I personally thought Time’s 2006 Person of the Year was a brilliant choice. I think many of you might have agreed. I was less than fully enthused about their 2008 selection, even if not terribly surprised. There’s no question that winning the election to the US presidency requires a very great deal of ambition, talent, endurance and sheer determination – it does, especially if you’re a Democrat (Republicans only win through guile, fraud and deceit). And it certainly is noteworthy on many different levels that a man with our president-elect’s background can rise to the highest office in the land. I guess in my own small way I viewed the campaign as analogous to screening for command in the Navy: Not so much a reward for what you have done as an opportunity to see what you can do. Winning a national election is the pinnacle of accomplishment for any politician with an ounce of ambition. Having done so, the trick is to govern.
We’ll all know Mr. Obama a great deal better four years hence, and it’s very likely that some of those who have filled in their own sketches on his tabula rasa will be disappointed, even as others opposed to his election may well be happily surprised. I certainly hope to be.
One of the reasons I remain cautiously optimistic about his administration – beyond my native optimism – was his retention of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. Who, as it turns out, is Aviation Week’s Person of the Year:
Robert Gates sits at the table, sandwiched in the cathedral-like hearing room between an antsy Senate Armed Services Committee and an anxious public. It’s December 2006 and if the Code Pink Iraq war protesters in the public seating are not providing enough volatility, the grim Senate panel in front of Gates is still reeling from an historic congressional election the month before, as well as the sudden firing of the larger-than-life man he has been tapped to replace.
After years of obfuscation and antipathy from Donald Rumsfeld, Sen. Carl Levin (Mich.), the committee’s ranking Democrat and soon-to-be chairman, simply wants to know whether President George W. Bush’s new pick to run the Pentagon believes the U.S. is winning the war in Iraq.
“No, sir,” he answers. With those two words, Gates signaled that the era of Rumsfeld’s ideology dictating Pentagon decisions was over.
Fast forward nearly two years. Defense Secretary Robert Michael Gates is standing on a stage in Chicago with President-elect Barack Obama. The reform-minded Democrat is announcing his decision to keep the Republican as Defense secretary – marking the first time that a newly elected chief executive would retain the existing Pentagon chief for his Cabinet – let alone during a White House transition between opposing political parties.
In a short speech, the 65-year-old Kansas native explains his decision to stay in a direct fashion: “Mindful that we are engaged in two wars and face other serious challenges at home and around the world, and with a profound sense of personal responsibility to and for our men and women in uniform and their families, I must do my duty – as they do theirs. How could I do otherwise?”
Venturing a little further afield – and taking the truly long view, a view that encompasses not merely the latest electoral cycle or financial mess, FrontPage Magazine has selected Geert Wilders as its Person of the Year:
(The) unusually coiffed Dutch MP is a favorite hate figure of the Western media, which has spent years vilifying him as a “reactionary,” a “particularly dangerous type of demagogue,” a “racist” and an “Islamophobe.” Wilders would almost certainly plead guilty to the last charge, and with ample reason. His tireless campaign to sound the alarm about the growing threat of Islamic radicalism in the West has turned him into a target of Islamic jihadists and the object of untold assassination plots. A 2006 death threat, one of hundreds he’s received, declared that his “infidel blood will flow freely on cursed Dutch streets.” Al-Qaeda has specifically singled him out for slaughter.
Against this menacing background, it would have been no failing in his character if Wilders had decided that the price of speaking out about Islamic fundamentalism was too high; others in his prominent position would have reached just that conclusion. Instead, Wilders has persevered. Braving daily death threats and sacrificing the security that his critics take for granted, he has opted for the often-thankless task of saving Western civilization from its Islamist discontents – beginning with the valuable reminder that the demands of Islamic zealots are not only not congruent with Western values but are, in fact, in direct conflict with them.
I am not one of those who believes that every Muslim (nor even most of them) secretly burns to cut infidel throats, or even to actively – if iteratively – impose Sharia law on the rest of us by insidious demographic assault. We’ve issues of our own to deal with, and the recent expulsion of a family of travelers from an AirTran jet for the crime of looking different and making innocuous remarks is an embarrassing example of national paranoia. But it’s sadly not a paranoia entirely without cause either – witness the death threats Wilders receives for daring to note that there are at least some Islamists who believe that uppity infidels ought to be murdered. We only learned to think this way recently, and for 3000 very good reasons. Still, we’re better than that, or ought to be.
The civilizational clash of values that has been going on for most of the last two millenia is not going to be solved in the span of a 30-minute informercial, a fact that Wilders often reminds those who would rather revel in the liberties they own than safegaurding them for future generations. For his actions, Wilders has received not just death threats – and the loss of personal privacy that comes with 24/7 personal security – but also the opprobrium of a Western cultural elite more keen on being seen as tolerant than preserving the underpinnings of that tolerance. He perseveres out of a sense of duty.
Mr. Obama has won his prize through ambition. Let us see what he can make of his duty.
Sir, only “notable” is his being so corrupt, and still able to be elected (similar to JFK) to the federal executive office.
Lex, I agree with all your remarks save one: that family of travelers is only reaping the reward of a religion that as a whole has failed to condemn Islamic terrorism. When I see the folks at CAIR make public statements against terror, I’ll feel a little more remorse at what I would call (in a post-9/11 world) reasonable precautions to insure safe air transport.
When the Islamic world takes a stand against terror, then I’ll give it’s followers a pass. Until then, they’re all suspect.
