A.
Posted on 09/14/2010 7:18:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
The Rev. Terry Jones may just have exposed the ultimate futility of America's war in Afghanistan. Consider the portrait of frustrated impotence America presented to the world last week.
Our president and the secretaries of state and defense deplored Pastor Jones' plan to burn 100 Qurans but could do nothing to stop him, other than to plead with him. Jones decided to call it off himself.
What was the message received by a billion Muslims?
"Muslims must understand that our Constitution protects the desecration of your holiest book. America is a place where people have a right to denounce Islam as a religion 'of the Devil' and burn the Quran in public."
Having gotten the message, Afghan mobs chanting, "Death to America," burned the American flag and set off to kill our soldiers.
Can rural Afghans understand the refusal of a U.S. president to stop what they see as a televised sacrilege against their faith? In their country, Jones would have been stoned to death. That is who they are.
What would a U.S. soldier say to an Afghan soldier who asked, "If you Americans believe it is the exercise of a precious right to burn our holy book, the Quran, why should we fight beside you, against fellow Muslims, who would fight to protect the Quran?"
Had Jones' Quran-burning gone forward, the televised pictures would have gone out to the world. The impact would likely have been of the same magnitude as that of the Dutch cartoons of the Prophet that ignited riots across Europe and the Islamic world, and the anti-Islamic scribbles of Salmon Rushdie that earned the novelist a fatwa -- a death sentence -- from Ayatollah Khomeini.
Now consider the message sent to U.S. troops.
Their commander, Gen. Petraeus, warned that, should the Quran burning proceed, it could endanger their lives and imperil the mission President Obama sent them to fight and die for.
To those troops, President Obama was saying that his read on the First Amendment forbids him from interfering with book-burnings in America that could get them killed in Afghanistan.
How do you fight and win a war like that, with a war president like that? Saturday, the president declared: "Americans are not -- and never will be -- at war with Islam. It was not a religion that attacked us ... it was al-Qaida." President Bush declared Islam "a religion of peace."
Both statements are understandable, for if we are perceived as at war with Islam, we will lose that war, and Osama bin Laden will have won by having broadened and defined what the war was about.
But, while understandable, are the two presidents' statements wholly credible? For tens of millions of Muslims and growing numbers of Americans are indeed coming to see this as a religious war.
If we are not at war with Islam, why are we fighting the Taliban? They did not attack us. If Islam is a religion of peace, why are Muslims massacring Christians in Nigeria and Sudan? Why did those Afghan mobs also yell, "Death to Christians"? Why are Christian Copts being attacked in Egypt, and Assyrian and Chaldean Christians in Iraq? Did these Christian communities start a holy war against their vastly more numerous Muslim brethren?
What do the terrorists and "state sponsors of terrorism" -- Mohamed Atta, bin Laden, al-Qaida, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- have in common, except for Islam?
Is not the one thing that differentiates them from our friends in the Middle East, such as President Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, that our enemies exhibit a more rigorous Islamic faith?
What motivates the jihadists who conduct suicide attacks on American soldiers and drive car bombs onto U.S. military posts, if not the Quran's promise of paradise if they die a martyr's death?
If some Muslims hate us because we are the new Romans, is that hatred not grounded in the Islamic mandate to drive infidels out of the Dar al-Islam, the House of Islam?
If other Muslims hate us for our corrupt culture, what is the source of that hatred, other than Islam's puritanical teachings? If others hate us, as neoconservatives argue, for our freedoms, what is the taproot of that hatred?
When Obama and Bush hail Islam as a religion of peace, do they know more about Islam than those who are dying for it?
Describing Islam as a religion of peace is like saying Prussians were a people of peace. It is at best a partial truth.
According to a Washington Post poll, two-thirds of Americans do not want the Cordoba House mosque built near ground zero, and half of all Americans harbor negative views about Islam. They don't want the mosque by ground zero because they think Islam had something to do with those 3,000 massacred Americans. Are they entirely wrong?
