What to do if Al Qaeda drops an Atomic Bomb in Manhattan

The attacks of 9/11 reminded us of humans’ seemingly inexhaustible imagination and capacity to kill innocent lives. What was unthinkable one day, became reality the next. Today, in the back of everyone’s mind lies the irrepressible fear that one day, terrorists will orchestrate an attack that would make 9/11 look like a Saturday night brawl. What would happen if Al Qaeda dropped a nuclear warhead on Chicago or New York City and kill a million people? How would the US retaliate?

Answers to this unlikely but not impossible scenario have been of three kinds. One was to close the United States borders and initiate a massive security operation inside the country. Another one to invade the whole Middle East region and a third, most common one is to retaliate with a nuclear attack on the Arab countries. In my view none of these responses would prove effective in isolating and capturing Al Qaeda members with the cooperation of Muslims around the world. Moreover, human cost would be enormous and the United States military resources maybe stretched to the limit. After having visited Syria, Lebanon, Tunisa, Morocco, and some other Muslim countries recently I am convinced that most Muslims are peace loving people who would be as horrified as westerners to see massive killings of US citizens. So how can the US regain control of a situation like this after a nuclear attack on US soil? I think that there is another alternative to nuclear attack or massive invasion. I call this plan the Oil Trust and it would lead to massive political and social change in the Muslim world.

The Oil Trust Operation, would be a realiatory plan that simply consists in confiscating all Persian Gulf oil facilities and controlling their production. The premise is that only by separating the Arab regimes from their oil money can financial pipelines to terrorists be effectively cut.

So how would ‘Operation Oil Trust’ be carried out?

An immediate US response would be to swiftly take over most of the oil wells in the Persian gulf, many of which are under water or near the coast line and are very hard to defend. After the oil facilities are secured the US would bring in oil workers from all over the world to run these wells to ensure their protection. The next step would be to create an ‘Oil Trust’ and put money obtained through oil revenue in this trust to the benefit of Muslim people in the region.

The positive outcomes of this retaliatory plan would be threefold: first, the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers would be avoided, taking the oil fieds is much easier and less deadly than invading cities; second, the occupation of Persian Gulf oil fields would make it immensely harder for terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda to be financed with Arab oil money; lastly, the US would act as a revolutionary force in the region redistributing wealth among Muslims. Ultimately, the objective would not be the annihilation of Arab regimes and the occupation of whole nations, but rather, the confiscation, the securing and the management of Arab oil until the link between Oil Wealth and terrorism was severed and until all countries in the region become functioning democracies.

Before ending I just want to clarify that I am not recommending that the US do this now. This would be an insane foreign policy. I am only recommending this in retaliation to a successful Al Qaida nuclear attack.

• Al Qaeda
• Atomic Bomb
• Islamic terrorism
• Operation Oil Trust