Joseph,
I don’t like the guy, can’t see why anyone voted for him, but “corrupt?”
I don’t see it. To be corrupt, you have to actually have done something in your life.
Lex … I can’t feel much remorse about the Muslim family which was ejected from the airline flight when, just last week, Muslim leaders reinstituted crucifixion as a punishment for ‘infidels’ who displeased the Muslim powers that be in countries ruled by sharia law. I’m with Byron on this one. In a world where adherents of a death-loving religion accept such statements from their leaders without protest, simple good sense would suggest that we protect ourselves against these fanatics.
As Major Chuck Zeigenfuss said, not entirely facetiously, “if they don’t like our rules, let ‘em start their own dam’ airline.”
Marianne
We only learned to think this way recently, and for 3000 very good reasons. Still, we’re better than that, or ought to be.
Its not a recent phenomenon-its actually a part of our national character going back to the foundation of the Republic. Only the people we have been paranoid about has changed. Perhaps the difference is that , in some corners at least, that instinct is recognized and a need to control the impulse is also recognized.
Eh. . .Geert Wilders says some things that need saying, for sure. But I would counter that he goes a bit far. Ever since Fitna came out it seems like his statements recently have been phrased in as inflammatory a manner as possible. Like he’s trying to invoke Islamic ire to keep the limelight on himself.
In my mind, he’s become as much a publicity whoring whacko as Medea Benjamin. Which is tragic.
Lex, the average Muslim is the sea the Islamist swims in. It’s a characteristic of the religion, and you can’t separate them.
As for the Muslims on the Air Tan flight, I sympathize with them. I’ve had the conversation a few times with people who have not flown before. I such situations I return to what Walter Williams said about racial profiling, (and (I paraphrase here as I can’t remember the exact words) “I don’t blame the Police, I blame the other Blacks who have have provided the data to construct the profile. The Police are just doing their job.”
Perhaps Muslims will learn why the world distrusts them and change. The Soviets used them as proxies against us and Israel, but they kept them at arms length. They knew the fire they were playing with.
Really, Lex–paranoia? Nice moderate Muslim doctors would never do anything like leave a car-bomb smoldering outside a crowded dance club, or drive one into an airport lobby.
Oh, yeah, they did, never mind. Look the other way, maybe it won’t happen again.
Humble1310, Geert Wilders in the same sentence with Medea Benjamin? Maybe you need to talk a long walk in the fresh air.
Like it or not, Wilders is the only politician of any stature in Europe who is actually talking about defending liberty, starting with free speech. Most of Europe has already capitulated, even Anders Fogh Rasmussen waffles in his public statements. Wilder’s example clearly limns the moral cowardice of Rice and by extension Bush (go back and read the mealy statements of Rice and the White House at the time of Fitna’s release), not to mention the whole cavalcade of European dhimmis, elected or appointed, who all agree that free speech ends when it offends either their own ego or that of some Mohammedan.
Wilders stood up to the EU, which is a gigantic monolith of oppression itself, his own government (which tried many, many nasty things to suppress him, most of which haven’t seen the light of day yet)–the whole bloody enlightened world to say simply that Islam has doctrines that justify violence against us, and that Muslims committing violence against us invoke those doctrines to justify themselves.
Remember Ayaan Hirsi Ali? It was when she was publicly threatened following the butchering of Theo van Gogh in the streets of Amsterdam that Wilders, alone in the government of the Netherlands, stood up for her–everyone else lacked the balls to do it, fearing to end up like van Gogh. Hell, she had bigger balls than any of them. And for standing up for her, the death threats began on him as well, leading to four years now of living on military bases and always traveling with armed security. The stalwart Dutch government? Well, after playing games with her citizenship, then they said they weren’t going to fund her personal protection detail, either. What makes Wilders’ security detail any more certain? Yeah, I guess it’s their own big mouths that causes their death sentences. If only they’d shut up and be good dhimmis.
Publicity whoring whacko? WTF?
He won with ambition yes, and a sycophantic media that buried nearly everything the public needed to know about the man in the morass of what they wanted us to know about about the messiah.
I too hope that Obama and his administration have a true grasp of what they are taking on – that their ambition and platitudes are just words and don’t amount to anything without the balls to take the right actions at the right moments.
Duty? Does Obama even understand that word? His thirst for the Presidency was so clear, so obvious – that I know the next 4 years will be spent with him campaigning for his 2nd 4 years.
The family in the Trans Air episode was dressed in Muslim garb and, apparently loudly, debating about what would happen to them if the plane blew up.
Now, they were certainly not planning a terrorist act. But, if I dress in grungy clothes, act stoned and talk loudly about marijuana in an airport, would anyone be surprised if I am detained?
No.
I’m not saying it was “right” in hindsight for them to be refused a seat on the plane. But, people who are apparently smart enough to get through graduate school, should have sufficient common sense to keep their airport waiting area conversational topics away from exploding planes – especially if they are wearing garb typical of the publicity-seeking terrorists who have wreaked so much havoc on us and our world.
I’m with some of the others – until the mainstream Islamic community stands up and actively shouts down the Jihadi-idiots, all are suspect. Maybe not suspected of actual terrorist acts, but certainly suspected of quietly cheering on the Jihadis who are knocking off those awful Infidels.
The lines were clearly drawn after 9/11 – you are either with us or against us. Make your choice and stand for it.
