Posted on 09/25/2003 10:13:31 AM PDT by quidnunc
The arrest of two Muslim-American servicemen based at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, (a developing story originally broken by this newspaper), raises some complex questions about the conflicting loyalties of Muslim-American soldiers in the war against radical Islamic terror. Dueling it out are two policy imperatives dear to our tradition of government: equal treatment of all regardless of race and religion, and the need to guarantee national security. The threshold must be high for a policy to curtail one of these fundamental values in favor of defending the other — but it is a threshold that can be met in extreme cases. The ancient imperative of self-defense is such a case, but it remains to be seen whether we have reached that situation.
The complex connections between terrorist organizations, Islamic charities and some mainstream Muslim groups bring up the uncomfortable issue of whether Muslim chaplains and men in the ranks should be treated differently than recruits of other faiths. The military is confident in checking with the Vatican to confirm the character of a Catholic priest, but relying on the judgment of Muslim groups has proven to be less reliable.
Trouble was bound to happen eventually, as the military has sought assistance to approve chaplains from Muslim groups that are themselves questionable. According to Robert Spencer, author of the new book "Onward Muslim Soldiers," the Air Force "in July 2002 asked for help recruiting Muslim chaplains from the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA is subsidized by high-placed Saudi Wahhabis. Many Muslim military chaplains have been trained by the American Muslim Foundation's American Muslim Armed Forces and Veteran Affairs Council; the AMF has been investigated for suspicions of funding terrorism." Because of this system, many Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military have strong Wahhabi beliefs. The risk of conflicting loyalties is not limited to the chaplain corps.
Considering that there are only approximately 4,500 Muslims in uniform, their record of religious-based crimes is significant. The most notorious case of conflicting loyalties was that of Sgt. Hasan Akbar, who killed two of his commanding officers in a grenade attack in Kuwait last winter and shouted, "You guys are coming into our countries, and you're going to rape our women and kill our children." As Mr. Spencer pointed out to us yesterday, "He explicitly identified himself as a Muslim, and not an American."
The author provides other serious examples of enemies within the ranks. Naval Reservist Semi Osman was charged last May with illegally trying to become a U.S. citizen (he had altered birth certificates and other related papers) and possession of a handgun whose serial number was altered. Maj. Ali A. Mohamed, an Egyptian, joined the Army as a resident alien in the late 1980s even though he was on a State Department terrorist watch list. After leaving the Army in 1989, he joined Egyptian Islamic Jihad, worked directly with Osama bin Laden and was charged with involvement in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998. Army reservist Jeffrey Leon Battle was indicted last year for conspiring to wage war against the United States, and according to the Justice Department, "enlisting in the Reserves to receive military training to use against America." He planned to go to Afghanistan to join up with the Taliban.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Hey...!! By the way.... Tell us when you served your country, I suspect you're an American, have you given anything back for the liberty you enjoy?
I'm asking again...Would you be willing to take the same risks our soldiers have to take for the Political Correctness you seem to hold so dear to your heart?
I'll say it again another way..----> Talk is cheap, isn't it.
I suspect most people feel the same... it 's now up to all "peace loving" Muslim Americans to take the initiative and demonstrate their outrage before your PC attitude is acceptable to me.
I have yet to hear true outrage..even from those I know.
Yes, they got him (them). But I wonder what damage has been done because it took so long.
Then you're just not thinking clearly. The reason no distiction is being made between "good muslims" and "bad muslims" is that they are both followers of Islam, and it is Islam itself which is the problem. It isn't the "bad muslim" that is the problem, it is the "good" one that actually follows the teachings of his religion, a religion that calls for the abolition of secular government in favor of an oppressive islamic regime under Sharia rule, and a religion that demands of its followers to "kill the infidel wherever you find him".
I see no 'wink wink...look how funny I am with my joke about Muslims'. Deep in many peoples hearts is a true and honest hatred of Muslims
You do not understand. It is not Muslims we hate; it is Islam (Muslims are only victims of its "success"). And the reason we hate Islam is because it demands that we surrender to it; giving up essential freedom while adopting rules of behavior completely incompatible with enlightened civilization.
Do they know any? No
You're projecting. In truth, all the people I know who have experienced the face of Islam first-hand are those who are most opposed to it. Only those ignorant of the teachings of Islam, like yourself (unless you are a Muslim practicing al-taqiyah; there have been more than a few on this site), find anything positive within its beliefs.
