Demographic Jihad

The numbers in this video says it all.

Telling Stories of Jihad and Freedom

Every culture has a story or a narrative that it lives by. Throughout history, cultural stories have come into conflict with each other many times resulting in war.

We have three major cultural narratives in conflict today - the secular narrative of freedom loving people, the socialist narrative of Marxism, and the theocratic narrative of Islam. Marxism is hardened in Cuba and North Korea, being slowly diluted in China, and having a comeback in Venezuela. For global impact, neither of these forms of Marxism at this time is overly threatening as a cultural narrative. Outside of the Marxist dictators in Africa and Venezuela, there is no real rush to embrace the Marxist narrative.

Islam, on the other hand, is a different story and the difference between their story and that of ours, the secular narrative of freedom is, well, telling.

But what about the narrative? Why is human freedom to be valued? Why is the rule of law important? Why is representative government a good thing? Why does the individual human being possess such worth? Why should we defend the weak? Why should we care for the orphan, the widow, the sick, and the elderly? When is anything worth dying for? Why do we love? What is our story?

Currently, our story is confused, divided, in disarray and in pieces. Political correctness and the practice of multiculturalism has stymied our efforts to forge a coherent story that we believe and what we show to the world.

And what about Islam?

Islam has one . . . a story, a narrative. In general, Islam's answers to these questions is quite different from the answers given by the West for most of its history. Bernard Lewis may have over-estimated the power of the West's commitment to freedom to overwhelm the attractiveness of the Muslim narrative in what he describes as its "Third Wave."

What’s so attractive about the Muslim narrative? I’m not taking about the militant from of Islam but the socio-political form. The one that’s on the march throughout the world today. And what of this “Third Wave”?

Let’s look at what’s attractive about the socio-political religion called Islam.What makes Islam tick? And what can we learn about it that will help us understand those that adhere to it and learn more about the threat it poses to the civilized world. Muslims claim that Islam is the world’s fastest growing religion. If true; why? What attracts so many converts from around the world to this belief system?

The answer can be found in two concepts: Decidophobia and a thirst for a Path to God.

Decidophobia is the morbid dread of making fateful decisions – an ostrich like defense that drives people to seek refuge from decisions in a religious or ideological conformity. The term was created by Walter Kaufman in his book ‘Without Guilt and Justice”.

The objective of the Decidophobic is to make one major decision, and only one major decision, so one does not have to make another major decision in his or her life ever again. One strategy is to join a religion or a movement. One that has a set of finely prescribed behaviors that circumscribe one’s actions and offers an earthly or heavenly reward for the true believer. If a person is adrift without personal bearings and can not function in a chaotic ethical and moral environment that is perceived to have no absolutes – much like we have today – he or she will seek a belief system that offers a safe haven in this storm of relativism.

Islam fills that void.

It is a strict religion that offers paradise and a sense of meaning in life to those who adhere to the simple pillars of its faith. Islam also presents to its followers a person whose life can be imitated and acts as a blue print to achieve the promise of paradise. But there is another form of ‘religion’ that is just as powerful and offers the reward of paradise here on earth. That is the belief in a strong secular ideology also led by a man to emulate – and even worship - and follow in his footsteps. Examples of these ideologies are Nazism with Hitler and Maoism with Mao Zedong.

Both of these belief systems are the answer to one suffering with Decidophobia. There is even an instruction manual for the Decidophobic that relieves him or her of any future personal decisions. The beliefs revealed and the instructions are clear in their ‘bibles’. Mein Kampf, Mao’s Little Red Book, and the Koran. These belief systems are now the Decidophobic’s community, their country that they dwell within surrounded by fellow citizens of their little nation.

And the word nation is not used lightly here.

Take Islam. The nation of Muslims is the nation of Islam – or the Ummah. Ever wonder why the Islamists are so vehement about nationalism as practiced today? Quite simple. It runs counter to the concept of the nation of Islam. A true Muslim can not be a citizen of two nations at once. Mohammed condemned the concept of nationalism in any and all forms. The jihadist condemnation of the World Soccer Cup is a case in point.

“Claiming that soccer plants the seeds of nationalism, and is therefore part of a "colonial crusader scheme" to divide Muslims and cause them to stray from the vision of a unified Islamic identity, the Jihadist website told readers: "The sad fact of the matter is that many Muslims have fallen for this new religion and they too carry the national flag.”