Lex,
I, too, am loath to lump all Muslims under the same category, but I have come to one inescapable conclusion:
There are no innocent Muslims, in the same way that there were no innocent Germans in 1945. No one can say that they didn’t know. None can say that they tried to do something to stop the madness, when they are seen dancing in the streets and happily waving Hamas, or Hezzbollah flags. No one can say that it was their government’s fault.
This is Islam’s fault, plain and simple. No muslim has clean hands unless and until they stand up to make it stop. Unless and until muslims start holding large rallies to demand an end to Islamic terrorism, and mullahs start demanding that their adherents cease and desist terrorist actions, and unless and until Islam demands that muslims learn to treat all other religions as an equal to be respected, then NO MUSLIM can be seen as innocent of terrorism.
Painting with a large brush? Certainly. But when you have an entire building to paint, it helps to cover large swaths at one time.
Extremist Muslims are our most serious, long term enemy and I have no (zero, nada, none, zilch) sympathy for Muslims if they don’t like the scrutiny they are under.
Given the virtual total silence on the part of, presumably, non-terrorist Muslims, if they do not like the suspicion they are (rightfully) under, leave the USA and move to the Middle East.
As Peggy Noonan said in a WSJ Opinion article years ago (paraphrasing); “If the 9/11 Terrorists were blue eyed, blond haired, middle aged, white women, then Peggy would expect to be subject to a higher level of suspicion and attention. Peggy also said that, as an American, she would understand the reasons for the action, and would not resent it.”
If Muslims don’t like the suspicion they are under (especially if they appear to be Middle Eastern Arab’s); tough.
Nuances are nice if one has the luxury; in this area we do not have the luxury.
All muslims speak a language I am familiar with. Their deeds speak much louder than their words. If they’re not out there in the world someplace surprising innocents with sudden merciless death, they are applauding those that do the killing or setting fire to cars that belong to others.
What’s a hudna again and why would we want any part of such a thing? I’ll welcome them to the civilized world when a cathedral is built in Saudi Arabia.
And it certainly is noteworthy on many different levels that a man with our president-elect’s background can rise to the highest office in the land.
Truly, it is remarkable that a man who’s a banker’s spawn on his mother’s side and has a father who’s an African plutocrat from Harvard law has made it to the presidency.
It is noteworthy indeed.
One upon a time we were a nation of the people, by the people, and for the people. Now, we are a nation of average Americans, but our freedoms, our aspirations, our dignity have been surrendered to urban elites from Harvard Law and Goldman Sachs.
It is remarkable that such a noble nation, such a dream, should pass so quickly into despotic oligarchy. Perhaps some day an honest working men will once again fill our legislatures and our executive offices.
But that day is not today, and in a few weeks I shall mourn for our Republic.
It’s all a one-way street with Moslems; they ask for concessions to their own religion in non-Moslem nations that they never, ever, would give, or even consider giving, to other religions in their own countries–and never have.
Several of the regular crew have chimed in before me, and said most of it pretty well.
What is being left unsaid is where it leads. It’s leads to a global war. One that we can only avoid by politely and tolerantly dying so as to not sully up their planet. Time, and past time, to take all our power and our weapons and end this threat. Nation building is what we do after the victory.
I am unembarrassed by the decision to remove these people from the plane. I think was a series of deliberately provocative things they did and said. The end result was to set it up so they could cry VICTIM! if they got the treatment they expected. Frack ‘em.
virgin xenophon:
Not only are Muslims willing to give concessions to other religions, Muslims in this country keep putting on our uniform, traveling to hostile lands, fighting for our flag, and making the ultimate sacrifice to protect our ability to practice our many faiths back home.
It would do you good to remember that modulo a couple California fruitcakes, all the Muslim Americans that have died in the War on Terror have done so either as victims on our soil or servicemen under the orders of our military.
They are willing to fight for you, in spite of your bigotry and the bigotry of others like you at home.
They are willing to fight for you, knowing that if captured they will have double the wrath of their captors, for our enemies will consider them not merely infidels, but even worse, apostates.
It would do you good to remember that same freedoms defended by Americans named Washington or Jefferson are still defended today by not only men with those old names, but with new names such as Mohammed, and yes, Hussein.
SAM here is a pretty good case in evidence of total and complete ISLAMIC MURDEROUS DENIAL. He does the quick shuffle to misname the point of his ire and then takes off on a jolly misdirection to announce that a teeny tiny handful of muslims have made an effort to join 20th century western civilization by assisting their natal or associative country against those who have declared themselves enemies of the United States. It still looks like 99% of muslims in America hate/despise America but you should run the numbers yourself and let me know if it is just me that sees vast turnouts of muslims in America demanding “Death to America”, or honor killing their daughters or driving around military bases with pipe bombs in their cars and murder in the hearts or hijacking planes, slitting the throats of the flight attendants and crashing the planes into big buildings or taking their SUVs and deliberately running down poor innocent college students who could not get out of the way of murderous muslims at large behind the wheel of big merican cars.
The important thing SAM, is that we see you very clearly for what you are. You’re an apologist for grown men that kill 14 year old girls for not wearing hijabs and you’re an apologist for muslims that wear suicide vests into church.
Now you might ask yourself why a a 45 year old world traveler who has lived for 4 years in the middle east takes your comments as indicative of support for jihad. The only cathedrals I know of in the islamic world are those that have been converted to islamic mosques. Sofia ring any bells for you?
