction of a cherished building stiffened their resolve to resist, obliterated their illusions and helped bring about the landslide election victory of a new, hard-line Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. Continued...