This might seem silly to us and we degrade those who hold such a looney idea but it fits nicely into Islam’s goal to stop Muslims from straying from their true nation, that of Islam. Which brings up the concept of the Path to God that dovetails perfectly with the Islamist view that the destruction of the secular world is the necessary first step in creating an Islamic utopia on earth.

Why are the Islamists so concerned with the secular view of the world? Yes, we say it’s because it conflicts with our secular story that promotes freedom and democracy and Islam can not coexist with it, etc. etc. But why? What are the religious grounds for this? That is to say, how can secularism be a threat to the Muslim’s path to God?

The Hindus have recognized for centuries four paths - or ways - to self-development and spiritual growth - the Way of Action, the Way of Love, the Way of Knowledge, and the Way of Mind Control or Meditation. Islam uses primarily the Way of Action. In the book entitled ‘The One Quest’ written by Claudio Naranjo, the two approaches to ‘right action’ are the one of discipline, duty, injunctions and restraint; and the other it’s direct opposite, the one of self-expression, self-trust, and unconstraint. In the latter case, freedom itself can lead to the goal of self-improvement of the spirit by providing the greatest opportunity for experience and choice.

Guess which ‘right action’ is the choice of Islam and why it’s current choice of the path to spiritual development will be extremely difficult to integrate into a world filled with the thirst for freedom? Yep – the approach of discipline, duty, injunctions and restraint – the direct opposite of what modern western style culture exhibits today.

Our modern day culture believes that self-improvement – at least in the physical realm - can only be achieved by the greatest opportunity for experience and personal choice, unrestricted by any discipline, duty, injunction or restraint. Taken to extremes, one approach leads to the restriction of everything, the other, the permissiveness of everything.

Clash of civilizations? You bet. Clash of paths to self-improvement? You bet.

The outlook is not good for any kind of integration of the two ‘approaches’. Take the way of action that demands discipline, duty, injunctions and restraint – that is, the removal of any and all physical world distractions (including the female body) and entities (nationalism) that would hinder the true believer’s goal of reaching paradise - and we have the Taliban. Allow freedom to disintegrate into license and we are left with the nihilism of Nietzsche.

One approach leads to a constipated, restricted, dead culture – Islam. The other to the chaos of relativism where moral equivalency, political correctness and multiculturalism prevent the perception of what’s right and what’s wrong. Neither extreme assists both the individual or society’s spirit reach its fullest potential.

Finally, both extreme belief systems, theocratic and secular, are two sides of the same coin. Islam sees religion and the state as one and the same. Their book of beliefs dictates how society should function. Secular extremism like Nazi Germany and Maoist China operated the same way. The leader’s belief and the function of the state were direct results of the ‘bibles’ of Mein Kampf and the Little Red Book.

Now what about the Third Wave of Islam? Bernard Lewis writes:

The first wave dates from the very beginning of Islam, when the new faith spilled out of the Arabian Peninsula, where it was born, into the Middle East and beyond. It was then that Muslims conquered Syria, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa — all at that time part of the Christian world — and went beyond into Europe. There, they conquered a sizable part of southwestern Europe, including Spain, Portugal and southern Italy, all of which became part of the Islamic world, and even crossed the Pyrenees and occupied for a while parts of France.

The second wave was conducted not by Arabs and Moors but by Turks and Tartars. In the mid-13th century, the Mongol conquerors of Russia were converted to Islam. The Turks, who had already conquered Anatolia, advanced into Europe and in 1453 they captured the ancient Christian citadel of Constantinople. They conquered a large part of the Balkans, and for a while ruled half of Hungary. Twice they reached as far as Vienna, to which they laid siege in 1529 and again in 1683. Barbary corsairs from North Africa went to Iceland — the uttermost limit — and to several places in Western Europe, including notably a raid on Baltimore (the original one, in Ireland) in 1631.

The third wave is taking a different form: terror and migration. The subject of terror has been discussed frequently and in great detail. What I want to address here is the other aspect, which is of more particular relevance to Europe today — the question of migration.

Where do we stand now? Is it third time lucky? It is not impossible. Muslim immigrants have certain clear advantages. They have fervor and conviction, which in most Western countries are either weak or lacking.

It’s not that our story is weak, but how we practicing it.

[Muslims] are self-assured of the rightness of their cause, whereas we spend most of our time in self-denigration and self-abasement. They have loyalty and discipline, and perhaps most important of all, they have demography. The combination of natural increase and migration that is producing major population changes could lead within the foreseeable future to significant majorities in at least some European cities or even countries.