I’ll offer you a deal. I will give you 100 bibles and a ticket to Jeddah and you give me 100 Korans and a ticket to anywhere. You’ll be in prison before me since I can sh**can a Koran anywhere on earth but you can’t take a single bible to Arabia to save your life.
And that, Secret Asian Man, is the rub… The harmonious intersection of the Western and Islamic world is very small but, it does intersect. How we acknowledge and honor those of the Islamic faith that do support western values and how we distinguish them from others that wish to change our culture at the least or those that are intent on violently disrupting our way of life is a near impossible task.
I recognize that but I also recognize that while we in the west are turning over/inside out to accomodate, there is quite a silence from the so called innocent majority of Musims in our western countries to stand up for western values. A few threads ago I cited several examples of absolute insanity on the part of western nations to accomodate the Islamic faith; turning hospital beds towards Mecca 5X/day, removing anything “piggy” from view, and don’t even get me started on the Celtic cross… I don’t see any accomodation from Islamists. It seems a very one sided discussion.
So yes, there are a few, a small few that support and are willing to fight for the freedoms we hold dear in the west and I salute them. The rest, ah, not so much.
You know the old saying “You are either part of the problem or part of the solution?” I would say that this sums up the frustration of many commenters on this thread.
Secret Asian Man,
First, the name is Virgil, not Virgin. Or were you being cute?
As for all those noble Muslim sacrifices, ever heard of Shirwa Ahmed? There have been many, many others like him, but if you can’t remember past two weeks ago, I won’t help you.
Name a single Muslim wearing a US uniform who has been captured and faced “double the wrath” of his Muslim captors? I can name more than a few who, wearing the US uniform, have betrayed our country or gone over the hill. And how can any of those facing “double the wrath” endure any worse than, say, Sgt Maupin?
Let me be clear. There have been Americans who called themselves Muslim and have honored their oath of allegiance to the United States of America, some even with the utmost sacrifice. But they did it because of what was good and honest and decent in each individual one of them, not because of any doctrine of Islam. I honor their sacrifices as Americans.
Now that you have begged the question, I ask you: who is the good Muslim, the one wearing the US uniform or the one at war with him for his apostacy?
When you can answer that one honestly, then maybe you can call someone on this board a bigot.
Since I’ve evidently had the pleasure of being the only one here singled out by one of “The Children of Allah” for personal attack, I feel the need to exercise the right of reply.
At first I was rather taken aback by the use of personal invective to reply to a comment that I think by any honest perusal of the overall comments on this thread , was relatively mild as compared to some others here who clearly vented frustrations (entirely justified IMHO) far more vehemently than did I. Accusations of bigotry laid against anyone critical of the actions of Moslems or of Islam in general, like the habit of many in the black community of crying racism no matter what the objective validity of it’s critics comments, is truly the last refuge of scoundrels. I assume, Secret Asian Man, that you do not wish to be thought of as being so labeled. If so, in the future, please refrain from personal attacks and discuss the issues on their merits. Your comments would have been entirely within the intellectual bounds of fair debate and valid commentary save for your third para. Please have the common courtesy to refrain from personal attacks unless and until obvious untoward comments are actually voiced.
I am/was also mildly surprised to find out that I was a virgin. My wife, Mary, has been known to comment upon occasion that she indeed really was “The Virgin Mary”—–once; but I had no idea that I myself had been thusly “reborn,” as it were. To be returned to that state of nature with all the innocence that such a transformation would imply may be secretly and devoutly to be desired–but I’m afraid such a thing is beyond the power of mere mortals to accomplish–but thanks for trying….
I am reasonably sure there are those who practice the muslim religion across the globe and even within the confines of our shores that do not follow the kind of radical nonsense that the terrorists spout (kill all infidels, etc). That I am pretty sure of because, I’ve known some muslims that didn’t come across that way in polite company and all. What I have been surprised by, especially since 9/11, is the lack of any kind of unified voices from the muslim community speaking out in opposition to this sort of thing. Maybe it was happening and I just sort of missed it on the evening news.
I recall, growing up in the South and all, all kinds of talk regarding the civil rights struggles of the African American community. A lot of it was what you might termed bigoted by those who felt threatened by the established order of things as it were. But there were plenty of equally loud voices from plenty of white people, from pulpits and streetcorners, who denouced in no uncertain terms the racist actions of those who stood in the way of our country moving on and growing up and moving closer to our professed ideals.
Questioning the lack of such voices from the muslim “community” isn’t bigotry. I hope to be shown again and again where those voices can be heard anywhere approaching the frequency I hear those demanding we be “tolerant” of those who feel so agrieved.
Wow. A lot of heat here.
I would like to join others in support of Lex’s original assertion, that we shouldn’t be lumping all Muslims together (I’m paraphrasing).
There’s some interesting category shifting going on in some of the posts that have shaped my response.
We can’t think of the GWOT as a Global War on Islam–that whole Crusades thing didn’t work out too well for either side.
When we argue that the GWOT is about all ‘those crazy Muslims’ who want to kill us and enslave us, we make it difficult for moderate Muslims to speak out, to act out–for we are denying that they exist through our very discourse. We are also then enforcing the propaganda of the other side–that the GWOT is really a war on religion in disguise.
I am in support of fighting against terrorism; religion, not so much. Terrorism–that’s a winnable war.
The reality is, most Americans know nothing of Islam except what we learn from the media as related to terrorism and extremism. As we found after 9-11, some Americans are so ignorant of what constitutes the practices of Islam that non-Muslim Indian men were beaten in the streets for wearing head wraps.
