Posted on 09/10/2010 6:44:34 AM PDT by Kaslin
Is there anyone who has not weighed in on the Saturday night, Sept. 11, bonfire of the Qurans at the Rev. Terry Jones' Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla.?
Gen. David Petraeus warns the Quran burnings could inflame the Muslim world and imperil U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton declares it "disgraceful." Sarah Palin calls it a "provocation." President Obama calls it "a recruitment bonanza for al-Qaida. You could have serious violence in ... Pakistan and Afghanistan," and Muslims could be inspired "to blow themselves up."
The State Department has put U.S. embassies on alert in the near 50 countries where Muslims are a majority. The Vatican calls the bonfire "an outrageous and grave gesture. ... No one burns the Quran."
Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the defender of the ground zero mosque, is consistent. Burning Islam's most sacred book is "distasteful," he says, but the "First Amendment protects everybody."
Everybody frets and wrings their hands. No one acts.
Yet if, as President Obama and his commanding general both say, the torching of hundreds of Qurans could so enrage the Islamic world as to incite terror-bombings against U.S. troops and imperial our war effort, why does not the commander in chief send U.S. marshals to arrest this provocateur and abort his provocation?
For Jones, who sells t-shirts saying "Islam is of the Devil," may be an Islamophobe, but he is also a serious man, willing to live with the consequences of his deeds, even if he causes U.S. war casualties.
The questions raised by his deliberate provocation are not so much about him, then, as they are about us.
Are we a serious nation? Is Obama up to being a war president?
Constantly, we hear praise of Lincoln, Wilson and FDR as war leaders.
Yet President Lincoln arrested thousands of citizens and locked them up as security risks, while denying them habeas corpus. He shut newspapers and sent troops to block Maryland's elections, fearing Confederate sympathizers would win and take Maryland out of the Union.
President Wilson shut down antiwar newspapers, prosecuted editors, and put Socialist presidential candidate and war opponent Eugene Debs in prison, leaving him to rot until Warren Harding released him and invited the dangerous man over to the White House for dinner.
California Gov. Earl Warren and FDR collaborated to put 110,000 Japanese, 75,000 of them U.S. citizens, into detention camps for the duration of the war and ordered the Department of Justice to prosecute antiwar conservatives.
During Korea, Harry Truman seized the steel mills when a threatened strike potentially imperiled production of war munitions. Richard Nixon went to court to block publication of the Pentagon papers until the Supreme Court decided publication could go forward.
This is not written to defend those war measures or those wars. It is to say that if a president takes a nation to war, and commits men to their deaths, as Obama did in doubling the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, he should be prepared to do what is within his power to protect those troops.
And if Petraeus says letting Jones set this bonfire could imperil U.S. troops, Obama should act to stop it. And if he is so paralyzed by uncertainty as to whether he can do anything -- and, as a result, soldiers die -- what would that tell us about their commander in chief?
Would stopping Jones and confiscating the Qurans violate Jones' First Amendment rights? Perhaps. And perhaps not. But if Eric Holder cannot find a charge against Davis, or an inherent power of a war president to prevent actions imminently damaging to the war effort, Obama should find some Justice Department attorneys who can.
Let the ACLU make the case that interfering with Davis' bonfire violates his First Amendment rights. Let a U.S. court decide whether Obama has the power to take a decision previous wartime presidents would have taken without hesitation.
And if Obama does not have the power to stop actions like this, imperiling our troops, then we should get out of this war.
This episode reveals the gulf between us and the Islamic world. Despite all our talk of universal values, tens of millions of Muslims, in countries not only hostile but friendly, believe that a sacrilege against their faith, like the burning of the Quran by a single American oddball, justifies the killing of Americans. What kind of compatibility can there be between us?
What do we have in common with people who believe that evangelism by other faiths in their societies merits the death penalty, as do conversions to Christianity, while promiscuity and adultery justify stonings, lashings and beheadings.
And what does it say about our ability to fight and win a "long war" in the Islamic world if our war effort can be crippled by a solitary pastor with 50 families in his church who decides to have a book burning?
Action creates consensus, Mr. President. People follow when a leader leads.