Our challenge today is to reach back in time and tell the coherent beneficial story that freedom loving people have fought for and attained over the last several centuries.

But we also have some advantages, the most important of which are knowledge and freedom. The appeal of genuine modern knowledge in a society that, in the more distant past, had a long record of scientific and scholarly achievement is obvious. They are keenly and painfully aware of their relative backwardness and welcome the opportunity to rectify it.

Less obvious but also powerful is the appeal of freedom. In the past, in the Islamic world the word freedom was not used in a political sense. Freedom was a legal concept. You were free if you were not a slave. They did not use freedom and slavery as a metaphor for good and bad government, as we have done for a long time in the Western world.

But the idea of freedom in its Western interpretation is making headway. It is becoming more and more understood, more and more appreciated and more and more desired. It is perhaps in the long run our best hope, perhaps even our only hope, of surviving this developing struggle.

The one place where we can most definitely lose the war on terror is on the battlefield of ideas. Who would believe that a combination of pure hatred and medieval superstition would provide the most appealing ideology of the 21st century?

What is our counter? The ideology of freedom, obviously. But do we really believe in it anymore? That is hard to believe on a continent which in the previous century was ravaged by the deadly poisons fascism and socialism, where everybody now seems to know what they are against (America, Jews, capitalism, immigrants, whatever), but there is little left to unite us when we are forced to decide what we are fighting for.

We need to affirm what we are fighting for and not just against.

Secular Blasphemy writes:

The one place where we can most definitely lose the war on terror is on the battlefield of ideas. Who would believe that a combination of pure hatred and medieval superstition would provide the most appealing ideology of the 21st century? What is our counter? The ideology of freedom, obviously. But do we really believe in it anymore?

Or do we believe in what Janis Joplin said, “Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Before we get to that point, I hope we can tell our story in ways that will halt and push back the strong global story of the Islamists.

 

Never Forget

Recipe for an Islamist Global Insurgency

On our last Friday's Gathering Storm Radio Show we discussed with Mr. Frank Salvato whether we were winning the war against Islamism. He said, we were not. We were losing the real jihad. The jihad not covered by the MSM. The real jihad misuderstood by the majority of the free world.

The political jihad - or what's known as the 'soft' jihad. They are using a very succcesful recipe for world domination which is one part intimidation, one part infiltration, one part disinformation and two parts of the appeasing and apologizing of the ‘useful idiots’.

But Foehammer’s Anvil has one just as good.

1 ) Create an atmosphere of fear.

2 ) Squash free speech through that fear.

3 ) Alienate Western democratic governments from their own people through the paranoia surrounding terrorist events and the culture of fear.

4 ) Alienate the Jews from the world until such time that Israel can be destroyed, especially through “world” bodies like the United Nations and by fomenting anti-Semetism in the West.

5 ) Squash the will of the American and European people to fight the jihad longterm by using the “Death by 1000 Cuts” strategy in Iraq and wherever else it can be maintained perpetually using martyrs, Al Qaeda, etc. Use terrorism, sectarian violence, open jihad and “good cop, bad cop” strategies.

6 ) Populate all nations with as many Muslims as possible and slowly usurp their populations, especially in low-Western birth nations throughout Europe. Increase the Muslim birthrate whenever possible and especially marry non-Islamic women and “revert” them as a priority.

7 ) Lobby for changes to laws in all nations to better serve the jihad through the perpetuation of myths like “Islamophobia.” Ally with the far Left to accomplish this whenever prudent. Fabricate and instigate media events in order to sway public opinion also (i.e. the US Airways Imams).

8 ) “Revert” first the lowliest elements in Western nations like their criminals and ill-educated, then once the “culture of fear” sets in, perpetuate further “reversions” to Islam through political overtures like those used by Ahmadinejad in his letters. Use college campuses, too, and prey upon the young, liberal idealists who are especially ignorant of the teachings of the Qur’an but will quickly drink up the fight for the “enlightened barbarians” from the Middle East.

9 ) Kill as many of the stubborn “polytheists” that are left over as necessary in order to further the ends of 1-7 and especially #8. Use of WMDs, poisons, outright murder — as long as the “good cop, bad cop” strategy can be maintained by the ruling Islamic leaders to keep the world entangled in political red tape, it’s all fair.

10 ) Mix well and repeat.

11 ) Be patient.

12 ) Islamic victory.

Quo Vadis America?