Can you imagine what one’s vision of Christianity would be if your primary images of it were restricted to photographs of the Oklahoma bombing (Timothy McVeigh died a Catholic, as recognized by the church through the administration of a Sacrament to him) or images of terrorist acts in Ireland and England? (I had a family member in England who checked regularly under his car before starting it while he served in his local government–one of his colleagues had been blown up by the IRA).
I think we all know that Catholicism itself has a wide range of practices associated with it and is only one flavor of Christian faith. Islam is equally diverse…we just don’t get to see it without going to look for it. The vast majority of my Islamic friends and neighbors are slow to self-identify as such; they are scared to discuss their faith in any context–including with other Muslims–for to be seen as a integrated community invites suspicion and investigation. Yet, all are proud to be Americans, love this country, and want to see spaces created where they can worship freely. And yes, all of them are angry and hurt and feel betrayed by those who murder in the name of their faith.
Our founding fathers created a government that assured freedom of religion…they didn’t specify what religion or what God. They also didn’t say it would be easy.
I would like to think that the GWOT is not just about protecting the west, but also about protecting the lives of many Muslims here and abroad who are affected by terrorism. In the heat of some of the comments, I think that was lost a bit.
So Virgil…you actually impregnated your own wife? Is that what you are claiming???
What a refreshing thought!
Laurie, I have to say that’s one of the most thoughtless, in the sense of not having any thought to it, posts I’ve ever seen here. However, you can prove to us how much more yo know about Islam than the rest of us American boobs by answering a few simple questions:
Who is al-insan al-kamil, and why does that matter?
What is the Pact of Omar, and why does it matter?
What is the significance of Khaybar Oasis, and why does it matter?
What is the doctrine of taqiyya and its kin, kitman, and why do they matter?
Who, exactly, is a kafir? What makes him a kafir? What are the legally allowable responses for a Muslim to a kafir?
Since those will have you stumped for a while, even with winkypedia, here are some easy ones:
Just how many Islamic friends and neighbors do you have? Not speaking global citizen here, just speaking your zip code and co-workers, toss in a few social contacts for fun–how many?
Of them, how many have been marching in the streets defending Israel’s right to self-defense and right to exist? Or to make it easier, have you ever heard one of them, just one, criticize a fellow Muslim in front of you (assuming that you are not a Muslimah)?
I could ask you many more, but if you’re just a troll (and I don’t think you are), you’re wasting our time, and if you’re just an air-headed do-gooder (far more likely), you’re also wasting our time. But if you’re honest enough with yourself to coldly research the first five questions and realize what they mean, please take the time (weeks, months), and then come back.
If it’s truly your goal to create some space for “moderate” Muslims, then you need to understand what they might be, and how lying about the true nature of Islam only makes it difficult to impossible for any “moderate” Muslim to speak up.
Laurie,
Here is the problem I have with Islam:
When Timothy McVeigh bombed the Federal Building, he didn’t do it in the name of Catholicism. If he did, the Pope, the Conference of Catholic Bishops and Catholics everywhere would have denounced his actions.
When Abortion Clinics are bombed, even whack jobs like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell (sp) denounce it as not being in accordance with Christ’s teachings.
When Muslims murder 3000 people, shoot nuns because of a cartoon, vow to wipe out Isreal, bomb, homicide bomb innocents and children?
Circkets.
You did get one thing right. Before 9/11, I believed that Islam was a religion that taught, as does mine and any other real religion, peace and love for fellow man. When I saw Muslims around the world dancing in the streets when 3000 of my countrymen were murdered for doing nothing more than showing up for work, I realized I was wrong.
That’s cool. I get the banner ad “The International Muslim Matrimonials Site!” for Muslima.com at the bottom of this page. What do you see?
And Virgil, way to go, old guy!
Yeah, way to go!
I think I meant Israel.
I was rolling…
Nose – well said. Thank you!
Laurie, speaking as someone who lost a loved on on 9/11 – and seeing absolutely NO response from the Muslim community denouncing the actions of the hijackers – what possible conclusion can I draw about Muslims as a population? Are all Muslims terrorists, actively seeking jihad? No. But are all Muslims tacitly endorsing the actions of their fellow Muslims by standing by without saying anything? Yes they are.
Zane is an incredible authority on the subject of the religion of Islam – not just the nature of Muslims to be terrorists. I strongly urge you to listen to what he has to say.
From my perspective, there’s a middle ground between blind optimism and apocalyptic confrontation: A democratized Middle East.
I know that not everyone shares that vision as possible, or even desirable. But the problem in dealing with Middle Eastern regimes over the years since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (at least) is that we could not honorably hold the people living their to account for the actions of they tyrants that had clawed their way to the top of the skull mounds. The tyrants in turn deflected domestic criticism through brutality and banality: Cracking skulls with the full weight of a state apparat on the one hand, and the constant discovery of an “other” – the Jews, the West, apostasy – on the other. With state control of media organs, no alternative viewpoint dared express itself. Radical mosques were left to whip up anger in the street – encouraged to do so, in fact – so long as that anger was outwardly directed. And this had been going on for a very long time before the Sons of Iraq turned their knives away from Coalition forces to use them on al Qaeda.
Putting the people in charge of their government means that both they and their representatives are responsible for the actions of that government. I’ve long argued that selecting Hamas in the last PA election was a necessary precursor to the realization that the terror group has nothing to offer but violence and death, with those gifts disproportionately burdening the electorate that emplaced them.