Perhaps you are simply someone who has a few Muslim friends, who you think are "nice guys". And since they seem nice, they couldn't possibly be like those "other muslims", who must be an exception to the rule. The problem with your thought processes are two-fold. First, you are thinking via argumentum ad ignorantiam (you don't really know what Islam teaches), and second, you don't really have any way to know the true motives of your Muslim "friends". The people who "knew" Capt. Yee were confident that he was a loyal American and their good friend as well.
Sure. That's why notes sent along with the Anthrax said "Death to America, Death to Israel, Allah is Great".
Or why it was timed to arrive as a "second wave" after the initial al qaeda attacks, and was mailed from locations known to have al qaeda agents living nearby.
And the fact that Czech intelligence warned us that Iraqis had met with al queda and appeared to have provided them with Anthrax manufactured earlier at the Iraqi Salmon Pak facility is just a coincidence.
I suggest you go look up the concept of "Occam's Razor" and the principle of parsimony...
Muslims aren't known for their originality. Considering the text is essentially identical to a dozen or so other terrorist letters with clear middle-east origins, discounting it by saying it is too obvious only shows how ignorant you are about such matters.
The fact that the FBI is focusing on domestic terrorism
This would be the same FBI that was confident that the DC sniper was a white male militia member? Surely he couldn't have been muslim; after all, he left notes saying "I am Allah", and no muslim would ever do anything like that.
the targets, like Tom Daschle and NBC news (How likely is it that Al Qaeda had a gripe with Tom Daschle...
Once again, you are only showing your ignorance. At the time, Tom Daschle was the Senate Majority Leader. The Islamists don't buy into your simple leftist politics; they consider all Americans to be targets. To think it is ridiculous that Tom Daschle was a target is as stupid as thinking New York City would be safe because it happens to be a center of leftism in the U.S.
and the lab results (betonite and silica were in the samples)are all pointing to the anthrax being made right here in America.
Wrong. Both the strain and preparation (bentonite was the most common, but not only, anti-static agent used by the Iraqis) were known to have been used by the Iraqis at Salmon Pak. They are also known to have produced over 100 Scud warheads with various anthrax preparations, and it is known that at least a dozen were never discovered or dismantled. From the physical evidence, Iraq is the most likely suspect.
Oh, yeah...why would Al Qaeda or Iraq send anthrax to NBC when THEY DON"T HAVE NBC in the Middle East?
Your wealth of ignorance is astounding.
I suggest you look up Paranoid personality disorder.
It's not paranoid to think that when Iraq manufactured anthrax, gave that antrax to Muslim terrorists (caught by the Czech government in the act), and those same terrorist later performed other terrorist acts around the same time against the U.S., that perhaps the most likely culprit is the most obvious one. It is, however, delusional to ignore that most likely probability.
Your blind obedience to leftist dogma has made you delusional.
You can hate whatever you want. But you apparently are so clueless that you can't understand that Islam doesn't just require its followers to believe in a certain way, it requires them to act in a certain way; and that way includes such orders as conquering other peoples and forcing oppressive Sharia law upon them, as well as "killing the infidel wherever you find him". If you think such a philosophy is benign, that only means you are being foolish.
Let's just drop it.
No. You're welcome to your addled opinion, but your right to such an opinion does not extend into a right to deny others from pointing out the ludicrous nature of that opinion.
Go...Defend America and spy on a Muslim group or something.
Muslims aren't the only problem. Those idiots who blindly tolerate their beliefs and actions in ignorance, such as yourself, are also part of the problem.
Argumentum ad hominem, and as irrelevant to the issue under discussion as they are false. Your illiterate attempts to change the subject are as futile as your fallacious arguments. Since you know your ignorance of the true nature of Islam has been discovered, you try to change the subject in order to distract from your previous naive arguments in support of Islam.
That's because your being ignorant, an idiot, and so on and so forth.
Make you feel good?
No, you're still not getting the freely offered clue. The reason that I'm attacking your blind and ignorant support of Islam is because your idiocy is dangerous to those around you, and ultimately dangerous to the country as a whole. In your state of denial of the fundamental nature of Islam, you are as dangerous as some smallpox-infected tourist travelling around a country. Just because you don't happen to believe in modern microbiology (or that Islam is dangerous, in this case) wouldn't make you any less of a threat. Bad ideas can kill just as much as bad diseases, and Islam is both. To fail to attempt to eradicate such bad ideas is as intolerable as failing to notify those around a smallpox carrier of their risk to infection.
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