Posted on 09/18/2012 6:47:02 PM PDT by tselatysr
By Mr. Curmudgeon:
Surprise, surprise. The Obama administration suspended most joint military operations with the American-trained Afghan army due to a string of "insider attacks" on U.S. and coalition forces. "These actions balance the tension of the recent video with force protection, while maintaining the momentum of the [Afghan training] campaign," said a statement released by NATO's International Security Assistance Force.
It appears the Pentagon joins with the U.S. State Department in blaming a 13-minute anti-Islamic video with disrupting America's diplomatic and military alliances with our Muslim "friends" around the world.
"Now such partners will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and approved by [regional Afghan] commanders," said Pentagon press secretary George Little.
Years ago, I worked with a man who fought in World War II and was stationed in England before the Allied D-Day invasion of Normandy. He told me that British military personnel were less than enthusiastic with the huge American presence in their country. "Overpaid, oversexed and over here," was a phrase they used to describe the typical Yank.
"The very health and vigor of the Americans contrasted with the poverty, pallidness, and exhaustion of British men, suffering for several years from nightly bombing attacks and meager food rations," said Anni P. Baker in her book "American Soldiers Overseas: The Global Military Presence."
That animosity ended when the real shooting began and the clear goal was to defeat a common totalitarian enemy that sought to destroy our shared principles of freedom. The trouble we appear to be having with our Afghan "allies" and other "friends" in the Muslim world is that the common enemy is not radical Islam. For our allies, and the rest of the Muslim world, the common enemy is the free speech and individual sovereignty practiced by citizens of "The Great Satan."
That freedom flies in the face of a religious ideology whose main focus is the obliteration of individualism in the name of obedience and submission. Come to think of it, that is identical to the ideologies espoused by Hitler and Stalin - Muslims just attached a desert god to lend their brand of ideological tyranny heavenly legitimacy.
Come to think of it, the principles of individual liberty, said Thomas Jefferson, stemmed from "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." That means there is a fundamental divide where the thinking of the two distinct deities is concerned.
Come to think of it, Thomas Jefferson believed the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom of 1779, which later formed the basis for the U.S. Constitutions' First Amendment, protected "the Jew and Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindu, and Infidel of every denomination," wrote Jefferson.
The last part of Jefferson's statement is most illuminating: He obviously disagreed with the doctrines of various Christian denominations and non-Christian religions by using a term familiar to Muslims, "Infidel." However, he did not feel it was in his power to uphold the "honor" of God or his prophets. A belief in a Supreme Being, one would think, suggests the deity's ability to sort things out without the help of feeble and corrupt man.
For Jefferson, that was a struggle between the individual and his conscience. First Amendment principles, though battered, continue to fight the mob and its democratically elected officials in their war on individual conscience and the right to express it publicly. This is why freedom of religion and freedom of speech are first among our Constitution's original ten amendments.
Come to think of it, that is why Jefferson called "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" "unalienable rights." They are part of our DNA and cannot be separated from us ... except by the force of totalitarian monsters - like Hitler, Stalin and the mobs now crying for America's death.
All this being said, what can be gained by maintaining an alliance with those who fall to pieces over a 13-minute video? More than this, what does it say about a government whose bureaucrats - from White House press secretary, Secretary of State and Pentagon spokesmen - begin each denunciation of Muslim violence by first condemning the Jeffersonian principle of free expression?
More than half a century after France was liberated from Nazi occupation by America and her allies, their gratitude has faded but they don't feel the need to kill American military personnel. The U.S. liberated Iraqis from Saddam Hussein and Afghans from the Taliban a short decade ago, and they hate us and would kill us all if given half a chance. That's because the enemy of Islam is not tyranny. The common enemy is freedom.
So, will someone please explain to me why the deaths of our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan were worth the price of establishing Middle East democracies that hate freedom?
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“So, will someone please explain to me why the deaths of our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan were worth the price of establishing Middle East democracies that hate freedom?”
We never went into Afghanistan with the goal of creating democracy. That sounds nice, but it wasn’t the main motive. The goal was to track down Al-Qaeda, who had murdered thousands of our citizens. A side-effect was that we toppled the Taliban who brutalized the women of Afghanistan with the most primitive legal system in the world. I’m glad we toppled them. Do I trust Karzai? No. He’s a corrupt opium pusher who will likely be killed when we leave. If the Afghans want a dictatorship. Let them have it, as long as they don’t shelter terrorists again
Iraq was slightly different, but again, the goal wasn’t to bring about democracy. Saddam was a monster. He massacred the Kurds and tortured children, but that wasn’t why we went after him. He overplayed his hand to try and be the “big man” in the ME. He claimed to have weapons he didn’t have, and he became an enemy because of it. I’m glad we did this as well, because as a result, Gaddafi, who was developing WMDs, abandoned his own program and started working with us against the extremists. Are the new Iraq government trustworthy. No. They’re working with Iran, but Saddam was no friend to us either.
The only Arab nation we fought to “bring democracy” to was Libya, and that was under Obama’s idiocy. We also should have made sure Mubarak remained. As great as democracy is, some nations simply aren’t built for it
For a long time, this was the case in Chile, which is why we propped up General Pinochet. These Arab hellholes full of extremists are the same. People like Mubarak saved countries. Often from themselves. Hosni is sitting in a jail cell right now asking the world
“Do you miss me yet?”
It has nothign to do with democracy, freedom, or any of the similar sh!t that Beltway @ssholes use to justify military campaigns all over the planet.
The U.S. is building an empire -- plain and simple. And "democracy" is nothing more than a smokescreen to lend the campaign legitimacy in the eyes of American voters with IQs in the 80-90 range.
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There is no such thing as democracy where the people WANT to be ruled by a Caliph. Democracy requires respect for individual rights and the rule of law, not men. Sharia does not allow either.
Democracy , rights, liberty and freedom are something that took over 1260 years to be codified in the Magna Carta.... all starting with Christ. For that reason, all of this is antithetical to Islam.
Consequently, the backwards slouches will fight it tooth and nail. I doubt they recognize nor challenge their failures.
And Obama wants us to be like them?
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