In a Middle East governed by tyrants, terror is someone else’s problem. In a democratically governed ME, it is a problem for all of us. Islam will “fix” their own problems from the inside, or they will receive some unwanted help from the outside.
The world has grown too small, too interconnected for any of us to ignore the consequences of failure. And while we’re shining a spotlight on their issues, we cannot neglect to confront our own excesses.
Kris, I am profoundly sorry for your loss.
I can only imagine your position in this matter–but my imaginings are not from a completely uninformed perspective. I lost a friend, not a loved one, in the Pentagon, and had family members (loved ones) who have been altered forever by running for their lives, through the tattered remnants of other lives, as the towers collapsed. I have helped my sister as she tried to find a way to console a husband who had lost many of the people he worked with. I understand the pain and the anger, at least as a close outsider. And I will never forget the profound relief that I felt when I heard my sister answer the phone on that day, to reassure me that her family had by some miracle all made it out alive. I will never forget the experience of walking through New York’s subways, plastered with desperate pleas for information about lost loved ones.
And I’ve seen the hate that grew out of my sister’s pain. She has been quite clear that she has no problem with hearing about as many Muslims dying as possible in retaliation…for her, there will never be enough deaths to avenge the friends and lives lost that day.
I also know that there is a profound difference between the selfish cowards who flew those planes into the towers and pentagon and the average Muslim.
I cannot, will not, condemn an entire people based on their religion. But again, perhaps I’m tainted by thinking in terms of people I know, people I work with, eat with, people who are Muslim, who are sick about what is done in their name.
Yet, you tell me they don’t exist? That they don’t speak out.
My Muslim friends, colleagues, and students have extensive family networks outside the US, and when visiting relatives in the old country, they are individual ambasssadors for our country–explaining what life is really like here, that it is possible to be American and Muslim…that they are raising their children to be Americans–and Muslim…Muslim in a way that you would find compatible to your own notions of religion, Nose.
And there have been conferences and meetings devoted to reclaiming Islam for moderates–and op eds, and editorials, and petitions and statements against terrorism–but sometimes it is hard to hear people talking in measured tones when everyone else is shouting. CAIR, whatever you think of them, has been consistantly condemning terrorism while also protecting the civil rights of American Muslims.
I am not an apologist for Islam…Islam is the poster child for why state and religion must be separated…women are poorly treated in most theocracies, for instance, and Islam is no exception.
I do not advocate the kinds of absurd accommodations that have become common in Europe in the name of tolerance…tolerance at the expense of others’ rights is intolerance and not a solution.
However, I do have a perhaps naive conviction that there is a shared human condition–call me a creature of the Enlightenment. One moderate Muslim activist recently noted that Muslims who hate America do so because it is what they have been taught. It’s possible to teach them differently…I’d like to think we’re (Americans that is) not so bad once you get to know us.
Changing people’s minds (about one another’s biases, about the nature of one’s faith, about one’s government), a harder, slower, task than killing them–one best thought of in generational terms. Weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels would be mighty helpful–undermine the economy of the middle east–and more importantly, the power structure oil money props up, quickly. Dry up the money that supports terrorism.
But longterm, I don’t see any other option than working on education and reform. And talk, lots and lots of talk. And listening. Lots of listening. And for any of it to work, we have to abandon the Muslim=demon construction that underlies this discourse.
I mean really, what’s the alternative?
Laurie,
How many years did it take for the world to accept Germans as equals and friends? To trust them? We still have an army of occupation in Germany, more than 6 decades after that war ended.
I’d love to accept your world view, but it’s a suicide pact to do so. These United States cannot and must not extend any sort of trust to ANY muslim nation without demonstrable examples of their ability to BE trusted. Wishes and hopes get people killed, cut down from behind, blind-sided by people whom they thought to accept as civilized by our standards.
The west has trusted Islam enough. We can trust no more. Our very civilization, the freedoms we enjoy, the things we take for granted, are placed at risk of eradication by our willingness to believe that Islam is a religion of peace. It is not, and never has been.
Islam, the word, literally translates NOT as peace, but as submission. I refuse to go there, as should any right-thinking individual, any lover of the rule of man, of the rule of law and fairness over blind allegiance to religious dogma.
The west suffered through several centuries of that kind of rule before we reached the Age of Enlightenment. we should never, ever, willingly allow our culture to be cut down and stomped back into the dark age, as our Islamist enemies wish us to be,
Remember how everyone thought that that nice Mr. Hitler was just rattling his sabre a bit, just saying things to make a speech, that he REALLY didn’t mean what he said, or what he wrote in his little book? Yeah.. about that. Remember how no one would believe that the Germans would violate Belgian neutrality? For a THIRD time? That worked out so well.
The next time you hear someone speaking of moderate muslims, think about all the moderate Germans in 1945, the ones who said they had no idea what Hitler was doing. Yup.. hold that thought.
The next time you hear of Islam being the “Religion of Peace”, remember the story of the turtle and the scorpion.
respects,
AW, we haven’t had Army of occupation in Germany for 40 years. After about 1960, we were there because of NATO commitments. I can remember over 400,000 Airmen and troops stationed there. We have less than one fourth that now, and will most likely be drawn down further under “the One.”