I’ve been thinking. A dangerous thing, I know. 

I’ve been at this blogging thing for a few years now; many other have been at it much longer. I started out like all of us, I guess, with the idea that by educating others to the threat from Islam we could gain their support. After all, it was Einstein who said history was a race between education and catastrophe. 

In my opinion, this race will be won by catastrophe. 

Looking at what we have elected to lead us and the MSM becoming the propaganda arm of that leadership, I have come to the conclusion that there is little we can do now to ‘educate’ what’s left of the masses. 

So, we wait for the catastrophe. 

The issue then is Quo Vadis – which way does this country go after that. 

Let me segue for a moment and compare today with the decade before WWII.  That decade began with the American public having little interest in the current political problem in Europe and Asia. Who cared if some nutcase by the name of Hitler and another nutcase by the name of Tojo were making insane remarks about the Third Reich and the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere. Most Americans didn’t care what happened in Austria, Czechoslovakia or some place called Mongolia. 

They weren’t our concern in the early days of the 1930s. We had our own problems namely the Great Depression. 

But over the years, as Americans were polled and they began to be educated by the events in Europe and in China, public opinion slowly changed. But an Administration that knew the nature of the enemy – fascism – and knew it would have to be confronted someday did not have the popular support to enter the war against the German and Japanese regimes. 

That all changed on December 7^th, 1941. After that date our country found its voice and as one, went to war to defeat the global threat to freedom. 

Now fast forward 70 years. 

Today, instead of a growing understanding of the threat facing us, the general public is growing less knowledgeable to the threat to their freedoms. And instead of an Administration that sees the threat, we have one that ignores it. 

Over the 10 years from 1930 to 1940, America moved towards recognizing the threat. Over the last 10 years, America has gone in the opposite direction and has learned to ignore the threat – even after 9/11. 

So what happens when the inevitable catastrophe occurs? 

America can go in one of two ways. 

In the 1930s, we learned that our freedoms were at risk from tyrants and we had a government that saw that risk and acted on the cry from the public “Remember Pearl Harbor!” The general public demanded action. Demanded retaliation. Demanded that their freedoms be protected. 

And the government complied. 

I fear that this will not be the response when our catastrophe occurs - one that kills tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of Americans. I fear the response to public demand for action, retaliation and protection will go unheeded by the current leadership with their own idea of who the real enemy is. And when the public see that their leadership will not take the proper action, many will take that action upon  themselves. 

The response from such leadership we have today would be to turn on those carrying through on the necessary action to protect our freedoms. It will use the constitutional ‘crisis’ to impose draconian restrictions on our freedoms to protect the ‘victims’ who perpetrated the biggest bloodbath in American history. 

There will be a choice and a choice will have to be made. 

Will the current Administration respond as its predecessor did 70 years ago? Or will it turn on its citizens because deep down inside they refuse to recognize the enemy and fail to protect us from it. 

Quo Vadis America?

 

Getting a Handle on the Terror War

Those in the know are quite aware that our political and military leaders either refuse to understand or don’t understand and the true nature of our enemy and the many different tactics they employ. Every once and while a light bulb goes off in some corner of the political-military-think-tank universe and they flirt with a way to go about confronting our Islamist enemy.

Such was the case of a Georgetown University professor.

Defeating terrorism - or at least battling it back to pre-9/11 levels - takes both brawn and brains, a Georgetown University professor said Friday. Yet so far, the United States has only used half that equation - the brawn of military muscle - in its war on terror, leaving the country just as vulnerable to attack as it was when al-Qaida blindsided the United States 5½ years ago, said Bruce Hoffman, keynote speaker Friday at a daylong seminar on religion, violence and terrorism at Case Western Reserve University.

So far so good. The professor understands militant jihad in the form of terrorism and on the battlefield is only a part of the overall strategy of multiple types of jihad that the Islamists are using against us.

He said the United States must pause now and thoroughly study the enemy - its motivation, its strategy, its culture, its strengths and weaknesses - to battle it on fronts that extend beyond a battlefield.

Ah! He understands. It’s not just the acts of terrorism that need to be defeated but the ideology that drives it as well.

Now, every time the U.S. kills part of al-Qaida, it simply regrows, Hoffman said.

Every time a terrorist plot is broken up, new al-Qaida operatives tinker with the plan to make it stronger so they can attack again, he said. Just as the United States knows it can't kill every terrorist, terrorists know they can't kill every Westerner. Instead, Hoffman said, terrorists are trying to use fear to undermine the pact between governments and their people, all the while planning to launch bigger and more sensational attacks.