How do we win a long war when we cannot name the enemy?
“How do we win a long war when we cannot name the enemy?”
Now, that is a DAMN good question.
Great questions that politicans will never answer.
Tito
Our president and the secretaries of state and defense manufactured a geopolitical news event based on Pastor Jones’ plan to burn 100 Qurans. They did this for reasons yet to be fully appreciated.
For starters, we vote democrats out of office. And we should understand that moral equivalence is ridiculous and gets people killed. We’re dealing with tribal mentalities and ninth century culture. People who don’t know how to read or write, who feel envy and hatred for the US because they don’t have our standard of living. They believe they’ve been cheated out of what should be rightfully theirs — world domination — they have the self control of a two year old and some have atomic weapons.
What people of other countries, mainly the Middle East, have to realize is that we Americans make decisions, not on what they want, but what we want. Their opinions of what we decide, how we decide, when we decide is of no importance to us. At least it is of no importance to me. I’m tired of hearing about them, I’m tired of our kids fighting for them when they don’t really care. I’m tired of them trying to force their religious beliefs on America.
“How do we win a long war when we cannot name the enemy?”
The Obama regime can’t name the enemy, but we can, Obama is one of them. And the enemy are Muslims, those that are radical jihadists, and those more passive Muslims that just hate us but don’t act on it unless provoked. And provoking them doesn’t take much, like one piddly preacher w/50 parishioners, wanting to burn 100 Korans. For this, the Muzzies are willing to go on a rampage all over the world. So Pat may not be able to name the enemy, but the rest of those in America that are rational and not mentally deranged socialists, have figured it out. Back to the drawing board Patrick, for more excuses to use to justify your America First philosophy of no wars, unless of course it is against Israel. Then I’m sure you’ll make an exception.
This is one of those rare occassions when Pat nails it.
Great article.
Obama saves his lectures on tolerance for the west.
As one poster asked here today in another thread, “Would you rather be a Muslim living in a Christian country, or a Christian living in a Muslim country?”
Our Equal Protection under the law arises from out Christian heritage. Contrast that with Muslim heritage which calls for lesser citizenship for infidels.
The actions of Mohammed in personally executing hundreds of people, the clear language of the final book (Book 9) of the Koran, and the actions of the followers of Islam show the West is sadly misinformed
about the nature of this death cult.
Anyone who is infidel enough to disagree with non-islamic President Barak Hussein will be dealt with.
Please report them to flag@whitehouse.gov if you hear anything “porky” being said against Islam.
Salam.
0bama stated in his Cairo speech that “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance.”
The greatest rhetorical device in defeating any leftist argument is to make them, before they go any further,
to exactly define what they mean by the word they just used.
Pat Buchanan: Still an idiot.
Try it this way, Pat: "For if we are percieved as at war with Nazism, we will lose that war."
Why would he assume that the US of A, if we put our mind to it, could not utterly defeat Islam?
The only reason, really, is if we lack the will to do so, as we currently do.
Bingo. We don't lack the means to eradicate islam, we lack the will to do so.
People forget that back in 1944 were the question put to a popular vote America would have quite happily exterminated every Japanese on the planet.
The bizzaro world aspect of this threat to burn Korans is that practically every day Christians die at the hands of Muslims, or Christian churches burn, or Bibles burn, and no one flinches.
But have some no name pastor of a tiny church in Florida just threaten to burn a Koran, and the whole world goes into a tizzy.
The Obama regime can’t name the enemy because it won’t look in the mirror.
I don't consider that "frustrated impotence". That's America being America - a land where the government works for the people, not rules over them. Long may the President and the secretaries of State not have the power to stop any US citizen from exercising their right to do whatever they wish.
[[“How do we win a long war when we cannot name the enemy?”
Now, that is a DAMN good question.]]
How can one “name the enemy” when one of them occupies the highest office in our own land?
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