Like it or not, many Germans had no idea what was going on in Berlin. You can see the same thing here, now, with much better communications than they had. Realizing that many Germans in Pfalz knew little about what was going on in Franconia is not close to being beyond the pale. The Book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” has long been discredited by the record.
Contra Lex, A truly democratic Levant is beyond reach. We are where we are, because of 1000 years preceeding. The Ummah has no such preparation, and, in fact, possesses a religious preparation that is entirely against what we view as democracy (it isn’t one man, one vote, one time). Our own civilization is in serious decline because we no longer educate properly – we indoctrinate new leftists that hate the 1000 years proceeding.
Jefferson expressed it well, you can’t have an ignorant electorate and democracy. This is especially true when you have people actively seeking that very thing because they hate what we are. It is sad to contemplate that academia really does hate what we are, and slowly becoming “were.”
The Gramscians have nearly won this battle as they pretty much own academia, which is supported by our taxes. We are paying for our own destruction.
Hey Xenophon, I thought when you and the Ten Thousand were trying to leave Persia the Persians were Zoroastrians. Now you say they were Muslims? I’m confused.
QM,
We are there, still, more than 60 years after the surrender. I stand by my statements fully regarding the Germans, and I will not accept the revisionist claims that Germans did not know. THAT, my dear friend, is unacceptable and terribly naive.
The Germans knew what was going on, and any first year law student could cut down their claims of ignorance. It was, at the very least, willful ignorance, and no amount of touch up paint will ever hide the stain they rightly bear.
Regarding the Persians, they are Muslim now, though they were Zoroastrians (and many other sects) before that.
However, they are always Persians first, and 2500 years of recorded history still reinforces the truth that no one can ever trust a Persian. Even the Arabs refer to the Iranians as Persians, for they have long memories too, and well remember what Persians are best known for.
Quartermaster
Plenty of Moslems in Persia these days–just not the Arab kind. And I will take issue with you a tad about NATO not being an army of occupation–at least from the British perspective. I am reminded of the account of a British diplomat being queried by a newsman shortly after NATO was formed as to what it’s exact purpose was:
“Oh, it’s very simple really, ” he replied, “It’s to keep the Russians out, the Americans in–and the Germans down.”
LOL. The British WERE still a bit touchy after the war, weren’t they?
Have to agree with you about most of the post otherwise.
Laurie,
I wouldn’t dream of contradicting you. I lived for many years in Bahrain and spent many months in peacetime in the Kingdom and most of the Gulf Emirates and made friends wherever I went. I would say that you strike me as the quintessential Westerner who is more than willing to attribute the cherished attributes of Western Civilization to other people based on some exposure to the most cosmopolitan of their race who have traveled to America or Canada and settled peaceably into our clime. In other words, you really don’t know them.
In Bahrain (Sunni minority ruled, Shia majority), the emir had to lock up the Islamic clerics that kept calling for his death and the death of all his family and for this he was greatly chastised by the various idiots around the world who did not believe that those calling/demanding death were serious. Now for those of us who checked under our cars every day before we got in them and found that people around us really were trying to kill westerners eating out in restaurants by setting off multiple firebombs at all entrances/exits to the eateries in question, yeah, we took it seriously. So did the emir. He locked up those calling for jihad.
Being a muslim, he periodically flushed the jails of most crooks, thieves, murderers, attempted murderers; usually in conjunction with Eid.
A Kuwaiti friend gifted me with a Koran when I was stationed there. English and Arabic of course. You should find it and read it. That book is the word of God to all muslims and while it might strike you as odd, many muslims have found it counter to their religion to suppose that any parliament of men/women could pass laws that contradict even the slightest word of God as written in the Koran and this is why “democratic” government fails to launch in the muslim world. Such a thing runs counter to the word of God and must not be allowed.
I discount your words about CAIR. They spend most of their time words and effort at attempting to explain away the atrocious and vicious acts of so many muslims in America who have tried to kill Americans and been caught in the act or prior to the act.
I have many muslim friends and acquaintances but they would be the first to tell you that no voice of moderation in islam goes untroubled by fanatic islamic goons. If they aren’t being attacked by the mutari in the Kingdom it’s the baseeji in Iran. When islam can generate murderous riots that take the lives of scores of muslim rioters on false reports that detainees at Gitmo were subjected to having their Korans flushed……well, you can see that for a brave “moderate” to stand in front of such a crowd and question their idiocy at rioting simply isn’t done. Look at what happens to brave “moderate” voices in islam and you’ll see why their voices and views are never expressed and never heard. The last ones I recall were 3 women in Pakistan that were murdered by their own families for daring to announce that they wanted a say in choosing their own husbands. Before that I think it was Benazir Bhutto blown to pieces in a totally expected reaction to her return to Pakistan.
I wonder how different things in Afghanistan would be if Shah Masood had survived his assassination. The Lion of the North had impressed me for over a decade. I would have liked to see him running Afghanistan instead of Karzai.
At the end, there can be no moderate voice in islam to critique the actions of those dedicated to jihad because that runs counter to islam. You can see this every day by just looking at what happens to those that cooperate with the West in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are hunted down, in the night by their jihadist neighbors and brutally murdered along with their extended family. It’s going to take a top down revolution to change their ways and I don’t see the Sauds as having the balls to do it and if they cannot there is no one of sufficient stature in islam to change islam. The house of Saud, as the custodian of the 2 holy mosques has what remains of the old authority of the caliphate and yet are as aware as any other emir that they cannot control the beast without excising it completely and nothing persists like a persecuted minority, particularly one that believes totally in martyrdom and jihad.