Exactly! You don’t achieve victory by defeating the enemy on the battlefield. Those are just battles won. You achieve victory buy destroying their ideology at its roots and prevent it from re-surfacing again.

Unfortunately, the professor did not follow through on his argument by identifying the “motivation, its strategy, its culture” of our Islamic enemies. He failed to list actual examples of the tactics used by the Islamists everyday in the non-Muslim world like:

Ø Terminate America's freedom of speech by replacing it with statewide and nationwide hate-crime bills.

Ø Nominate Muslim sympathizers to political office to bring about favorable legislation toward Islam and support potential sympathizers by block voting.

Ø Yell ''foul, out-of-context, personal interpretation, hate crime, Zionist, un- American, inaccurate interpretation of the Quran'' anytime Islam is criticized or the Quran is analyzed in the public arena.

Ø Encourage Muslims to penetrate the White House, specifically with Islamists who can articulate a marvelous and peaceful picture of Islam. Acquire government positions and get membership in local school boards. Train Muslims as medical doctors to dominate the medical field, research and pharmaceutical companies. (Ever notice how numerous Muslim doctors in America are, when their countries need them more desperately than America?) Take over the computer industry. Establish Middle Eastern restaurants throughout the U.S. to connect planners of Islamization in a discreet way.

Ø Reading, writing, arithmetic and research through the American educational system, mosques and student centers (now 1,500) should be sprinkled with dislike of Jews, evangelical Christians and democracy. There are currently 300 exclusively Muslim schools in the U.S. which teach loyalty to the Quran, not the U.S. Constitution. In January of 2002, Saudi Arabia’s Embassy in Washington mailed 4,500 packets of the Quran and videos promoting Islam to America's high schools – free of charge. Saudi Arabia would not allow the U.S. to reciprocate.

Ø Nullify America's sense of security by manipulating the intelligence community with misinformation. Periodically terrorize Americans with reports of impending attacks on bridges, tunnels, water supplies, airports, apartment buildings and malls.

I await the day when one of our leaders stands up and identifies the multiple types of jihads that the Islamists are using against the non-Muslim and moderate Muslim world.

• Litigation Jihad
• Education Jihad
• Cultural Jihad
• Demographic Jihad,
• Economic jihad
• Institutional Jihad
• Media jihad
• Financial jihad
• Criminal jihad
• Thuggery Jihad.

Hopefully, the event that will bring such leaders forward will not be the result of 100,000 innocent Americans dead.

Offend Someone Online - Go To Prison

This from your friendly neighborhood Leftist fascist. Why isn't Rep Snachez shouted down for this kind of crap?

Oh, that's right. She's from California. Link here.

At a time when freedom of speech is already under attack like never before, a shocking new bill in the U.S. House of Representatives would make it a felony to offend someone online.

A felony.

Under this new law you would not just be slapped on the wrist and have to pay a fine.

You would go to big boy prison.

While most free speech activists have been watching the recent "hate crimes" bill, this much more insidious piece of legislation has received almost no notice whatsoever.

Just take a look at what H.R. 1966 actually says.....

Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

Whoa.

So if you offend someone on Facebook you could go to federal prison for two years?

Yup.

If your blog insults someone and causes them to feel bad you could go to prison for two years?

Yeppers.

If you are in a bad mood one day and you send fire off an angry tweet on Twitter that you maybe should not have you could go to prison for two years over it?

Yes indeed.

Are you starting to get the picture yet?

Talk about an attempt to chill free speech.

So if someone reads something that you have written and it makes them feel bad they can take it to the feds and have them come get you?

That is a very, very frightening thought.

The reality is that the government is increasingly trying to control even the very small details of our lives. They are even increasingly trying to control what we say and what we think.

Freedom of speech is one of the cornerstones of a free society. If we are not free to express ourselves without the fear that someone will be offended, then what freedom will we really have left?

The reality is that if we do not stand up to this, the United States of America will quickly become overrun with politically-correct "commissars" who are eager to throw anyone who disagrees with them in jail for "hate crimes" and "thought crimes".

Things are already out of control in the United Kingdom. Did you know that there are actually undercover officers in some areas of the U.K. that sit in bars and restaurants listening for anyone who might say something offensive or racist?

You may laugh, but the United States is quickly heading down that road.