Nonsense. The only thing that will stop these animals from killing Americans would be for all Americans to convert to islam and accept sharia law. The sooner we accept that the sooner we will stop tip toeing around these SOBs.
“For Jones, who sells t-shirts saying “Islam is of the Devil,” may be an Islamophobe, but he is also a serious man, willing to live with the consequences of his deeds, even if he causes U.S. war casualties.”
Then let him move to the middle east, where arabic Christians are within reach of the Islamic mobs if he wants to “live with the consequences” of burning a Koran.
Freegards
And by mentioning it Patraues is asking his civilian bosses to suspend the Constitution and stomp the koran burners.
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Amen!
So your saying if we burn the korans they will kill them even more!!!
No. You haven't been paying attention the last 20 months or so.
Petraeus is thinking of his overextended troops and I approve of his comments. No one in history has ever won an offensive war in that area. Do you have so much confidence in His Awesomeness' leadership skills that he can lead the US to victory?
Without a competent CinC, Petraeus is helpless.
So far as I know one does not have to move to practice the 1st amendment. I suffer when the flag is burned so the the mooslims can just suck it up when those vile books are torched!!!
If every single American purchased a copy of the Koran and burned it, who would benefit more than the folks who sell Korans? And who sells more Korans than Muslims?
Print off a few sheets from the internet,
put them on the coleman
fire ‘em up.
Hey, I’m sure that’s a big comfort to the arabic Christians living among the savages. The westboro loons and the westboro loon wannabe can burn the books if they want. I just doubt they would if they had Christian family members within reach of the Islamic mobs. Maybe I’m wrong, and they would do it for their 15 anyhow.
Freegards
See post 33!!!
Be sure to put an animatronic Muslim boy in it to draw more attention from the Islamic community.
Make certain that it's not an animatronic girl. They probably won't care then.
What does that have to do with Christians living within reach of the Islamic mob? You do know that there are Christians over there, right? They would seem to be the ones who are going to have to deal with the savages so others living in safety can have their 15 minutes of fame.
Freegards
No. You haven't been paying attention the last 20 months or so. Petraeus is thinking of his overextended troops and I approve of his comments. No one in history has ever won an offensive war in that area. Do you have so much confidence in His Awesomeness' leadership skills that he can lead the US to victory?No, I have a solid belief in the Constitution of the United States and Petraeus' obligation to protect that Constitution at any cost.
Don't worry - I am burning pages of the queeran today and tomorrow after soaking the pages in bacon grease for additional fuel.
Would you defend someone's right to be obnoxious and burn Torahs, even to the extent of going to war with Israel?
To provide for a common defense.
Is it not expressly the purpose of our military to defend every American and their unalienable rights?
No. Not even close. Have you ever been into the American Citizen part of a US Embassy? (I don't think so). Look at the text at the bottom of the large notice on the wall. The part where it says that it is our responsibility to obey all local laws and the US denies any responsibility if we should happen to land afoul of them.
Our constitutional rights end somewhere before we hand the DHS goon our passport, then stripping almost naked to go through the checkpoint.
What other legitimate purpose does it have?
To defend our borders. From what I've read about southern Arizona, we are very close to ceding large tracts of lands to Mexican drug cartels. We should have troops there. Instead, our government is suing Arizona.
Free speech is not going into a bank and saying "this is a bank robbery. I have a gun and will kill everyone unless you do exactly as I say" (not having a gun, then saying, hey I was just exercising my 1st amendment right of free speech when police are called in). As absurd an example that may seem, it is identical to that idiot Jones in Florida.
I suggest you reread it, since you have an exotic interpretation of the role of the military.
President Bush, as much as I disagreed with him starting the Afghan and Iraq wars, did not declare war on Islam.
Bin Laden was never the right target. Ayman Zawahiri (Bin Laden's master) was the correct target. Bin Laden was a Ted Kennedy, a rich kid living off his parent's wealth and whatever we were paying him when he was cultivated as a CIA asset when the USSR was invading Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Bin Laden is as Muslim as Ted Kennedy is Catholic. Zawahiri is just plain insane and should be treated as such. The only reason he ended up in Afghanistan is that when he tried to incite real Muslims to violence, he was rejected.
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