As I remember telling a young dedicated democrat on a flight out of SFO to San Diego who asked me about the GWOT, I just don’t see any options. It resembles the current situation in Gaza. The enemy of the West has attacked and attacked and attacked and is finally checked by a counterattack. There is no option. We in America have been attacked and attacked and attacked and there is no option but to counterattack. A year or so ago there used to be those on the left that argued that Islam would sort it out in some sort of Reformation between Sunnis and Shias. The idiots obviously were unfamiliar with the Reformation. I would not wish that on Islam or anybody.
Korans aren’t expensive. They give them away at mosques. Why not get one, read it, accept that all muslims view it as the word of God and then reconsider your worldview of islam? You may recall a story from about 8 or 9 years ago talking about some “volunteers” in Afghanistan being taken into custody by the taliban for being christian missionaries proselytizing the faith in Afghanistan of all places, under taliban rule, where apostasy for a muslim was punishable by stoning to death. To be brutally honest, I didn’t much care what the taliban did to people that stupid….err, filled with faith. That they were willing to die a martyrs death is fine with me, good luck to ‘em but that they were willing to tempt muslims to be stoned to death by a regime that proved over and over again that it was ready willing and able…contemptible.
Laurie, I find it only mildly amusing that you have played all the sympathy cards in your hand, and yet haven’t answered a single question I posed to you. Not even an aside to say, I’m looking them up, will get back to you.
Until you know jacks**t about Islam, and you clearly don’t, you have no standing to use sloppy, undefined terms like “moderate Muslim” that let you feel good, but have no basis in fact.
Just what is the difference between those “selfish cowards” and the average Muslim?
“And there have been conferences and meetings devoted to reclaiming Islam for moderates–and op eds, and editorials, and petitions and statements against terrorism– ” name five, provide citations and links. Did any of them assert that, contrary to the divine, immutable Koran, we kufr have equal rights to life, liberty and self-government?
“CAIR, whatever you think of them, has been consistantly condemning terrorism while also protecting the civil rights of American Muslims.” That statement is a flat falsehood on both fronts, and also meaningless unless CAIR specifically rejects established Islamic doctrine regarding the inferiority of the kafir.
“One moderate Muslim activist recently noted that Muslims who hate America do so because it is what they have been taught.” Well, freakin’ duh! And just who was this rocket scientist–citation/link, please?
And one last time, Laurie, who/where on this thread has equated Muslims and demons? No one is tarring a whole “people” (whatever that is in this context), but we are tarring a religious ideology–Islam, which is expressed in law as Shari’a. I’ll bet you can’t even explain why Islam has no theology, but only law. Stop the schoolteacher bit and start learning, leave your feelings at home in the closet.
Ever heard that old saying that actions speak louder than words? I’ve seen the actions of Muslims, I’ve seen the words CAIR and folks like Laurie write. They keep using these words like, “religion of peace.” I do not think that means what they think it means, to paraphrase a Spaniard.
I had a Muslim roomie in college, we used to drink beer and shoot pool together after class. Once at dinner we’d both grabbed the pork fritter. I asked him why, and he said because I’d always eaten it and he thought he’d try it as well.
I reminded him that I’d grown up on a farm, raising fowl, pigs and cattle, so a meat diet was kind of like sweet revenge to me three times a day. And that’s also why I don’t eat corn or popcorn.
He took a bite, chewed thoughtfully, and then remarked as to how it was pretty tasty and his only excuse was he was a *bad* Muslim.
Darn I liked that guy. His actions spoke more about tolerance and diversity than any proclamation made at that university. Or by CAIR. Or Laurie.
– Max
Out of serendipity and happenstance, I was reading elsewhere and came across a series of pictures of our folks serving around the world.
The last one caught me by suprise.
http://www.floppingaces.net/2009/01/02/why-our-military-is-so-hated-around-the-world/
“GRATEFUL KISS
A grateful refugee camp resident in Kabul, Afghanistan, kisses U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. (Dr.) Yevsey Goldberg, who helped bring more than 550-kilograms of rice and other supplies, Dec. 6, 2008. Goldberg is deployed to International Security Assistance Force Headquarters.
U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Aramis Ramirez”
Yevsey Goldberg. Don’t know the man, from the name I’d guess there’s a good probability that he’s Jewish. Not betting *my* money on it and really don’t care either way, but we’ve a pretty good probability that it’s so.
He’s wearing a uniform. Which means it has that name tag. Nice and big so the D.I. can immediately identify the miscreant, or the division XO can log yet another entry into his notebook with accuracy.
An elderly Afghani man, white beard and all, is kissing him on the cheek. I’m thinking that says a lot more than any press release from CAIR.
Actions do speak louder than words.
Unfortunately, for most actions are uncommon.
– Max
When I hear that Islam is “a religion of peace” I always think of that 1990 Sci-Fi cult movie “I Come In Peace!” (Dark Star outside US–starring Dolph Lundgren) in which a tall, blond haired (long, flowing) alien inter-galactic drug dealer comes to Earth to harvest brain endorphins from victims he pumps up with heroin (which triggers the endorphins.) to peddle to addicts on his home planet. Just prior to despatching his victims by slinging a super-sharp vibrating razor-bladed disk, slitting their throats, he exclaims: “I Come in Peace!”
Sort of the same MO certain other people I can think of seem to use….
I always think of “Alien Nation” myself.