Tracking a Terrorist Nuclear Attack

A group of nuclear weapons specialists issued ominous warnings before members of the U.S. Congress that terrorist groups like al-Qaida could launch a massive nuclear attack on the United States and currently there is little to deter or defend against such a strike.

Sidney Drell, an arms control specialist and physicist at Stanford University, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee the United States has entered, what he calls, a "dangerous time."

"I view us on the precipice of entering a new and more dangerous nuclear era with the spread of technology, which means, in particular, the enrichment of uranium, which makes it possible for more societies to enter the nuclear club," he said. "That raises the danger of nuclear weapons getting in the hands of terrorist groups and others unrestrained by the norms of civilized behavior as we know it and therefore these weapons become more likely to be used."

"If we discover that a country has purposely transferred fissile material or a nuclear weapon to a terrorist group, we ought to be telling them in advance that we will treat them as though they were the one who launched the attack and they should expect devastating retaliation," he added.

All well and good. But how would you know what country fissile material or a nuclear weapon came from? Though our first response would be to nuke someone – anyone – the reality is that we couldn’t take such drastic action without confirming where the nuclear material came from.

There is a way and it was used to some extent in a Tom Clancy novel The Sum of All Fears.

The procedure is called Nuclear Attribution.

Since the beginning of the atomic age, the fear of a retaliatory attack has kept many a nuclear nation from getting too close to the launch button. But with nuclear terrorism now the paramount threat and rogue regimes able to peddle the necessary ingredients on the black market, the classic deterrence of reprisal is no longer an adequate defense.

That’s led security experts to devise a new strategy: Hold states directly accountable for leaks or illicit sales of fissile material. How? Nuclear attribution.

Using sophisticated techniques such as radiochemical analysis, scientists can determine the isotopic fingerprint of elements like uranium and plutonium, even after they have been used in a detonated bomb. Then, by isolating telltale trace contaminants and using traditional law-enforcement methods, analysts can narrow down the range of original sources, providing in the process a kind of “birth certificate” for nuclear material. They could then know whether the material used in a bomb might have come from, say, North Korean or Iranian facilities.

The information needed for such an investigation has been going on for some time.

For a decade, an informal international working group of scientists and law-enforcement personnel have been meeting to share forensic techniques. The methods, however, are only half the equation. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the European Commission, and the United States have been gathering databanks of “nuclear fingerprints” from different sources, against which they can match forensic samples. Having a thorough log of the world’s fissile material would be an invaluable tool in fighting nuclear terrorism.

We inform the nuclear nations that we will track the nuclear attributes of the bomb or nuke materials in the case of a dirty bomb back to its source and respond to that country or countries accordingly. Such an announcement, in the case of North Korea, was actually made by President Bush.

Directly after North Korea tested a nuclear bomb, President George W. Bush invoked nuclear attribution directly when he warned that “the transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and [it] would hold North Korea fully accountable of the consequences of such action.”

But there's a rub.

But in order for attribution to be truly effective, states will have to work together to develop policies that hold accountable all states with nuclear facilities, not just rogue regimes in Pyongyang or Tehran. What happens, for instance, if the material used in a nuclear terror attack is traced back to France or Russia? Even countries that aren’t charter members of the “axis of evil” don’t always adequately track or report lost, stolen, or smuggled nuclear materials. Eighty percent of seizures of nuclear material cannot be matched with recorded thefts, according to the IAEA. But for nuclear attribution to work as a deterrent, all countries, even the United States, must be held liable for the harm done from their wayward nuclear material.

That doesn’t mean that Moscow or Paris should be blown up in retaliation for a nuclear blast set off in the United States by terrorists. But countries could be held legally responsible for monetary damages. The families of victims can be compensated and properties rebuilt. The cost would be enormous but repaid over time. Such a policy would not be entirely without precedent—consider Libya’s payments for the 1988 airline blast over Lockerbie, Scotland—but it would be an incentive for states to keep their nuclear stocks more secure, or avoid nuclear capabilities altogether.

So is nuclear attribution the solution to deterrence?

But the prospects for this kind of multilateral coordination may not be bright: Countries are loath to give up their own nuclear information, including how they may have covertly obtained data on other countries’ programs.

The currents state of deterrence is no longer effective now that rogue regimes and terrorist organizations may get nuclear weapons for their use. Though not perfect, nuclear attribution of a new form of deterrence. But deterrence doesn’t work if you don’t state ahead of time your intentions. Time could be running short. It’s a national security policy issue that should be addressed now.