From Lileks. He seems a little pessimistic (perhaps with good reason--we'll find out as the sun goes down across the nation):

It’s been an interesting election season, I’ll grant that. Our would-be gubernator, Mike Hatch, called a reporter a “Republican whore,” and it yielded a piece in the paper about how “stress” and “scrutiny” lead candidates to make mistake in the final days. Any who knows Mr. Hatch knows the comment had nothing to do with stress or scrutiny, but rather with the fellow’s personality; he is a mean, small man. But if he wins, Garrison Keillor will write a column about how the ancient true Minnesota virtues of Decency have been reasserted, because Mr. Hatch will quite possibly raise the gas tax, and nothing confirms our essential decency like the ever-steady rise of state levies sloshed off to indistinct purposes.

...Those are my local races; I expect they’re mirrored one way or the other around the country. I expect the next two years to go poorly, I’m afraid. Then again, I’m often wrong; perhaps it’s possible for a country to win a war with apologies and investigations. Perhaps we’re not at war at all; perhaps Iran and the jihadists are merely an illusion conjured up by the puppetmasters, just as they turned Iraq – the veritable Monaco of Mesopotamia – into a Threat, and just as they defended Israel against the brave Defenders of the Apartment Buildings in Lebanon. I really should relax. I mean, if you’re driving down the road and you see a car coming towards you head on in your lane, there’s no reason to worry. You’re in the right. What else matters?

[Update a few minutes later]

And to continue on a downer note, Joe Katzman has a post on the road to atomic perdition:

Wretchard's famous 3 conjectures, and related posts, talked about the current window of time as equivalent to "the golden hour" during which a trauma patient can still be saved and death averted. This announcement tells us, very clearly and in no uncertain terms, that The Golden Hour has just about passed us by. Welcome to a future in which the use of nuclear weapons in war approaches certainty, followed by the inevitable responses. Welcome, in other words, to Fibonacci's propagating nuclear spiral of a multi-proliferation future. One that features nuclear weapons in the hands of death-cult barbarians, the vast majority of whom grew up in an atmosphere glorifying suicide-martyrdom as mankind's greatest moral achievement.

The world in which your children will live.

If Islamic radicals acquired a nuke, what would be their
first preferred target? Tel Aviv or NYC? and Why?

Depends on which group.

If they're thinking really objectively, they'd be better off going for NYC using the most deniable methods possible. Going for Tel Aviv risks Sampson, and I'm not sure if Islam survives the loss of Mecca as well as Judaism survived the loss of the temple.

Going for NYC, things slow down, because we just can't up and kill a billion people over *one* attack.

Lileks certainly is wrong about the war, he just doesn't know or won't admit to the real reason. The war in Iraq is a war for Iran, not a war against it.

Do you want serious answer? Neither.

It is very hard to predict what people whose logic is based on completely different set of aximos will do, but my bet would be Madrid or Tashkent. Or both at the same time, if jihadis are willing to hold off using their first bomb until they acquire the second.

A nuclear attack on Israel would result in immediate extermination of entire Arab world. You can not build Caliphate if Caliphate’s core is gone. A nuclear attack on US might not have the same effect, but then again it might. At the very least it will result in destruction of all Arab and Iranian warmaking capicity, and in effective occupation of Saudi Arabia, with House of Saud remaining as figureheads (not that al-Qaeda will shed any tears over them).

OTOH, al-Qaeda would expect the destruction of Madrid to completely demoralize already demoralized Western Europe, to create doubt and uncertainty in US (“This could happen to us! Better stay out of the fray!”), and to energize the Muslims already in Spain and elsewhere into openly taking over the place and establishing Sharia. I am not saying all this wills happen - I saying this is what al-Qaeda will expect. They know that West is weak, that God is on their side, and that all formerly Muslim lands (such as Spain) will revert to Muslim rule. In light of that certainty, striking at the Christian occupation of al-Magrib is a logical thing to do.

A strike on Tashkent will likewise (in al-Qaeda’s twisted mind, and to some extent in reality) will energize Muslims everywhere and deliver Uzbekistan to Sharia. Of all secular Asian dictators, Islam Karimov is probably the most brutal, and particularly brutal toward Islamists. Many Uzbeks hate him, and radical Islamism is what they naturally gravitate toward. Enemy of my enemy is my friend, and all that. If Tashkent goes up in nuclear fire, al-Qaeda will find a lot of grateful supporters – who were never high on things like democracy and women’s rights, even if they do not pray regularly (yet). Of course, many others would hate al-Qaeda (say, those with relatives in Tashkent), but al-Qaeda is used to being hated. God is on their side, remember? And incidentally, Uzbeks are not Arabs, so there will be little backlash in the "Caliphate core" that would happen if, say, Cairo got nuked. However much al-Qaeda would love to kill Mubarak.

BTW, why are you hiding your name?

Why would Islam not be able to survive the loss of Mecca? I don't see their faith based on the presence of that city any more than Judaism was dependent on the Temple prior to its destruction. The role of the journey to Mecca seems more symbolic, perhaps to keep the religion somewhat unified culturally. But I'd say that the various schisms since the time of Mohammad indicate that this hasn't been particularly effective at its task.

Given that Islam has survived quite easily more than a thousand years, I doubt that the destruction of Mecca would have any measurable effect on the religion.

Second, Israel is supposed to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 200-400 "small" nuclear bombs (as I understand it). While that is sufficient to significantly hurt any combination of foes, it's not enough to exterminate the Arab world.

Al Qaeda does seem to go for the big, flashy schemes. If they do get nuclear weapons, I wouldn't be surprised if they did go for both NYC and Tel Aviv in a simultaneous attack. But they might decide on lower risk, softer targets like Madrid and Tashkent.

could be Bombay

> Why would Islam not be able to survive the loss of Mecca?

There's some verse in the Koran about Mecca being protected from unbelievers by Allah.